3D Livery Painting on the MSFS Models

Thanks for all your work bestdani.

I still find I get the best results from Photoshop, but this has really helped speed up the placement of major elements.

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bestdani,

Have you found a way or know of a way to separate the combined PBR Normal map MS uses? Trying to get some data into substance. TY.

Hi Guys, my FS2020 downloaded via Game Pass, is installed in a different drive(External) due computer capacity, and move in to C: is not an option, for this reason, I think I canā€™t install liveries on my FS2020!.
I have located my community folder properly, via Developers option on game, I have tried so many times and different ways, but no joy!

Any suggestion, or is it really not possible if installed outside C:/??

I have installed the simulator in another unit D: / and I can install liveries in community without problems, I remind you that even the installation in C: / there are people who cannot either ā€¦

Maybe GamePass can be an issue?

Or the pack or liveries that you want to install, there can be many factors

It is the pack from here, I will try a few separated packs
Tks!!

I have used this for educational purposes and would like to do a video tutorial about how to include this in a custom livery making workflow. But before I do so , I have a legal question : is doing this and painting a model in blender in compliance with the gameā€™s EULA ? I ask because in some other games (namely Arma 3) you are allowed to rework textures but NOT open the 3d model or extract it anywhere.

I am trying to find a way to preserve the transparency of parts of this texture file for the Longitude ā€¦ using Photoshop but not having any success at all. Every time I change it, it saves with white (background colour) instead of transparent. Any suggestions would be fabulous!

You need to create an alpha channel for the transparent info or on a layer with a mask, or transparency, in the layer itself. Iā€™d recommend the latter vs. using alphas as itā€™s much easier to visualize. Iā€™m not 100% sure but I believe exporting the dds file converts your transparency data into the alpha channel the game requires. Iā€™m having problems with the Photoshop DDS plugin working at all or Iā€™d test this to be sure.

As for the how, this is beyond what I could explain in a forum post but you should find more than enough basic tutorials on working with transparency in Photoshop via YouTube. Good luck!

Yep - my plug-in doesnā€™t seem to work for transparency even though it permits me to read and edit the basic dds files.

I know its got to do with the alpha but its not working the same way as it has in FSX/P3D, and I am yet to figure out how to use the mask and transparency layers to do what needs doing. And the info Iā€™ve found to date hasnā€™t been too helpful.

In that case, your transparency data probably needs to go in a new channel. Open the channels pallet, create a new channel, and then copy anything from your layer mask to that channel. If working in a transparent layer, control (command on mac) click the layer preview icon in the layers palette to select all the pixels in that layer, click on your mask, fill the selection with black, deselect and invert. Then you have your alpha channel mask set up. Delete your mask on a layer if you have one set up, and flatten the image before saving. Hope that makes sense/works.

Problem solved - it was as simple as checking the dds file in DTXBmp and going back to FSX/P3D practice ā€¦ adding the missing alpha layer from a working file!

I did my first 787 paint and happy with it, but I kinda did a crude method, I went by old FSX paint kit that had whole fuselage and curved lines. I just broke it down into 1x1 squares and just painted the stencil on in sections. got me the entire fuselage length with curves and everything worked out fine and did not even touch the Blender paint tools, just was pasting stencils onto the plane. 2048x2048 resolution.

Still having some trouble trying to find the right object that does the engine texturing, it only does 1/2 the engine, but I am stuck with this ā€œFrostā€ engine but is that icing? not the actual paintable part of nacelle? I wonder if icing is an actual texture map and find a way to remove or back it up so no visible icing shows up for an airliner?

is the fuselage COMP dds what defines shiny metal surfaces? if so, how can I select what I want to be metallic from my original fuselage dds? I see red/purple etc.

Shininess is in your green channel. Darker values are shinier. You should be able to select and edit directly in only that channel using any of the big image editing apps.

I guess corel paintshop is limited perhaps, it does not view channels right nor can even do DDS even with plugin. I have to use DXTBMP to compile back to DDS 1 for all my textures, I use Paint.net to open some DDS that DXTBMP seems to not open, so I convert to PNG to work on it in corel. I tried to convert via paint.net to a PNG with the base NEO Airbus fuselage comp file and I highlighted the fuselage lines that I wanted metallic like, so I pasted them over and assumed I could use the pink to get metallic based off another persons metallic gold comp file which had the outlines pinkish, so I figured Id use that color. Well nothing works, fuselage still has no effect, even it is now converted back to a DDS file.

I guess I must be breaking layers somehow if layers actually did exist?

You should probably download and learn some basic editing with GIMP if you want to create liveries. Youā€™re going to need good layer editing capabilities and working with the comp files needs a package that allows you to manipulate individual channels. Maybe paint.net has these features though?

I am looking for information on the values for the COMP layer, a color match to use and example if I use red is glossy paint, orange is matte paint, pink is metallic, but what I wonder is what are the basic values of these colors and if I darken or lighten from the basic color what are the effects, I canā€™t find this information, if someone could direct me or tell me or find the right information, in order to master the COMP layer, instead of tattooing without any convincing results.

Thank you

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You are thinking wrong about the RGB channels, you have to view them differently to understand the logic.

Assuming you have Photoshop, open the channel-panel and view only the red channel. That channel is the ambient occlusion channel. So those are simply put extra shadows that will be multiplied with the base color to make the lighting look more realistic.

Than take a look at only the green channel, so you see a greyscale image in front of you. This image you see is the amount of roughness of a color/fabric etc. Entirely black is 0 roughness and is actually not really realistic most of the time. The more to white you go the more rough a material is so it will appear less glossy.

Than the blue channel is used to tell the software if a part is metal or not. Black is non metal (dielectric) and white is metal. In reality itā€™s never a value in between since something is a metal or something ainā€™t. But you can cheat with values in between if that will give you a better result.

I hope I made it clear the COMP file are actually 3 images just put in one file to save a lot of space. So see it also as three different images (one per channel) instead of a kind of magical color you want to pick to get a certain result.

If you like glossy red plastic, just have red in the ALBEDO file and for the COMP file you keep the RED channel as it was (you need those extra shadows), put a dark grey in the Green channel and make it black in the Blue channel (you want plastic, not metal).

This info is also in the SDK BTW but maybe it helps if I put it in my own words since it can be confusing.

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