How to make the Cessna 172's spinner metallic?

[Jerrivel6060]

I'm tying to make the A2A Cessna 172's spinner look metallic, instead of white.

Somebody have any idea on how to do that in photoshop?

[Al FR-153]

There are a couple steps involved. First, you have to color the spinner in your main 'paint here' layer for the specific paint. This MUST be gray, shade to your taste but you can follow what I show below.



Then, you have to alter the ALPHA channel for the item to be chromed to very dark gray - black as shown below.



Try that, then we can go from there if you have questions.

[Jerrivel6060]

That's what I don't undestand, how do you edit the alpha channel?

[Al FR-153]

Jerrivel6060. Okay. It is a little late in the day right now, but let me put together some stuff for you and I will post again tomorrow morning (my time - Chicago). It is going to get a little deep, but I will keep it as simple as I can.

[Jerrivel6060]

I appreciate it a lot man.

[Al FR-153]

I am going to start this off with a clean slate, no aircraft paint scheme, just a basic C172. I am also assuming that you know absolutely nothing about working on the Alpha Channel.

For info, I am using Photoshop CS6 on Windows 10 Pro 64 bit. Your screen may look slightly different, but the work should remain the same.

Circled is the basic setup for Alpha work, from the beginning. Make changes to your work to match the circled areas.



Next we are going to turn the Alpha Channel ON, in a couple steps.





At this point, your aircraft should look something like what is shown.




Click on the ALPHA 1 area to make it the active selection.



Next, we have to make sure that we are working in BLACK and WHITE on our paint selection. If you click your mouse on the B&W icon, it will set the paint color correctly, automatically. SELECT BLACK as your color.



Recommend that you use the 'Rectangular Marquee Tool' to frame off the area that you want to paint. You can do it without the tool, but carefully stay within the area to be painted.



Select the 'Paint Brush' and fill in the selected area with BLACK. Because you still have the RGB, Red, Green & Blue channels turned on, your BLACK will show as RED, dark red. If you care to see it in black, turn the color channels off. Personally, I prefer seeing it in red.



Work completed, it is time to back out of the Alpha Channel area.







Make certain that the ALPHA is unticked. Assuming that you painted the prop spinner a gray in the earlier post, you can now save your file as a DDS file and you should have your chromed spinner. Have fun.

Al

[bladerunner900]

Nice one AI. Of course, doing it for PBR is a right PITA.

Steve.

[TBryson2]

Thank you for the instructions!

I'm using the exact same programs you are to accomplish this, and so far it looks promising, but

Is there a way to get the old "FSX reflections" on the spinner? The Barron 58 has "FSX reflections" which makes it really POP giving it the illusion of an excellent shine! My spinner, (after following your directions) simply looks like dull polished aluminum. (I guess I should correct myself here, my spinner in P3D does have dynamic reflections, but ONLY if you look at it square on. Any side view looks like dull aluminum.) My Dynamic reflections is maxed out in the graphics settings. (I say "FSX reflections" because I know they are not Dynamic reflections as utilized by P3D. I've seen examples of this in the reflectivity of glass on buildings I've created for FSX and P3D.)

Thanks!

TB2

[TBryson2]

bumped this due to editing and wasn't showing up in "new posts"
TB2

[Al FR-153]

P3D is a completely different animal. It uses PBR type textures and not the normal FSX reflection methods for which I gave you instructions. I am just now studying PBR textures and therefore cannot be of much help. Hopefully, someone more knowledge of PBR can jump in here and answer that question.

[TBryson2]

Yea, I figured that. I already know that the dynamic reflections are handled differently in P3D vs. FSX. But sure would be nice to get a mirror like shine! Good luck with PBR, I may (or may not) go down that path

TB

[bladerunner900]

The only way I have been able to make a spinner have chrome-type characteristics in NON-PBR, is with the use of a fresnel3.dds file. Here's the one I did for the C172 back in my FSX/P3D v3 days.

This picture is from P3D v4 and the NON-PBR version.


The spinner is black in the Alpha but the rest of the Alpha is a very light shade of grey, to subdue the chrome finish effect for the rest. If you make it pure white then the paint will have a matt effect. Have a look at this texture set to get the idea. It has a PBR and NON-PBR option and includes the fresnel file. Feel free to use it, or make your own if you wish. The PBR metallic spinner doesn't look as good in my opinion and probably needs perfecting. Something I may look at again when I feel more inclined.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jc6xl1xypu60w ... DL.7z?dl=1

Steve.

[TBryson2]

I agree with the PBR version Spinner not looking so good. Hope there’s a solution for it. I’ve made mine into a PBR version and (except for the spinner) prefer it over the other version.

I’ll grab your file to see how it was done. Thanks!

TB2

[bladerunner900]

Michal - A2A explained how to do metallic here for PBR.
viewtopic.php?f=107&t=69342&sid=b413532 ... 15#p527668

I made a good effort with an all metallic version, but something changed and it doesn't look so good any more. Actually, my whole PC changed so the reason is buried in there, somewhere.

Steve.

Edit: Had another pass at it and it looks better. I just wish MCX could show the effect. Would be allot easier.

Edit 2: And again.

[TBryson2]

Please keep "us" updated. I would love to fix my C-172, learn more, and possibly contribute to the community some day!

TB2