The A2A Simulations Community

Hi all,

I'm trying to make a repaint of this wonderful '172 but I'm having problems.

Using GIMP to open the .psd files (I don't have PS), all the layers showed up, and I got painting, using the F-GOAP livery layer under "paint here" as a template.

I got the design painted on, and it looked like this (all fine I think), but when I came to exporting it with GIMP's DDS plugin (using BC3/DXT5 compression, maybe this has something to do with it?), I had some serious issues. I merged visible layers, then added a layer mask with the alpha channel so that this was all I had in the layers section. However, when I go to load the livery in FSX, having done everything with the AC.cfg etc, I get this.

I am a bit stuck here, as I think it's something to do with the alpha channel, but I have tried many combinations of having the alpha on certain layers, merging layers, and the same with the _spec file, but to no avail, I always just get the black aircraft.

Any help is greatly appreciated, as this is my first repaint and I have no clue what I'm doing!

Max

Hi Max,
I dont have Gimp but I'd like to help, so I would need the exported .dds if possible.
Could you PM me?
Marius

I'm only posting here because it's one of VERY few non-Connie threads.

I'm pretty sureI found the issue.
Your texture is correctly compressed to DXT5, however it appears to have other dimensions.
The textures always need a quadratic size (e.g. here 4096x4096).

And I noticed the layer with the lines needs to be activated in the paintkit as well

Cheers and Happy New Year!

The end result

Not finished in my eyes. Something about it just looks odd, maybe the lack of shadowing?

I got really frustrated with layering and GIMP so this is all I have. I would change it more but I don't have a version with the individual layers intact.

Just a question though - are the repainters expected to add shadowing to the paint themselves? I didn't manually add shading/shadows to this paint, and nothing has shown up, or is there something in the paint kit for that, which I must have missed?

Thanks for all your help anyway, I learned something from it at least and maybe in the future I will try some more repaints.

Thanks again,

Max

Hey Max,

looking good. Go over the paint kit it looks like you have weathering and some shadowing and panel layers etc which all combine together to form the good effect turned off in your repaint.

thanks,
Lewis

Thanks for the advice Lewis.

Unfortunately, compiled this and cannot find the original layered version, but next time I attempt a repaint I'll do this.

I wouldn't suppose anyone wants this livery, but if anyone stumbles across this page and is dying for the reg/livery then send me a PM.

Regards,

Max

As an update to this post, I tried again(!)

This is the result.

I couldn't find a font that matched the actual plane, but the one I chose instead fits OK, and maybe one day i'll round it off manually. But otherwise, this is the first C172 repaint I've done that I'm actually proud of

There may be a download coming in the next day or two...

Max