Updated Textures for early Tomcats

[sa63114200]

First off, many thanks to HB for making the effort and allowing drop tank pylons to be removable. Flying an early -A Tomcat would not feel "right" with those pylons. Now the question is that would HB release an update to the texture files that do not have the pylon prints baked in the textures? Removing them is not exactly trivial, but doable after spending some considerable amount of time to blend seamlessly. Before doing that for my skins, I wanted to see what HB's plans are.

Thanks.

[CarbonFox]

Something else to add is will the TCT camera on the chin be removed for the early Tomcats?

[LanceCriminal86]

At some point in the future, the base textures for the B and A should be getting updated and certain model features like the ALQ-128 jammer blisters should get added, some model corrections done, and the new pilot bodies added. Potentially those will all be coordinated around the 80s -135 and IRIAF additions but it may be done more spread out.

As to the pylon areas, us rivet counters have to work back through our skins and remove the baked-in AO that leaves the shadowed area, I know Yae's been working through his and now that I have free time again I will do the same. That said, we've been waiting to see what the updates to the externals will bring as it may be more efficient to just do our updates at the same time since the A models need some alterations to the diffuse, normals, and roughmets that need to become part of the base textures on A models. 

With the announcement of the AI Intruder coming this summer I'd expect art stuff to be coming along soon as it sounds like the internal art resources are in full swing.

[sa63114200]

I did spend sometime and removed the pylon prints and it came out okay. It should do until such time that HB will update their texture files for 95-GR.