WestWind Airlines

It would be very cool if someone repainted Wilco Boeing 737-300/400/500. I have tried it and I think it's really amazing, for me - better than PMDG 737-600/700/800/900! And it's available for both FS9 and FSX.

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Pranas Drulis
WWA2097
Cat 4
FS9 + Level D 767

Assistant Hub Manager Amsterdam

We have a gotten a lot of new blood in this VA, and many of you are youngsters. How about some of you start learning to do repaints and Scenery? Those of us currently doing this work had to learn it at some point.  Nobody taught us.  What are you going to do when us old guys are gone, for one reason or another? Are you going to do this? Think about it, then do something about it while us old guys are still around to provide help and tips.

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Bob S.
Senior Command Captain
E.V.P. Scenery

Bob Sturm:

We have a gotten a lot of new blood in this VA, and many of you are youngsters. How about some of you start learning to do repaints and Scenery? Those of us currently doing this work had to learn it at some point.  Nobody taught us.  What are you going to do when us old guys are gone, for one reason or another? Are you going to do this? Think about it, then do something about it while us old guys are still around to provide help and tips.

I would love to learn to do repaints and stuff.Give me a general location to someplace to learn and im all over it  

 

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Monster Driver
P255 charter

Scott,

I don't paint aircraft, but here is a couple of links I found via an internet search:

http://www.avsim.com/hangar/flight/tutorials/

http://www.simmerspaintshop.com/forums/forum38-flight-simulator/

http://www.fsdome.com/design/help.htm

 Maybe Kim and/or Scott Stone can add to this.

EDIT: Also, see the "Repaints 101" post in the Announcements and FAQ section of this Aircraft and Scenery Forum. 

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Bob S.
Senior Command Captain
E.V.P. Scenery

Thnx Bob,i did a search but didnt come up with much,not these links atleast.thnx again,appreciate it 

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Monster Driver
P255 charter

Ye, I'd love to try repaint a few aircraft. I'll give it a go. I've done a lot of changing aircraft from FS9 to FSX recently and some have been a success. We could use these in are FSX fleet (well, some of them) if you wanted. At the moment thats the only thing I can really do! Its pretty easy, but I have to start somewhere!

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Eoin Coates
Senior Command Captain
Real World Student Pilot
Frankfurt am Mein-Hub Manager

"If the thought came into my head, I would go out and buy a gun"- Herb Kelleher's reply after being asked if he would start another airline.

The tutorial that I liked the best was this one:

http://www.calclassic.com/repaint.htm

Most everything else I learned by trial and error, I also got lucky and someone gave me a copy or JASC's PSP......

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EHAM-YSSY B772LR

Hi Guys,

I checked out all your links and my dad had a copy of paint shop pro 7 in the house so I borrowed that as well! I'm still trying to learn the basics of it all and paint shop is really confusing! Bob, no offence, but your links are a little bit on the old side! I even heard a reference to FS98 mentioned in there somewhere. I was 6, when that came out!!! However, your links did help a lot. Kim, I think yours was the best as it dealt with Paint Shop Pro 7, but I really did'nt think that there is so much work involved!! I'm starting to really feel sorry for you!! I'll keep practicing and when I'm up to standard I let you know, and see if I'm up to your standard!

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Eoin Coates
Senior Command Captain
Real World Student Pilot
Frankfurt am Mein-Hub Manager

"If the thought came into my head, I would go out and buy a gun"- Herb Kelleher's reply after being asked if he would start another airline.

WWA2104:

Bob, no offence, but your links are a little bit on the old side! I even heard a reference to FS98 mentioned in there somewhere.

No offense taken.  I just grabbed the first site that showed up from my google search. The whole idea was to point out to you that with some internet searching you should be able to find what you need. There are a number of  designer forums which are available for information and help. I don't do painting, but I figured that, generally speaking, if you can paint a FS98-2002 aircraft, the same basic process would apply to FSX.

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Bob S.
Senior Command Captain
E.V.P. Scenery

paint shop pro will work... Adobe Photoshop is really what you want, though.  If you have the nvidia plugins for it, you can save directly as the DXT format used by MSFS without having to use the converter.

Either way, you should probably get a copy of "DXTBmp" anyway.  A paint kit usually comes as either a native photoshop .PSD, a paintshop .PSP, or just a BMP with an all-white texture.

The problem comes in with layers - you really want a paint kit that's already in a layered format, so that the rivets and windows and all that are on a different layer from the paint.  The idea is that you're going to create the paint on a separate layer and overlay/merge it with the other layers, and then render it down to a 24-bit targa file (.TGA), which you will then load into DXTBmp, apply an alpha channel, and write out in a format that MSFS understands.

Painting an aircraft is not easy.  If you are not very familiar with and comfortable with moving files around in Windows, converting file formats, installing programs, etc, then you will want to acquire those skills before attempting to paint aircraft.  You will want to look up an online tutorial or some other resource to learn about painting in layers as well, either with PSP or Photoshop.

The Gimp works as well, but not quite as well as the others.  Photoshop is still the King here.

Feel free to ask questions :)

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Scott M. Stone
WWA1712 - Cat-III - Director of Aircraft
VATSIM 1018857 - C1 Controller - KZSE
Private Pilot - ASEL + Complex + IFR (almost)

Could someone explain the concept of an alpha channel.

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WWA1702 Senior Command Captain +3
RWP SEL Instrument Rating (almost)
WW Test Pilot
Monster Driver

Mike Gibbs:

Could someone explain the concept of an alpha channel.

In FS9 the alpha channel controls reflections on daylight textures (think shiny metal on the leading edge of the wings or engine inlets....), and how the lighting shows up on nighttime textures.  It is essentially a semi-transparent mask that is placed on top of the primary texture.  Now in FSX I believe that the base texture format was changed away from what it is in FS9 and that is one reason why some FS9 aircraft look funny in FSX, because FSX translates the alpha channel differently.......

Photoshop may be the King, but it commands a royal price too.  I found that for painting aircraft PSP works just as well (and to me at least was more intuitive), and I am ok with the extra step of using the converter.........

While painting aircraft is a time consuming affair, I eventually got to the point where I could do the standard WW paint in less than an hour if I had a good layered paint kit to work with.  If I just have a white base texture, then the time involved goes up, as to really do it properly I would end up creating layers for the windows/doors (I found this method to actually be easier than cutting out the window and door openings out of the WW paint layer....)  The anniversary paint was a step up, as running a stripe the whole length of the fuselage is not that difficult, but on some aircraft getting the fuselage stripe and the tail stripe to align sometimes took several hours.....especially on the airplanes where the tail texture was a different scale then the fuselage texture.........

I agree with Scott though, you need to get very familiar with layers and transparency settings.  Once you get through that you have to figure out what some of the things on the texture correspond to, and how it is layed out.  Some of the Posky airplanes (A340) required backwards text for the right side of the fuselage, that took a while to sort out in my mind.....).

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EHAM-YSSY B772LR

SirijusS:

It would be very cool if someone repainted Wilco Boeing 737-300/400/500. I have tried it and I think it's really amazing, for me - better than PMDG 737-600/700/800/900! And it's available for both FS9 and FSX.

 

SirijusS, I have this and have done a repaint in Westwind colors using the 2007 standards.  If you are unable to paint it yourself drop me an email at edbleck@yahoo.com and I should be able to send you the files.  However, .... I agree with what the others have stated here, give yourself some time to try your hand at painting and if you just can not get it done or get frustrated and give up on it....drop me an email. 

 Good luck,

 

Ed

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WWA 843
Toronto Hub

Luck is when preparation meets an oppotunity

VPCargo:

Mike Gibbs:

Could someone explain the concept of an alpha channel.

In FS9 the alpha channel controls reflections on daylight textures (think shiny metal on the leading edge of the wings or engine inlets....), and how the lighting shows up on nighttime textures.  It is essentially a semi-transparent mask that is placed on top of the primary texture.  Now in FSX I believe that the base texture format was changed away from what it is in FS9 and that is one reason why some FS9 aircraft look funny in FSX, because FSX translates the alpha channel differently.......

Photoshop may be the King, but it commands a royal price too.  I found that for painting aircraft PSP works just as well (and to me at least was more intuitive), and I am ok with the extra step of using the converter.........

While painting aircraft is a time consuming affair, I eventually got to the point where I could do the standard WW paint in less than an hour if I had a good layered paint kit to work with.  If I just have a white base texture, then the time involved goes up, as to really do it properly I would end up creating layers for the windows/doors (I found this method to actually be easier than cutting out the window and door openings out of the WW paint layer....)  The anniversary paint was a step up, as running a stripe the whole length of the fuselage is not that difficult, but on some aircraft getting the fuselage stripe and the tail stripe to align sometimes took several hours.....especially on the airplanes where the tail texture was a different scale then the fuselage texture.........

I agree with Scott though, you need to get very familiar with layers and transparency settings.  Once you get through that you have to figure out what some of the things on the texture correspond to, and how it is layed out.  Some of the Posky airplanes (A340) required backwards text for the right side of the fuselage, that took a while to sort out in my mind.....).

I believe the alpha may be different if you are saving to DXT.. if you're saving to the old FS9 BMP format, you are fine, or so it seems - I did the DASH8 this way and it worked out ;)

One nice thing that DXTBMP does for you is allow you to import and apply the alpha channel while doing the conversion.  Also, since I forgot to mention it earlier, DXTBMP appears to be free software, which is very handy :)

 

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Scott M. Stone
WWA1712 - Cat-III - Director of Aircraft
VATSIM 1018857 - C1 Controller - KZSE
Private Pilot - ASEL + Complex + IFR (almost)

Ok Guys, I got started good using PSP. Everything was good until DXTBMP. Firstly the area of the aircraft I was painting was the fuselage only, so the alpha channel screen was just grey, without any breaks. I ignored this. When I clicked on send alpha channels to editor (which was set to PSP) nothing happened. I then tried to send the image to PSP, again nothing happened. I use Vista and FSX (I know, its a terrible mix), would this have something to do with it or did I do something wrong? Also, I would like to thank Bob, Scott and Kim who have helped me get this far. I don't know if the alpha channels are different or used at all in FSX, so maybe this might be a problem? BTW, the aircraft was a all white livery Abacus A320, I doubt it makes much of a difference but I thought it would be best if I told you anyway.

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Eoin Coates
Senior Command Captain
Real World Student Pilot
Frankfurt am Mein-Hub Manager

"If the thought came into my head, I would go out and buy a gun"- Herb Kelleher's reply after being asked if he would start another airline.