Mach3DS

Can I ask a legitimate question here? I'm not trying to bait anyone, or be a jerk. I'm obviously extremely disappointed with this decision as it's opening an entire host of issues which were clearly not previously thought through. Question: Who exactly is pushing for this encryption of models and textures? Surely it's NOT the devs, right? They should be fully aware that it does not protect your IP. This seems like a knee-jerk reaction by someone else who is completely unaware of how the sim software interacts with the PC hardware. This is literally only causing a problem for legitimate customers and good faith community members. You all know that right? Those tech savvy enough who could do it before are still tech savvy enough to still do it. Please take this as a frustrated but good faith inquiry from a long time supporter, customer, tester, content creator and texture artist. It's become so astonishing to me that it's gone down this road. You will literally KILL livery making for your sim. This is taking a generational step backward. That's not hyperbole. Again, I earnestly plead with ED to reconsider this ineffective IP theft measure, and just walk it back. The livery/texture community will be greatly affected by this over arching policy decision. Why? Because you're making it impractical and extremely painful to down right impossible to continue in this hobby with your future products. And frankly if this is how it's going to be in the future, then I've come to the end of my contributing rope. It's not reasonable and it's down right disrespectful to those who put it so much time FOR FREE to make your community vibrant and diverse with content - to ask them to spend 5x more time on something that will ultimately be much worse in quality. I bought the F-5E and the remastered version. I've purchased most product until now. I have been more than happy to support DCS. This makes me want to completely reconsider my future purchases and support. Respectfully, A long time customer.

I got so carried away, I didn't even think of that! Hopefully we don't have a repeat of the F-5 and being unable to create high quality liveries in a reasonable amount of time and actually can view/edit core textures to make fully custom liveries at the highest quality level possible for the community! It looks phenomenal. Very excited about it. Hopefully we can paint it. It's kind of depressing to think about if it does turn out like the F-5. Finally have the first FF Redfor aircraft and it's the classic I've been waiting for since I saw the discovery wings episode decades ago. My fingers are crossed that it won't be. It would be a real shame.

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.