Bananimal

So, I know some of you have been waiting on these. I dove in last night at about 10:30 and just wrapped up the CoNA bird. My god! This thing is slick. I was fighting with the color for a while. Started off by sampling some of the other CoNA repaints here to get a start and just could not get the blue to come through in the sun like it should. After about and hour of testing, I decided to pull the blue from one of the VMFA-321 XO birds in the pack I just released. And let me tell you what, it looks great on it. Perfecto! The CO of this bird, CDR. Reilly has an F/A-18 Hornet 4000 Hours patch on his left shoulder in one of the pics I have. For the life of me I could not find that exact patch anywhere. So, I had to create it. By far, that was the hardest part about painting this one. Go figure huh? LOL! There is a warning stencil on the dorsal of the aircraft I could not read, therefore did not put it on the aircraft. I wanted to and still do. If anyone knows what it says, that would be great. There are two more midway down the no-slip walk I could see in the pictures I have, but there's no telling what they are. Other than that, this bird is dead nuts on, fellas. It looks good in motion. Can't wait to release it to you all, but you're gonna have to wait. I've got two more relatively tough one's to do and then the line birds. Those will be easy, peasy!:thumbup: UPDATE: Packs are completed and uploaded. You can download them here: DOWNLOAD - VFA-204 "River Rattlers" CoNA, CAG, XO, and Line (c.2006-2009) DOWNLOAD - VFA-204 "River Rattlers" CAG and Line (c.1993-1996)

Not bad at all for a first skin. You're headed for greatness, sir!:thumbup:

Nice pics. Glad you are enjoying them.

Ok guys, The pack has been updated with the fix. Sorry about that.:doh:

Anytime. I've got a report of an error in one of the packs I need to correct. Seem one of the 03 birds has 00 on the nose. Not sure how I missed that, but i did. T'was late last night when I zipped everything up. Will have that corrected this evening.

Packs are uploaded. Should be available tomorrow once the admins review the files. In the mean time.......

Fantastic mod! Thanks so much for sharing it.

Alright, the pack is now 565 MB and will be split in two parts. There are 24 aircraft in total. I'll be working on packing it up for upload tomorrow.

OK, so the pack comes in just under 400MB, which means I have to split it before uploading it. Since I have to split it anyway, I'm going to paint a few more birds from 1998. I was wanting to do them , but was not planning on it unless I was way under 300MB. A few more days, gents. Maybe even later this afternoon and they'll be ready. For those that are waiting on the 90s VFA-204 birds. Sorry I got so head down on VMFA-321. The thing is, The paints are so unique, I had to dive in on them. I wasn't expecting to find so many neat variations of the squadron. So, being as I am, I began the process of nailing them down for skins. I think you'll like them.

They are just about ready, folks! Testing and then I'll zip it up to see how big the package is. If it is under 300 MBs then I'm going to paint a few more. This package is hella cool. Right now there are 17 skins in the pack. There are five custom tanks with custom graphics I created as seen in photos. Three of them revolve around the World Trade Center terrorist event. I hope you guys like them. Took all day to get them right.

Thanks for the response, Skate. I have another question, would it be possible to allow the latest version of your utility to run multiple sessions simultaneously? Meaning, with the older version of your tool, I could open multiple instances of it and thus open two separate model viewer windows. I use this to compare changes I make to the my skins in Photoshop. To see if the change I just made looks better than it did before that change. Right now, I can only open up one instance of your tool, thus I have to close the open model viewer with the current state of the skin to see the changes I made. This results in my having to determine if my changes are good or bad based on recollection instead of comparison.

Hi Skate, Is there a way to use the middle mouse button to scroll the model sideways in Model Viewer 2? Not finding a setting for this. I use this extensively when painting in the original Model Viewer.

That helps. I should be able to find some pics with pilot names, etc. Who knows, I might even run across a unique one too. Seems that has been happening when I start researching. :thumbup:

I'm eyeing it up man. I like it. Can't get started on it right now. Maybe a couple of weeks. Head down of VMFA-321 right now, then i have to do more VFA-204 birds. If I do do this one, I will have to do others in the squadron as well. I never release a standalone bird. Got any other pics of addition squadron birds of that time-frame?

Wish I could see it. It doesn't work with SLI.

I've got the roughmet for the underneath of the wings corrected, still working on the belly pylon marks. I removed them on the roughmet, but the shape of the pylon still exists. Still trying to find out the cause on that. The plane looks so much better without the pylon shadows on it. The good news is, this mod will fix all installed F-18 skins the user has. Not just mine. So, it's worth getting done.

Not wingtip, not lex.........wing vapor over the wings. Was added a patch or two ago.

And here's the 2004 variant of 01. One's beat up a bit. The good news is, I'm including a factory fresh version as well. The paint scheme looks so good on the F-18, I had to release an un-weathered version as well. It was screaming for it. Just a few more things to tidy up and these two are done. I'm working on correcting the roughmets for the aircraft to eliminate the pylon dirt under the wings. Both files come in at 26 MB, so I cannot include them in the pack. I'll create another download for these roughmets for those that want to use them to get rid of the pylon dirt. I can't believe ED put that on the roughmets. The blue on this aircraft was a mistake by the painters. It was supposed to be the color of the gate guard version. Instead, it came out almost black. It's deep navy (midnight) blue. I think I nailed it. It looks black except where the light glints off of it. Stunning in the sim. ED really nailed the lighting engine in the game. Combined with Reshade's HDR, this is what you get.

T'was a productive weekend. Got to hunker down with the VMFA-321 repaints I'm working on. Here's the gate guard version of 01. They painted it up to celebrate 61 years of service before being decommissioned. Pristine as in the photos, without a scratch on her. Guys, this thing is gorgeous in the sim.:thumbup: As with the VFA-204 packs I released, just about all the decals on these birds are created by me. I think the Decade of Decadence patch on the intake of the other 01 bird was lifted off of a picture. All the rest were lifted off of photographs to get the shape and the new shapes were created to create a clean decal. They came out great. One of the hardest things to deal with when painting is finding the correct font. Took about 6 hours of hunting to find the right font for both 401 birds that will be in the pack. But I nailed it! :pilotfly: To me, the thing that makes repaints convincing is the correct colors, the size, shape and color of the fonts as well as other stencils on the aircraft. Get any of these wrong and the repaint will look like a toy in the sim. Get it right and you get this.......... :D

Clouds are fixed but wing vapor never shows up for me. Turn off SLI and it's there. Lex vapor is fine.

Thanks. That is an early picture of that bird. It looks much better now. I am just about finsihed 01 circa 2004. It was painted up as a gate guard as the squadron was being decommed and sent to Quantico. At least that's what I was told. It looks stunning. I just have to resize the VMFA-321 fonts on the side (the hardest part to align) of the aircraft and I'll post some pics. Being that is was painted as a gate guard, it will have zero weathering as in the pics. I'm also doing the near black version with bigger stars on the dorsal. That one will be beaten on a little bit.

Awesome! Once I found out about his Youtube channel and that he lives in the same parish (county) I live in, I had to paint his bird. Not only did I paint his bird, I painted the bird he took is last flight in for VFA-204. It's number 405 2016. If he ever gets into DCS, I hope it helps him know there are those that appreciate his service and sacrifice. :thumbup:

If you like this one, wait until you see the one I'm going to be starting today after work. I'm excited to get started on it. :P

Added the weathering tonight and corrected the size of the graphic on the tanks. The weathering is very subtle. Also reduced the panel line darkness to reduce the cartoon look. Looks good.

So I decided to take a week or two away from painting VFA-204 birds. Namely because I'm wanting to fly something a little different. For those that are awaiting the VFA-204 CoNA, CAG and Line birds, they will be coming as soon as I wrap up this pack and patch the first two packs I released with fixes that I discovered while working the VFA-204 c.2017 pack. So, I just cranked this bad boy out today. These take nowhere near as long as the camo schemes, which was burining me out. I've got another CAG bird, CO bird, Ex-VFA-204 401 (Booger) that was transitioned to VMFA-321, and about 5 line birds to do for this pack. I'm figuring a week to a week and a half. Not bad considering it took me longer than that to paint just one of the 24 VFA-204 camo birds I recently released. :cry: The remaining CAG, CO and line birds will be circa 2004. I believe the year that VMFA-321 was decommissioned. This bird is the CAG circa 1998 as well as will be the Ex-VFA-204 401 Booger bird. They will be included as the bonus aircraft for the pack. :thumbup: This one is still a work in progress, but just about done. UPDATE: Packs are now available for download. DOWNLOAD PACK 1 HERE DOWNLOAD PACK 2 HERE DOWNLOAD PACK 3 HERE