Question for Painters

[Duckie]

Looking for a decent aircraft viewer to use in painting. I currently crank up FS9 everytime I need to check work and brother is that ever time consuming. Any suggestions, tricks of the trade or not too expensive apps that anyone can offer?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Happy New Year!

Steve

 

[huub vink]

Steve, I do the same as you do. I make the aircraft I'm working on my default flight. I know some use FS Repaint from Abacus, which offers a preview. But by starting FS9 every time I get my mandatory breaks and at least some flying time.

Cheers,
Huub

 

[Duckie]

Steve, I do the same as you do. I make the aircraft I'm working on my default flight. I know some use FS Repaint from Abacus, which offers a preview. But by starting FS9 every time I get my mandatory breaks and at least some flying time.

Cheers,
Huub

Good points all, and all are practiced by me too! Never really considered the "mandatory break" side of it but you are absolutely right, Huub!

Thanks,
Steve

 

[Quax d. Bruchpilot]

Hmm ? wasn't there a "keycombination" to load "player aircraft" without starting FS new ??? It means , klick the "windows key", make changes, go back to FS press "this key" and take a look what you have made. ??? Take a look in your FS "keyconfig". I have never tried this, but I have read about it in some other forums...

 

[Quax d. Bruchpilot]

okay, unfortunatly in german. If its usefull maybe somebody can translate ?

View attachment 55312
Is it this you have searched for ? It should work 75% ;-)

 

[Tom Clayton]

There is an available command that reads "Reload user aircraft." I don't know how much gets reset with that command, though. I think that it's intended for resetting crash damage and such.

Huub (and anyone else that cares), if you don't want to keep resetting your default flight, there's an easy work-around. Go into your Flight Simulator Files folder and find UI Generated Flight.flt and set a shortcut to that file on your desktop. Double-clicking that will start FS9 and launch the last flight that you set up in the Create A Flight menu. If you also have FSX installed, it will try to open with FSX when you double-click it. So you can right-click the shortcut and use the "Open with..." menu, or you can really get fancy and go to Folder Options, click the Filetypes tab, then reset the *.flt extension to always open with FS9.

 

[Sunny9850]

If you just paint the occasional aircraft loading it in FS is the best option, as it also shows the final result with the correct envbmp for reflections.
If you do a complicated repaint that requires copious amounts of cross and double checking to make lines and accents line up perfectly and you do a lot of painting FSRepaint is definitely a much more efficient way to go.
And you can paint on a PC separate from you FS PC such as a laptop away from home and don't need to have everything FS with you.

Cheers
Stefan

 

[Duckie]

Man you guys are 4 for 4. Some really good tips. Huub, I currently do as you by saving my current project as the default flight.

And Tom, your desktop shortcut trick fits the immediate need as it saves a few more mouse clicks. And since I don't have FSX loaded - no conflicts there.

Quax, working on the translation for your suggestion, looks like it might come in handy at times when already booted into FS9 and need to make a quick change like turning a layer on or off.

Stefan, been considering FSRepaint also for just the reasons you mentioned. I'm probably a little over the top when it comes to aligning panel lines and shading and other effects across texture files. And when you're adjusting a curved panel line stretched in one oblique direction across two textures and the textures are not in the same scale, you can wear the paint off a key board letter booting in and out of the sim so much!

So, looks like there's room in my expanding tool box for all of these suggestions because they each serve a little different need from the other.

Thanks so much for sharing your experience,
Steve

 

[johnh_049]

get the FsRepaint demo version
costs nothing and works great for viewing your repaints.
beats having to reload FS9 everytime you want to check something.

 

[Sunny9850]

LOL I totally forgot about the Demo version. It does indeed allow viewing the paint in process exactly like the registered version. The included paint part is rudimentary at best and can't hold a candle to PSP or even Gimp.
I never used it for more than initial testing of what texture covers what part of the airplane.
The decision to purchase was more a thank you to Abacus for the excellent preview tool.

Cheers
Stefan

 

[OBIO]

It's a shame that Aircraft Container Manager was not released as freeware by the author. At one point, he was working on a new version to work with FSX and said that it would be freeware. The last I have seen of him anywhere on line was from a couple years ago. I read that he had been in a horrible auto accident and was injured very badly...that explained his disappearance from the sim world for quite some time. He came back, did the freeware Air File Manager (or something like that) as freeware, announced that he would be working on an improved/updated ACM....got some input from FSX users....then disappeared again.

OBIO

 

[RobH]

Have you folks tried this? http://www.scenerydesign.org/modelconverterx/ I use it for FSX and it will open FS9 model files. There are a few issues with moving parts, but it will show the main fuselage and wing textures just fine/ It will also let you change between different liveries. I think it has good lighting in it, just like ACM has.