I want to paint a new livery for Blackbox’s BN2 Islander. They provide three .psd template files and a tutorial as well, but unfortunately the tutorial is for an A320 and on top of that, it was written for SFX. I’m sure the concepts carry over but not sure how.
I’m quite experienced working in the traditional 3d world mapping uv layouts and creating textures for models. (3ds max, maya, etc) I’m steering clear of working in Blender and would just like to use Blackbox’s provided photoshop images.
I’ve searched online and found some tutorials, but again, they’re a bit confusing and none seem comprehensive. i.e. different people use slightly different methods.
Is there a step by step tutorial on converting and getting photoshop image files back into MSFS? I look in the SimObjects/Airplanes/blackbox-aircraft-BN-Islander and see multiple texture folders and .cfg and .dds files, but I have no idea what the .dds files from Blackboxes BBS-BN20-EX1_alb.pds files would replace, nor how that connects to MSFS interface where you are able to pick a livery once it’s made.
All a bit confusing, but I’d be so thankful for the help!
Matt
That’s what my intention was initially, too. I, however noticed that working in a combination of Blender as well as Photoshop worked rather well. My starting point was this very video on youtube:
If you create a plain white texture file, paint on the model and then use the new file as a multiplied layer in photoshop on the base texture, you can get fine results.
Some screenshots of my liveries:
Florian,
Thanks for the link. I’ll watch that video. My question, I suppose, is where the files go once they leave the graphic editing software. How are they converted and where do they go in MSFS folder structure.
X-plane is so simple. Just create the .png and put it in the plane’s liveries’ objects folder.
But maybe the link you provided will explain that. I’ll check it out.
Thanks again for the pointer. Nice liveries btw!!
M.
I usually use the free software paint.net to convert my finished png to the corresponding png.dds file. You mostly need the ALBD flagged files - these bring colour to your plane. If you work on an Asobo aircraft, they use the model itself to bring color, that’s why the LIVERYCOLOR file needs to be a transparent png. If you want some metallic look, there are the COMP files. I haven’t gotten around to playing with the reflectiveness (on my caravan, red and silver/gray should have a metallic-painted look) I shamelessly invite you to have a look at my brown C172 over at flightsim.to, maybe the setup of my files might help you.
Aditionally, I highly recommend using MSFSLayoutGenerator so that you don’t have to write the layout.json yourself.
Also, I just had another reason for using Blender over pure Photoshop. Sometimes, the UV mapping is a bit skewed so that a straight line in Photoshop will be curved and vice versa. The blue/yellow stripes were quite a challenge, as I went for the proven “FSX-compatible” method. I’d do it much more differently nowadays. Maybe I’ll come round to redoing it.
Thanks so much for the info!
