painting FSX planes on a second PC

[Daveroo]

i have my FSX and all its files on my desktop PC at my desk in the rv...but somedays my back hurts to much to sit here and fly or chat or whatever im doing..i need to get in my recliner or just go to bed ( i have a "matress genie" that turns my bed into a hospital like bed,lifts the back/head way up) and i can "sit" in bed in a comfortable possition to read ,watch tv,us the laptop,ect...OR i go to my folks and spend the afternoon there and i have the laptop with me in theyre house....

i want to know if i can put the planes..or paintkits i guess,,( i have the abacus FSpaint,but dont think that would work) on my laptop,,paint the planes and then transfer them back to my desktop and install them into FSX?...would i need to install FSX on the laptop to do so?...i do have a paid for winzip thingy..just dont know how to use it to zip up a file..( i can learn)and i have that BMP program somewhere on the desktop,whatelse would i need if its possible to do?im thinking i could just email it to myself? i do that with URL links all the time,,,if im in the house..i find a site..i copy/paste the link to email,mail it to myself then open the link when im on my desktop later in the rv..i could do that with th zipfiles too?

what would i do for planes that dont have a accual paint kit?..nothing?...

 

[TAFKAM]

Hey Daveroo, yeah i think it should be possible, as long as your laptop is fast enough or has enough memory to use the programs...maybe such as photoshop...

You dont really need to have FSX on your laptop, the only thing is that its not possible to have a look at it the model/texture in the UI in FSX so thats obly possible on your other pc...or maybe the Abacus FS paint gives you a possibility to look at the model with the texture..


Hope this is something that would get you a bit further, anyways all the best with your back ofcourse and with the liveries...



Take care


T

 

[Skyhawk18]

i have my FSX and all its files on my desktop PC at my desk in the rv...but somedays my back hurts to much to sit here and fly or chat or whatever im doing..i need to get in my recliner or just go to bed ( i have a "matress genie" that turns my bed into a hospital like bed,lifts the back/head way up) and i can "sit" in bed in a comfortable possition to read ,watch tv,us the laptop,ect...OR i go to my folks and spend the afternoon there and i have the laptop with me in theyre house....

i want to know if i can put the planes..or paintkits i guess,,( i have the abacus FSpaint,but dont think that would work) on my laptop,,paint the planes and then transfer them back to my desktop and install them into FSX?...would i need to install FSX on the laptop to do so?...i do have a paid for winzip thingy..just dont know how to use it to zip up a file..( i can learn)and i have that BMP program somewhere on the desktop,whatelse would i need if its possible to do?im thinking i could just email it to myself? i do that with URL links all the time,,,if im in the house..i find a site..i copy/paste the link to email,mail it to myself then open the link when im on my desktop later in the rv..i could do that with th zipfiles too?

what would i do for planes that dont have a accual paint kit?..nothing?...

All my liveries are painted on a second PC - actually they are painted on my Mac.
Besides FSRepaint, which other applications do you have to do the paintwork?

FSRepaint may be helpful for watching your paintwork applied to the models. FSR will also help you locating the correct template to paint. For the painting itself, I am using Adobe Photoshop. Other programs may be usefull, but I am familiar with Photoshop only. When working with Photoshop, you will have to work with files that are extended bitmaps. To bring those files back to the simulator, you will have to convert them to DXT5. I that case you may need a #3 freeware program called DXTBmp.

Painting is a matter of changing certain textures of a model. In some cases a paint kit is available (often layered), and in some cases a texture folder containing textures that makes a pure white model is included by the publisher (like most Carenado models).

So, yes you can definitely do the paintwork on an other PC, but watching your paintwork using FSRepaint should be done on your simulator PC (as the new textures must be installed into FSX before you can watch them in FSRepaint)

This is only a short intro of what painting is about. I guess that there are several tutorials that will explain the painting process step by step.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

To view FSX models you just need the freeware 'Model Converter X' program as that will display FSX and FS9 models with their paint schemes. To use it on a second computer you would have to copy the aircraft folder over from FSX, work on the paint and then copy the folder back to FSX overwriting the original.

As to getting the files from Computer A to Computer B there are numerous ways including USB cables, cross-over ethernet cables (not the regular type), LAN or wireless networks, thumb drives, external hard drives or even emailing or Skype type file transfers if you are desperate.

 

[OleBoy]

Yep, the way Tako_Kichi mentions should do the trick. ModelConverterX simply looks for a MDL file. Which you can browse to no matter where it resides. A fairly simple process actually.