TigersharkBAS

Beta Livery can found here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pB76tVYLCP7TXJaMSsoxfhDDIFym-aE8 *** ALL THE REFERENCE MATERIAL FOR THIS HISTORICALLY ACCURATE F-18 CAN BE FOUND IN THE FIRST POST ***

It’s ok summers. Don’t need skinning. Just need a keen eye to spot an errors or strange things. I’ll post a beta in the thread later. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Anyone willing to try this out for me and give feedback? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

As said before....these are gorgeous Jack. Nice work!

Almost done.... Just in case you were wondering...that Chippy Ho font....I couldn't;t find it....so that text is drawn by hand :-)

It wasn't these squares....it takes the whatever is drawn over it but inverts it.....very weird.

Thanks for the help with finding the last texture. I am struggling to find the inside of the "box" on the vert stab. I want to paint inside the box circled in this pic. Anyone know where this texture is?

Can anyone tell me where this texture is? Its the gray part sticking out from just under the yellow at the top of the stabiliser.

Hey Residual, Under what circumstances would stencil font be used over the regular MIL-STD-2161C font. The document cites both the non-broken and broken (stencil) type but are their any rules governing which to us when? Or is there any informal practice around them? Looking at pics of older hornets the JET INTAKE warning marking seem a lot closer to the intake but in the DCS model they are quite a distance from the intake. Any thoughts on that? Regards, Tigershark

It's really looking awesome Flip

Hey Flip. Thanks for the feedback! I could always use help. I’ll post the psd tomorrow. Not as complicated as some of your designs but I appreciate the support. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Updated WIP shots. Not far away now.....

In progress shot.....still some issues to solve with DAMBUSTERS text.

VFA-195 "Dambusters" 1998 (25 Years at Atsugi Edition) Strike Fighter Squadron 195 (VFA-195), also known as the "Dambusters", is a United States Navy F/A-18C Hornet fighter squadron (now F/A-18E Super Hornet) stationed at Naval Air Facility Atsugi. They are a part of Carrier Air Wing Five (CVW-5) and their tail code is NF. Carrier Air Wing FIVE - the nation's only "911" air wing - is a critical combat strike element of Battle Force Seventh Fleet, the only forward-deployed carrier strike group in the U.S. Navy. Squadron insignia and nickname The squadron, originally known as the Tigers, had its first insignia approved by Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) on 4 March 1944, consisting of a lion cub riding a torpedo. Bob Burns gave the squadron a lion cub. On the patch the cub is holding the musical "bazooka" that Burns used in his act, while riding a torpedo. The lion went to the Los Angeles Zoo. A new design replaced the cub with a tiger and parrot on the torpedo, and was approved on 18 April 1949. Sometime in the 1950s, the squadron adopted a shield insignia that featured an eagle's head and a torpedo. On 1 May 1951, squadron aircraft disabled the heavily defended Hwacheon Dam in North Korea, earning them the nickname Dambusters,[1] echoing the original Dam Busters of No. 617 Squadron RAF. Destruction of the dam had been previously attempted by other units many times. In August 1985, the squadron adopted the stylized eagle on green background insignia in use today. The 2000's From 1998 to 2008 VFA-195 was assigned with CVW-5 to USS Kitty Hawk. VFA-195 flew in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001, striking targets deep in Afghanistan. Called on for duty in the Persian Gulf in 2003, the squadron flew 278 combat sorties in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, delivered 179,000 pounds of precision guided munitions against military targets over the course of a single month. When USS Kitty Hawk was retired, CVW-5 and VFA-195 moved to USS George Washington in August 2008. About This Livery This livery represents a special version of the Chippy Ho High Visibility paint scheme that included "25 years in Atsugi" artwork on the left side of the aircraft. It comes in both CAG (BORT 400) and CO versions (BORT 401). Every effort has been made to meticulously replicate the livery as accurately as possible using a variety of model kit instruction sheets as well as reference photos where possible. Releases Version 1.0 - 12 Jul 2018 Release version. See release graphic for features of this livery. Version 1.01 - 18 Jul 2018 Tweaks to colouring of various marking on the aircraft. In some cases the green was not matching the same colouring used on the vertical stabilisers. Changed vertical stabiliser to include the weathering layer on top of the eagle and keep the painted icon in sync with weathering on the rest of the aircraft. Smoothed out fonts used in pilot names and other writing to make them flow more naturally along a line and avoid individual letters warping when rotated along an axis. Click here to download latest version (46 Mb) In-Game Photo Gallery Photoshop Source Files This PSD file makes use of Layer Comps that can be used to switch on/off various layers to show various unique liveries. It means multiple liveries can exist within a single PSD. Please learn about Layer Comps and select the various comps to see how each bird was created. Click here to download PSD file.(236 Mb) Reference Material ### Model Kit Reference Photo ### ### Decal Sheet from kit ### ### Decal Instruction Sheet ### Screen Shots ================================================================= Some things to note about TigersharkBAS releases: - Any artwork derived from decal sheets is redrawn by hand and turned into vector graphics which can be resized to practically any size and appear sharp on the in game model. - The release will include an image describing all the changes made to the aircraft to make it as historically accurate as possible. - All reference material used to make the bird will be posted in the thread. This includes the decal reference sheets where applicable. - Photoshop artwork and vector files will be posted so that other can reuse/learn/recycle techniques. Everyone contributes to this community where they can and as long people don't start taking these files and passing it off as their own work I don't why we need to be precious about sharing the source files that make up the livery.

Looking good Flip!

The model is loading for me but not the livery when I add those lines to autoexec.lua. Any thoughts Skate? LoadModel("CoreMods/aircraft/FA-18C/Shapes/fa-18c.lods") LoadLivery("FA-18C_hornet","JVL VFA-195 CAG") Also doesn't work if I change the folder to "Finland 31" which shipped with the Hornet.

How did you guys source the fonts for Chippy Ho !?

Jack/VFlip....you guys drawing your own artwork? Shall we pool our resources?

I am working on a 25 years at Atsugi version of it as well.

Finished my hand drawn vector image of the Dambusters eagle. Planning on vectors wherever I can to give the crisp sharp images these birds deserve :-)

This was awesome. Thanks so much. I might have some more soon. Hope you don’t mind if I ask more in the next couple of days. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Residual....hello! And thanks for the reply. I have a laundry list of questions, some of which satisfy my curiosity but some of which I hope to apply to livery in the game. I guess some initial questions would be: 1. How do you source the fonts for some of the liveries? Other than the std USN angled font (that we can source), what are the names of fonts used for specialised type on fuel tanks and spine? (The sidewinders have a kind of Asian spliced letter for "NF"...where is that from?) 2. Is there a kind of style guide used by livery creators that the Navy issues or is it "anything goes"? 3. Who designs the livery of say, a CAG bird...does the CAG do it with a painter, or the painter proposes, or someone in the unit draws it up? What kind of process happens from paper design to real paint on the bird? Is there a lot of trial and error? Experimentation? 4. The std paint used for line birds. I notice it generally matte. Is it hard wearing? Is there anything special about the paint in general? How many washes will it handle before a repaint is needed? 5. For CAG birds with glossy paint...is there anything especially different about that kind of paint? Is less hard-wearing? Does the CAG bird get maintained more often to keep the paint job looking good or does it have the same rotation as a line bird in terms of repainting? 6. Is everything effectively "stencil" painted on the plane or there is also hand painted stuff? 7. I notice there is quite a lot of font variation between carrier names between units. Sometime they are serif fonts that describe the carrier, other times std us mil stencil or navy angled font. 8. Kind of related to the style guide question, is there a std list of fonts that are used by painters of aircraft? 9. How are stencils created? Using machinery on board the boat? Hand cut? Machined? 10. Approximately how long does it take to spray a CAG bird? Is there a lot of drying time between layers of colour? 11. Are any digital tools like Photoshop used in the creation of livery or stencils? I know some of these seem oddly specific but I have always wondered how these thing are done in real life vs. the work we do in Photoshop to make these. Like I said, some questions are to satisfy my curiosity and hopefully some questions related to fonts will help make our designs crisper and more realistic. Thanks in advance for any answers!

Just wondering if there are any active or inactive USN peeps who have contacts with people who actually spray USN birds. I wonder if they'd be up for a kind of Reddit style AMA (Ask me anything) as I have a bunch of questions of how they design, paint and maintain the livery of USN carrier based planes.

This ^^^

Ah yes....I was kind of forced to move to a new server and backed this all up but it is tough getting it back into the same MediaWiki configuration. I was also really disappointed in Media Wiki. I wanted to make it fully open so people could contribute as they wanted....but it was inundated with Chinese sellers making pages to sell shit. So I had to enforce signing up for membership. The internet ruins everything :-(