Mach3DS

Thanks man!

I suspect that you didn't enable the alpha transparency and it was converted when you opened those 2 files to take the screenshots. However they look like they're identical.

RELEASED! DL LINK in first post! Enjoy.

Yes sorry, what Wyvern said above. Please post pics of the files open in the editor. We need to compare them.

Soooo nice! I wish ED would officially create F-16 variants. Like I would PAY for it. We need this kind of stuff as official.

Well if you took thr canopy textures from my stuff then I set the lua to have the canopy tint on by default. So that you can see it! Can you post a pic of BOTH Glass_new files? That is where the problem i think lies.

I'm assuming, and I guess it could be faulty assumption, but the glass texture posted above and the Roughmet both look correct. The format of the Roughmet has been altered from BC7 to whatever he's using now, since BC7 doesn't support the thumbnail preview (AFAIK). So I'm assuming that he exported correctly. However, for whatever the reason the actual texture image posted doesn't contain the colors needed to produce for example what he's showing as a golden aft canopy color. The Roughmet alone won't change that color tint.

Well, based on the information I can see from the screenshots, the textures you're using for YOU don't have the coloring to allow it work anyway. The Glass New texture defines the tint. Yours is white. So there's a mismatch between yours and your wingman's. The tinit needs to be enabled in your special functions. It can also be enabled by customers in the description Lua. Which it is in all my liveries. Can you post a screenshot of your Glass New texture and that of your wingman's? The Roughmet only changes the opacity of the glass not the color tint. So, it looks like the 3nd image has yellow ish tint in the glass New texture.

Hmm. Yes, go ahead and use the Roughmet I made! LOL -- Looks like your texture is all white. My guess is that when you were copying the textures in your editor you saved the wrong file as the wrong name. You may also want to check that you have the alpha channel enabled. You want yours to look like the 2nd viper pic?

Made one of those a while back...before the Roughmets and normals were implemented....Keep going! We need the big 22!

DL LINK https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3344673/

That's because for some some texture templates they were created in an alternative color space. The Intel Plugin uses a custom palette for it's default RGB color space. Generally it's ok. But if you try to export a linear color space it will turn extremely dark.

Let's look at it this way....none of us wanted to get this or any other competition "cancelled". However, if this was done because ED has realized that something corrective needs to be done with the idea of encryption on a whole, and by extension, getting the MV working correctly and allowing us access to the files we need in general going forward, then this isn't a win for "us" who voiced opinions - it is - but it's a win for ED and the community because it means high quality pieces can be made and the community can stay lively with the biggest user made staple of any game - skins. Regardless who makes them. I know plenty of amazingly talented painters who didn't voice their opinions here who will be overjoyed if this is the result going forward.

Yup! That's it!

That should be incorporated already. It's a travesty. The fact that LV at night is a veritable black hole, is nuts. You can't see the lights of anything unless you're at huge zoom levels.

Cool. Just give it to UGRA and please let them do it! We need an NTTR with the same level of detail as Cold War Germany! If ED don't want to invest that time/money, maybe ask UGRA if they'd be willing to do it from scratch! I'd be all for giving this to them and letting them make a brand new one with all the details. Let's invest in this map and get some much needed surrounding areas included. Fallon, China Lake, Edwards, north up to Hill AFB, UT.

You'd hope so.

The devs would be 100% aware of this. The community of creatiors are aware of this. It seems that only the persons who are decision makers are unaware of this.

Thanks! I actually have 2 more to release but they require normals to look right. One is an update. The other is a "like-new" version.

You guys need to revert back to the old model from 2021. The newest one no longer supports NORMAL Maps. So the surface skins are totally smooth. It also has some unwelded vertices on the nose radome. Perhaps Grinnelli can fix this but the easiest solution is to just use the old model.

You can't do what you're describing. You must have separate folders for different liveries as they all have to have their own description.lua file. However what you can do is put ALL the textures in the same folder and just call out that folder as the "common" folder. In each description.lua file instead of putting the common texture name, you call out the specific texture for each members specific texture. For example: If this was the F-16, I can use the above lua callout to tell the sim to look at this folder for these textures. You would just do this for every single texture entry. If you were wanting to only change the MAIN_1 texture for example, that's where you put the name and number you wanted for your members, then you could simply put an _THEIRNAMEHERE at the end of the texture, like I did above for me. You would do this for every member and that is how you would call out the textures for your individual squadron members in each of the lua files for each livery folder. No textures would be in the livery folders. Just a lua file that calls out the common folder like you see above. The problem with doing it this way is that now you have a massive folder that constantly needs to be updated every time you add a member. So if you just place all the custom files in the specific livery folder, for this example. Just he MAIN_1 texture. then All you need to do is leave that first entry without the folder path in front, and you don't need to even add the name at the end, unless that helps you keep track of things. Everything else gets the folder path as it's calling on the textures from the common folder for everything else which should be the same for all the jets. Below is an example of how it actually looks in the real situation where I'm using this method for my squad. You can see that the normal is the same for all jets. The MAIN 1 and the MAIN 1 Roughmet are custom for each jet. So those don't get the common folder callout. Only the Normal does. And I don't need to rename anything. Keeps it simple. These custom textures are placed in the custom livery folder for each squadron member and the specific description.lua file. This keeps file sizes much lower. All you have to do is give the livery name in the description.lua the correct member name and name the folder as well. That's it. Keeps it really simple. The common folder WILL NOT look like this. The common folder will reference the actual location of the textures. and Either FALSE or TRUE if you want to use your custom textures or the default ones. Make sense?

100% Concur on all points.

Having the entire game loaded plus Photoshop or whatever other editor you use is not ideal at all. No offense to this idea. But changing what we have is putting livery making back to the stone ages. That's not compromise and it's honestly not a good idea. The ED devs know this already. There's no way they don't. Plus you absolutely DO NOT have the same inspection ability in the sim as you do in Model Viewer. If we did, this thread and the numerous threads in Reddit and Facebook etc. wouldn 't exist. Because it wouldn't be an issue. That's to say nothing if the plethora of other features that make MV such an amazing tool.

Yes, unfortunately, this action does not actually protect anything. That's why so many devs in other games have essentially realized that unless the business is selling the model itself for use by others that it's basically a lost cause to constantly be trying to protect it in this way. If someone wants to rip any of these models they're going to do it. As has been described by others already. So in the end this just ties the hands of the community members who want to support the projects anyway. For crying out loud, you can literally check any users account to see what they've purchased. If it's really that important why not just tie in MV with the launcher? Add it to the launcher and make it only able to load encrypted models and textures when launched from the launcher with a good account check... is that not possible? @NineLine Thank you sir for your honesty. It really is appreciated. I think many of these feelings represent how much of a passion there is among the creators for making liveries and how emotionally connected people actually are to it. So just know that none of my comments are directed at you personally. I love painting in DCS and so the prospect of losing that ability in the frankly great way that we've been able to experience up to now is very demoralizing to say the least. And I think many people are having that visceral reaction to it as well.

No offense intended or taken. This has nothing to do with that. What the "Pros" see that you guys may not is that by going out of your way to create anything, no matter how much effort and especially no matter the time that goes into it, is feeding the beast. Because it doesn't stop with the F-5. What the "Pros" are concerned about, isn't the competition at all. It's the continuation of being able to make art in the best most efficient way possible. No one needs to feel bad about doing anything, but you should at least understand that spending 10x more time on something for less quality than it would take the alternate way is moving backward not forward. And it tell ED indirectly that they infact do not need to change anything because people are willing to do it no matter the cost. Which I am not. So that's .y perspective. I don't consider myself a pro, just an old guy whose been burned in deals in the past and would rather negotiate a win win rather than something else, if possible.