Been working on a Aluminum Texture color

Unfortunately no. It's cutom made to the specific paint. But the template I made can be applied with minimal work.
 
Had my eye on the Panther for some time but couldn't decide if it was 'me' or not. Last time it was in a sale, I ended up getting the Razbam Banshee instead!!!:banghead: This paint however has prompted me to grab a copy and I'm glad I did. It's a lovely carrier model.. nice gentle flight dynamics and you can see the carrier without having to fiddle around with the eyepoint:biggrin-new:

You'd better release this paint now Rick:encouragement:

ATB
DaveB:)
 
Dumonceau said:
Oh WOW!! Can't wait to see what it looks like in P3D!!!
Click to expand...

Most Likely I will have to redo it. P3D and FSX handle alpha channel slightly differently. Depending on how much reflection is allowed by the model, from what I've read around. There are a few models I've found that have virtually no difference between fsx and P3D though. A certain Milviz model works equally well for example while the Glowing heat model requires a complete redo of my polished aluminum paint. It needs to be darker alpha. But in will test it in P3D.
 
P3D:

You're going to find a lot more flexibility with your bump/alpha spec/alpha combinations. For DX11 capable cards, the light rendering is much more sensitive in P3D. Applications of your three alpha options will act cumulatively. Your spec layers will be much more light interactive.

FYI, keep your bump maps with their alphas at a lower rendering resolution. For instance if your skin is 4096, render your bumps at 2048. The bump alpha will render the details more smoothly with less pixilation, while providing a very lively light shift in the contours.

Maybe at some point, P3D will allow switching cube maps as altitude increases. Once above the cloud layer, a cube map with deep black/blue upper would be killer. Fun to think about the possibilities....

I love this plane....your skins are really stunning Rick.
 
Thanks gman. I appreciate the instruction as I'm still very new at this repaint thing. I'm also much slower at production and release of skins than some of you master repainters.

Can this same reduction of bump resolution be used in fsx with similar behavior results? Although I will be switching to P3D exclusively, I started this skin in fsx and want to finish it up for everyone here.
 
000rick000 said:
Thanks gman. I appreciate the instruction as I'm still very new at this repaint thing. I'm also much slower at production and release of skins than some of you master repainters.

Can this same reduction of bump resolution be used in fsx with similar behavior results? Although I will be switching to P3D exclusively, I started this skin in fsx and want to finish it up for everyone here.
Click to expand...

The technique will work for your FSX and P3D skins. The only difference is the DX11 light rendering.

A couple of tricks that work well for me:

Don't use an embedded alpha channel in your original Photoshop bump map . Create your bump alpha separately and combine the two in DXTBmp.
When I create a bump map for rivets and panel lines, I build the grayscale map at half resolution of the color texture art. Then I double the image size i.e. from 1024 to 2048...only for the bump map. This will soften your panel lines and rivets grayscale and blend the high/low contrasts, eliminating the square pixel look.

I hand paint exaggerated highlight and shadows onto each panel for the bump map. Reference the Red Bull P-38 skins I posted here to see the result. You will get really nice stressed panels using that technique. You will have to experiment with each aircraft to see how the model reacts to the intensity of these height maps.
I'm working on a revised HD skin for MJ's DAK using this technique.

I save a master grayscale, then run the Nvidia normal map filter and save the working bump map separately.

Save the final bump.dds file as DXT3. I tried 32 bit, but things got too grainy.

You can save your color texture files at 32 bit for good rendering in P3D. Of course it doubles the file size, but higher end systems will handle it nicely.

I keep a collection of Fresnel ramps and cube maps handy. I run parallel texture files in the working aircraft folder with the different cube/Fresnel combinations. I open each aircraft I the sim and compare them where I can see them in motion. I tend to run cube maps consistent with the environment i.e. mountainous as in the case of where I live.

I also replace the GlobalEnv_AC_Chrome in the sim texture folder with something more to my liking...usually a more aggressive and detailed cube map. If I want something unique to a single aircraft, I write it to the individual file.

G
 
almost ready

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I've added Tip tank anti-glare paint and I think it's done? Also have a mix and match used version as well :) What do you think? I feel like it's done...although I don't have much time ATM, and so I could use some eyes on to find errors etc...Thanks!


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I have to say, it's quite a stunning paint. Shiny but not too shiny.. just the right mix. I'm even more glad I bought the Panther model to go with it:very_drunk:

ATB
DaveB:)
 
Thanks Joseph! Thanks Dave. If I get the time I will release it today unless I find somenfixes. ;)
 
Rick, I'd say you've got it about as good as it's gonna get. :encouragement: Pls upload your finished work for those of us who have the Vertigo F9F package. I'd like to play around with the textures to see if I could come up with a pre-WWII aluminum/silver paint color.
 
I had done a set of skins for this bird, but lost them when the HD crashed.

This is a beautiful piece of work Rick. I'll look forward to the download.

Two thumbs up.....
 
Honnestly, it looks fantastic. :ernaehrung004:

PS: do you think you could apply such metallic textures on the current C-97 project ? (I don't even know if they would be suitable...)
 
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