solved Can't link individual liveries to other liveries

[Tailhook]

I thought it used to be possible but seems to no longer be.

 

Theoretically, it should be possible to take a number of liveries (lets say 10) that all share a few textures. You can create a master livery to serve as a common/base and throw all the common textures into that folder and use "false" in the description LUA of that livery. Now, for the last 9 liveries, all you should need is the unique texture for that specific livery (let's say different tail colors) in the corresponding folder and then use "true" in the description LUA for every common texture used and only use "false" for the unique texture. Doing so should tell the simulator to reference filenames of textures sitting in a different livery. But it doesn't. The only way to accomplish this is by making a standalone module and "mounting" the liveries and texture zips; OR the texture called needs to be inside the Hornet CoreMods FA-18C.zip

 

This is a technique to down-size a large collection of similar liveries and I thought it used to be possible but appears to no longer be both with ModelViewer2 and DCS 2.5.

 

Here is an example with 4 liveries. Livery 1 is the master and 2-4 are supposed to pull Texture #1 from Livery 1 but they don't. Feel free to test.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ws8vhipbwk4dpys/White%20Hornet%20Example%20Mod.zip?dl=0

[Sithos]

I know this is an old thread but is there maybe a new solution by now? Or does anyone have an example of how to solve this?

Thanks !

 

Edited January 23, 2023 by Sithos

[Tholozor]

Totally possible. Textures can reference different folders in Saved Games or in the core installation. My VFA-136 livery (link in my signature) does this with a shared folder where all textures are stored, and the actual liveries are just description.lua files that assemble them. The syntax in the description.lua is the key. You can't just put in the name of the other texture, because it's only going to either look in the core installation textures (note: not livery folders) or the individual folder of the custom livery to look for it; it needs a file path if the texture is in another folder or archive.

Here's an example for the Hornet's fuel tank. Normally, it would look something like this:

{"FPU_8A", 0, "FPU_8A_Custom", false};

If we want to look for a texture in another custom folder, it looks like this:

{"FPU_8A", 0, "../Custom Folder/FPU_8A_Custom_Elsewhere", false};

 

The same can be done for core installation livery folders/archives, so you can re-use textures present in core liveries without having to double-up your files. Here's an example for the normal/bump map for the F-16 that's calling the one present in the 36th FS folder in the core installation:

{"F16_bl50_Main_2", 1, "$LIVERIES/36th_Fighter_Squadron/f16_bl50_main_2_normal"};

In the OP's example, the description (for Livery 2, 3, or 4) would need to look something like this to reference a texture in the Livery 1 folder:

{"f18c1", 0 ,"../White Hornet Livery 1/F18C_1_ExampleWhite_ONE_Diff", false};

 

Edited January 25, 2023 by Tholozor

[Mapi]

it will go ...

[Sithos]

@Tholozor

Thank you for your detailed explanation !

I'll try it out for sure 

Edited January 25, 2023 by Sithos

[Sithos]

@Tholozor

Works perfectly - Thank you mate !