Cockpit Painting Tips

[Tako_Kichi]

The cockpit areas on the main texture sheet are the parts seen when looking at the Cub in external view. If you change the colour of the main VC cockpit textures then you will also have to change these textures to match but it's not a simple case of flood filling with a colour. You have to use the 'Hue' and 'Saturation' controls to change the colour. This tutorial is based on Photoshop CS3 so users of other programs may have to figure out how to do it in their program of choice but the principles should be the same (just the tools used may be different or have different names).

I like to keep all the layers for a specific paint in their own folder in the 'Layers' palette as this makes it easier to work with multiple paints and then I just turn on or off the layers I want to see.

Follow the steps below to change the cockpit colours:

• 1. Move all your current paint layers into their own folder in the 'Layer' palette if you haven't already done so.
  2. Look in the 'skin2' folder and copy the 'cockpit' layer by dragging it onto the 'Create new layer' icon at the bottom of the 'Layer' palette.
  3. Drag the new 'cockpit copy' layer into your current paint folder and drop it at the top of the folder layer stack.
  4. With 'cockpit copy' as the active layer use the 'Magic Wand' tool and click once on the main window anywhere outside of the cockpit parts.
  5. Now press <CTRL+SHIFT+I> to invert the selection and you should have just the cockpit areas selected (shown by the 'marching ants' borders).
  6. From the main menu bar at the top of the screen select 'Image/Adjustments/Hue/Saturation' (or press <CTRL+U>).
  7. You should now see the dialogue box shown below:
  
  
  
  8. Ensure the 'Preview' check-box is ticked so that you can see what you doing and that 'Master' is shown in the top drop down menu bar.
  9. Slide the 'Hue' slider back and forth and you should see the colours change in the main window.
  10. Slide the 'Saturation' slider back and forth and you should see the colour intensity change in the main window.
  11. Slide the 'Lightness' slider back and forth and you should see the lightness change in the main window.
  12. Adjust all three sliders until you get the colour (hue), saturation and lightness/darkness you desire.
  NOTE: I find that a slightly darker and less intense shade than the VC colour gives a more convincing external view of the cockpit as you would be looking at it through the glass in most cases (except with the door open of course) and it will be partly in shade due to the high wing.
  13. Getting the right shade is down to trial and error and having an 'eye' for what the colour might look like in external view on a real aircraft.
  14. Once you are happy with the blend click on 'OK' to apply the changes to the 'cockpit copy' layer.
  15. Save the file (this is VERY important, DO NOT forget to save) then flatten the image, flip it vertically and if you are using the nVidia plug-in 'Save As' a DDS file (users of other programs will have to follow their own methodology here to create a DDS file).
  16. Drop the newly created file in your paint folder in FSX and test it out in game to see how it looks.

Hope that helps.

[slait]

Excellent, thanks for the rundown. I'll give it a try when I get home and with a little luck have a new paint ready.

Much appreciated.