Bananimal

I think things turned out great overall. In no way did I expected Mover to take to DCS like a fish. I did everything I could to make sure the experience was a good one knowing up front that it was going to be tough. That is in fact the entire reason I reached out to him when he said he was going to install DCS. You don't just install DCS. :D Mover, Carl and I had a lot of fun, the people in Florida got some much needed help, and people outside of the DCS community got exposed to DCS as well. It's a win for everyone as I see it. Triple wins are hard to come by in life, folks. This one was probably one of the best I'll ever experience in my lifetime.

They're ready for download. See first post in this thread for the download link.

I didn't use a template. Just painted on top of the DDS file.

Any updates on this? Just curious.

Found the hook. It's on the fus_bot_v472.dds file top center. You need to call it in your description.lua as such: --Arrestor Hook {"Gear and metal", 0, "fus_bot_v472", false}; I have no idea why they would map stuff like this. Makes no sense from a skinner's perspective. The hook texture is on the bottom PSD already. Why not map it from there? Makes for a very confusing scenario. On top of that, they applied a metallic roughmet to it, so it's a metallic white and black striped hook on my skin now. Better than gunmetal grey though. I was not able to fix the flickering compressor blades. It looks like they mapped the wrong texture to the blades with overlap in a metal area. They will have to fix that.

Thank you.

Awesome, I'll give it a go. Thanks.

Thanks MPalmer, So in the place of the XXXXX I can put whatever I like?

Anyone know what to put in the description.lua file to call specific textures locally? I have no idea why the devs for this mod packed everything away in separate texture.zip files other than saving a little bit of space? It makes painting the mod an absolute horror and is totally unnecessary. Hooks, wheels struts etc. should all be on the top and bottom psd files. What should have taken 1.5 days to paint has turned into 6 days, 3 of which (26 hours) were fixing the horrid UV stretching for the snake on the comms hump.:cry: Hook, tailpipe, photograph on the dash, I need to call these textures locally with the "false" operator. The thing is, I don't know what to put in the XXXXXXs in the below entry to call the specific texture files I need. I scoured the lua files for references to the texture files and there are none. I don't see how these textures are getting called anywhere and what they are called for that matter. {"XXXXXX", 0, "fus_front", false};

Anyone know where the hook, tailpipe and compressor blade textures are located?

Howdy folks! Almost done with these. Looking for the tail hook, compressor blades and tailpipe textures to make corrections to them. After that they are done. There are 11 Bicentennial schemes and 11 Atkron 204 emblem schemes. All with correct serial numbers. XO's name is accurate. The rest are fictitious.There' are simply very few photos of these birds. VA-204 flew the A-4L, so these are semi-historical.....:thumbup: DOWNLOAD HERE: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3302666/

Here's a link to a local news channel that ran a story on this event. https://wgno.com/2018/11/23/simulated-flight-raises-real-money-for-hurricane-relief/ Thanks to all that donated to this great cause. Even though it wasn't perfect for some, it helped those that needed the help.

Hey Lex, Thanks for the insight. Enjoyed your vids as well and still refer to them from time-to-time. Back when I was painting the VFA-204 birds for the sim and watching your vids, I thought that I'd reach out to you and ask you if you have any pics of your bird. I'd like to paint it for you, as well as a few others from your squadron, as a token of thanks for you contributions to the DCS community and our country. I never got around to asking, so now I am.

There were plenty of cool tidbits in the vid.

Sweet.

Speaking to Lex's Youtube channel. He hasn't posted anything in 5 months. I have to wonder if he didn't get a knock on the door one afternoon. "Disrespect" was in reference to CHOPS' post.

Who says you can't goof around and learn? Goofing around is a great way to learn. Once you're finished goofing around, then you can take a deeper dive. Expecting anyone, RL pilot or not, to be able to jump into DCS and give a deep dive into the complexities of DCS and how it compares to a real aircraft in 6 hours is slightly far fetched, don't you think? You had me right up to the disrespecting part. Give me a break. To the contrary, I learned quite a lot of useful information from this experience that I have yet to see posted in any vid or these forums. Take a gander. 1. Dropping eggs is a phrase best reserved for describing fallopian processes and not ordinance delivery. 2. Carl doesn't know how to load a flight plan in the Hornet. 3. ED's default F-18 Warthog map is nothing like the real thing. 4. Not all PLFs are good PLFs. 5. Touching a fighter pilot's hand while he is engaged in DCS can be a dangerous endeavor resulting in immediate excoriation. 6. Sixty-nine is the A/A TACAN frequency real fighter pilots prefer. 7. You do not have to retract your airbrake prior to takeoff if your aircraft is equipped with afterburners. 8. Takeoff rolls with NWS HI engaged separates the men from the boys. 9. Assuming section lead without permission results in waypoint zero appearing as the selected waypoint on your DDI. 10. Real fighter pilots and simmers like the same color automobiles and prefer Chevrolets. 11. A TrackIR hat w/clip sitting on your desk in a video in no way guarantees that you will not be accused of not having a TrackIR. 12. Eating hamburgers with a real fighter pilot makes them taste better. 13. And lastly, I learned to never invite a neighbor over to hang out with a real fighter pilot because he may stuff his hand under his shirt to control his fighter pilot chubby on camera for all the world to see.

Challenge of the day. I don't know that this can be resolved. In the end, this skin and all work put into it for the last three days may have to be scrapped. :noexpression: Severe UV mapping issues on the A-4E hump. Here's what the snake looks like on the PSD followed by what happens to the texture when it is mapped onto the model in ModelViewer. UPDATE: It took me a total of 26 hours fiddling with this one decal to straighten it out. It's not perfect, but it is acceptable at this point. If you are planning on doing a skin with a decal on the hump, be advised, you'll have your work cut out for you trying to straighten it.

There's a preset sheet in the DCS downloads section. You have to manually map each one. https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3302561/

Thanks Skate.

Found the issue.. ModelViewer cannot read files in the Saved Games folder. I had to copy the mod into the mods directory in my DCS install. Back to painting VA-204. :-)

Guys, the mapping layout was the default ED F-18 layout as recommended by Wags when I reached out to him. I changed the paddle as a modifier and the pinky as the re-arm page. But those functions were mapped elsewhere so we wouldn't lose them. Those two caused the most problems. That and ED mapped the airbrake on the wrong switch and in the wrong direction. I'm sure there were a bunch of other buttons improperly mapped by ED as well. Lesson learned there. Since then, it has been determined that I would have done better loading the NATOPS config as per the real Hornet instead of using the default ED profile. I never knew such a config was available. I do now though. And it is loaded. In restrospect, it probably would have been a good idea to sit down with C.W. for 30 minutes and map them as he needed prior to his initial taxi. I took it on faith that the ED profile was correct as I had never used it before and didn't want to waste C.W.'s time.

Ha! Yeah, when I first got the F/A-18C module loaded up, I literally spent 30-45 minutes looking for the ladder switch. I never found it. LOL!:lol:

Here's what I have at the bottom of my ModelViewer autoexec.lua file. Not sure why the other textures aren't loading. As mentioned, the skin loads properly in the sim, but for whatever reason, while building the skin in the Bazar/Liveries folder, the call out to the other textures is failing. I copied the A-4E-C Textures folder to the Bazar/Liveries folder to no avail. I sure wish ED would fix this ModelViewer so we can point it to the files we want to load into it instead of guessing what we have to move into the Bazar Liveries folder. It's messy as all get out. An entire day wasted on trying to figure this out. I could have been done the repaints at this point. Seriously. LoadModel("Bazar/Liveries/0 A-4E-C/Shapes/A-4E-C.edm") --LoadModel("Bazar/Liveries/0 A-4E-C//Shapes/DFT_150gal_a4e.edm") --LoadModel("Bazar/Liveries/0 A-4E-C//Shapes/DFT_300gal_a4e_C.edm") --LoadModel("Bazar/Liveries/0 A-4E-C//Shapes/DFT_300gal_a4e_LR.edm") --LoadModel("Bazar/Liveries/0 A-4E-C//Shapes/DFT_400gal_a4e.edm") LoadLivery("0 A-4E-C","VFA-204 River Rattlers 401 (c.1976)")

I'm having a heck of a time trying to figure out where all the files are that need to be created locally for the skins so I can properly view the model in ModelViewer. They packed them away in zip files spread across multiple zip files. Uggghhh! The skins loads properly in the sim, but not ModelViewer. Apparently, the roughmets are loaded somehow, but the description.lua file in the livery folder I'm using as a template mentions nothing of them. The skin I am working on isn't loading the roughmets and I have no idea where they are located. Here's my description.lua. Looks right, but references to the roughmet are not there. Works for default skins though. I don't get it. livery = { {"Bottom", 0, "VFA-204_401-bot", false}; {"Top", 0, "VFA-204_401-top", false}; -- flaps, used on most liveries {"flaps_001", 0, "empty", true}; {"flaps_010", 0, "empty", true}; {"flaps_100", 0, "empty", true}; -- three digit, smaller nose numbers, used on most liveries {"nose_001", 0, "empty", true}; {"nose_010", 0, "empty", true}; {"nose_100", 0, "empty", true}; -- two digit top-of-tail, used on most USMC liveries {"tail_aggressor_001", 0, "empty", true}; {"tail_aggressor_010", 0, "empty", true}; -- three digit top-of-rudder, used on most USN liveries {"rudder_001", 0, "empty", true}; {"rudder_010", 0, "empty", true}; {"rudder_100", 0, "empty", true}; -- wing bort used on most USN liveries {"wing_001", 0, "empty", true}; {"wing_010", 0, "empty", true}; {"wing_100", 0, "empty", true}; -- 2-digit large nose numbers, used on USN/USMC aggressors {"nose_aggressor_001", 0, "empty", true}; {"nose_aggressor_010", 0, "empty", true}; -- 3-digit large tail numbers, used on some USN/USMC aggressors {"tail_001", 0, "empty", true}; {"tail_010", 0, "empty", true}; {"tail_100", 0, "empty", true}; -- custom fuel tanks: 150 gallon {"fuel_150_a4e", 0, "VFA-204_401", false}; -- custom fuel tank: 300 gallon left/right {"fuel_300lr_a4e", 0, "VFA-204_401", false}; -- custom fuel tank: 300 gallon center {"fuel_300c_a4e", 0, "VFA-204_401", false}; } name = "VFA-204 River Rattlers 401 (c.1976)" --name_xx = "" --[[ assign the countries ]] countries = {"USA"} And here's what I'm getting. The base skins top and bottom load. No roughmets though. :cry: