Conspicuous by Their Absence

Hello Smilo,

Glad you asked. The Ribs on the Ailerons and Elevators are a shade LIGHTER than the regular paint. The Panel Lines are a shade Darker. The AF5Paint codes are 106 for regular Green, 105 for Panels, and 107 for Ribs. I had noticed this before but never tried out the equivalent in a BMP file.

Moral of the story is that BMP and R8 are NOT the same even if the shades are nominally the same.

I still need to figure out the Palette thing for other projects.

- Ivan.
 
the lighter ribs look good.
what about the darker aileron,
elevator and trim tab boarders?
they seem very dark on both left and right sides,
which would be natural, since they are joints.

i guess what i'm saying is,
they show in both green sections.
are the joints highlighted?
 
The Separation Lines on Control Surfaces, Landing Gear, Canopies and other places where the Pieces move away from each other are typically done as Dark Gray (AF5Paint 2-5) and do not depend on the Paint underneath. The Panel Lines are Black overlays over the Camouflage Paint but only at about 15-35% Opacity so that the colours underneath show through. It's an arbitrary thing but makes sense in my mind. BTW, there are exceptions to this: The luggage door on the Fuselage behind the Cockpit is done as a Panel Line.

Here is a rather strange one:
I was always under the assumption that the Colours from the AF99 Paint / Final Assembly determined the untextured colour. When Textures are not selected for the build, the Colours look as described in the Assembly. The funny thing is that when the Textures ARE selected, the Colours displayed in the Model when Texture Files are missing are NOT the same as the Assembly.

Compare this Screenshot with the prior ones of this model. I thought I was getting a bad side effect from my SCASM changes, but that is not quite the case.

- Ivan.
 
Status of the Computer

Sorry for the Re-hash for those of you also following the Arado 196 thread, but without it, the next message would have no context, and I don't want to keep hijacking Smilo's Project thread:


I'm not a football fan, so when Anna Honey and the Kids decided to go Skiing this morning, I figured I would have a day to get a few things done.

I could have spent it working on my Hawk 81 project, but figured I could finish that up after hours even when they are home.

My original 17 inch Sony monitor went out a few months ago and I replaced it with another 17 inch Nokia which just wasn't as sharp. Today I figured I would pull a monitor from another machine that doesn't get as much use (Dell 17 inch).

My clock on this computer hasn't been keeping time for a month or two. Since I was gonna pull the monitor anyway, it would be a good time to open up the system unit because this is a desktop case and I also would have the space to work. Pulled the case, replace the battery (We'll see if it worked in a few minutes) and also found out that the monster vibration at times isn't from my power supply fan like I was guessing but instead is from the little bitty fan on top of the CPU. I also found out that my slot fan next to the graphics card was burned out.

After I purchased the computer parts and was having lunch, I got a call from Anna Honey that the furnace at her Parents' place was not working.... That changed my evening from a calm one to a rather hurried one with putting a computer back together (stripped a screw) and having to poke around in the garage for a space heater.

After spending about an hour and a half moving boxes and climbing up into the crawl space above the garage and then cleaning off the heater, I found out that the inlaws thought it was warm enough not to need additional space heaters this evening....

At 11:48, I still don't know who won the Super Bowl. (I presume the game is over.) Then again, I don't remember who played either.

Sorry for the hijack, Smilo.
- Ivan.
 
....After blowing out the dust from the CPU fan and then putting everything back together, I found that everything was fine.....

....for about 2 minutes. After that, the vibration from the fan was so loud that you could hear it from downstairs and could not keep your concentration while working in front of the computer. The vibration was also bad enough that it made the whole table shake.

Last night, I finally went to look through some other machines that are complete but not in service at the moment. A nearly identical CPU fan was "borrowed" from one of the other machines and fitted to the heat sink on this machine and now everything sounds fine.

- Ivan.
 
US Army Uniform

Up to this point, The Hawk 81 only had a Pilot wearing an AVG Leather Jacket with the Chinese Flag on the back. US Army Air Corps Pilots don't tend to wear that kind of thing, so it was necessary to re texture the Pilot. A GI Joe "Wheeler Field Pilot" that I acquired recently was used as a model. This is the result.

I am debating a bit whether this should be a single release or two releases for the two paint jobs. Two would make things easier but just about everything but the paint and screenshots is the same.

- Ivan.
 
i didn't know this was a poll.
but, i would think that if
the only difference was the textures,
one release.
if there are model and texture differences,
two releases.
also, with two releases,
you can see where the most interest is.

then again, you could make one release with
model.avg and model.usaac
(if there are model differences)
texture.avg and texture.usaac
and have both listed in the aircraft.cfg
using the same .air file.
(of course, if the .air files are different, 2 releases)
pretty simple, really.

or, better yet, do what you want.


how's that for decisive waffling?
 
Two Hawk 81s

I chose to do it as two releases because that let me post a screenshot for each paint scheme.
Each version actually has both sets of textures.

The gun hitting power on this aeroplane are a bit of a compromise between CFS Stock and the numbers from Emmanuel Gustin, Anthony Williams and the 1 percent folks.

- Ivan.
 
very nice...
and the two releases,
each with the texture of the other,
is a great idea.

well done, she's a beauty! :salute:
 
Hi Smilo,

Have you had a chance to test this Aeroplane out? I rather like the way it turned out, especially for appearance with the AVG Paint. There is one part of the flight model that I pretty much gave up on, but hopefully it isn't easy to find. BTW (....and this applies to everyone) If you find what you believe to be a problem in this project, please let me know.

Now that the Paint Booth in Ivan's Workshop has been upgraded, there are a couple other aeroplanes that want some time there. The Ki-61 already has a pretty decent AIR file. The Spitfire does not.

- Ivan.
 
well, that search was relatively painless.

i was able to take her out
for a quick look see.
i didn't spend a lot of time,
but, at first blush...incredible detail.
nicely done.

actually, i spent more time trying to get
the Army textures to show
than i spent looking at the plane.
with a little effort, i can rework
the aircraft.cfg so both textures will show.
also, the texture files need to be renamed
to texture.ARMY and texture.AVG1P.

are there two separate avg textures,
or are the texture and texture AVG1P both the same?
sorry, i didn't take the time to look close.

gotta run...inlaws are coming over.
 
Both aircraft have a total of 3 texture directories: One is the one in use and the others are just storage. I did it that way to keep it straight when working on the textures. When I was just renaming directories, at least once I overwrote textures for the other paint scheme without saving..... OUCH! (That's what happens when most of the work is being done late at night!) All the textures together are only a couple hundred K, so I figured it was acceptable overhead.

Smilo, Do what you need to do. I was just asking if you checked out the plane because you commented on it.

The Ki-61 is going through the SCASM and retexturing process at the moment. I can see by the SCASM source file that I last worked on this back in 2006 or so. The actual model was finished in AF99 back around 2005..... The virtual cockpit thing (only) was done in 2006 but I didn't bother with editing the source for BMP file names or anything else.

Here is a screenshot of it stripped down to primer in preparation for BMP textures. There is still a bunch of SCASM adjustments that are in the plans as well as comments in the code for future work.

- Ivan.
 
makes sense, but i'm still curious
what the third texture is
and if it is a duplicate
and if it is a duplicate
why is it there?
it doesn't really matter
i'm just wondering.

i guess i could go look
but being a lazy bum
it's easier to just ask.
 
No need to look, Smilo. It isn't really a planned or logic type of thing.

It is just a residual from the development directories. Instead of renaming directories, I just copy everything from the AVG1 or Army directory to the working one. Less chance to screw up that way.

- Ivan.
 
okay, fair enough...
there are 2 AVG texture files
with different names
and one Army texture file.

sorry for flogging this. :a1089:

i'm thinking that the average, joe blow,
cfs downloader, doesn't know a much about
renaming texture files and modifying aircraft.cfg's.
heck, he might not even notice
that there is an Army texture file.

i'm just trying to make it easier
for him to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
 
The Average Joe

Hello Smilo,

The Average Joe is why I did this as two separate downloads with everything in both. Each has a default aircraft which is shown in the accompanying screenshots. Perhaps they will find the other texture and perhaps not, but it doesn't matter all that much except for space and I kill a few hundred K with every screenshot I post.... 900K isn't really all that much for an aircraft with a semi-custom panel. I have wasted more space than that with a single post and a few screenshots.

I just finished the SCASMing stuff on the Ki-61 Hien.

- Ivan.
 
BMP Palette Editor

I just figured out how to do this using GIMP! If I can reproduce this, I can properly paint my A6M2....
If I can't reproduce this, I end up with a weird PINK Aeroplane.

Now I just need to figure out what Colour it is sposta be.

- Ivan.
 
Ivan said:
I just figured out how to do this using GIMP! If I can reproduce this, I can properly paint my A6M2....
If I can't reproduce this, I end up with a weird PINK Aeroplane.

Now I just need to figure out what Colour it is sposta be.

- Ivan.
Click to expand...

If you have found a way to tickle the palette with GIMP, share with us. Apart from Saint Paint (which is payware), I have found no freeware doing this, GIMP included. I must have overlooked something...:banghead:
 
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