F-5E-3 Remaster Skins

[Annelid]

7 hours ago, Megalax said:

As others have said, having a template ready for skin makers is amazing and we really appreciate the fact that they are provided.

 

However, livery artists heavily rely on Model Viewer in order to help them create their skins so that the rest of the community can enjoy them. Currently the new format that ED is using is not only encrypted but also hidden. It is understandable that a company with so much time invested into a product would want to protect it, as I myself absolutely hate when people pilfer my own liveries and upload them as their own work later on. Model Viewer is an amazing tool that saves time and resources for livery artists, it simplifies our process and work flows. The ability it provides to refresh the livery without restarting the whole game is a huge time saver. Not only that but it also serves to create fresh description.lua files which are required to have the game understand what textures the artist needs loaded so they can modify them to their liking. It has tools that help us see the roughmet files as well as normal maps which help tremendously when creating visual effects.

 

There are tons of livery artist out there that create for the game, and a large part of the User Files section. The skins section dwarfs all the others by a wide margin. Forcing livery artists to use the game to check their work is off-putting and will likely result in the new F-5E not getting as much love as it could. There are users out there that have bought modules solely based on the fact that their favourite livery for that aircraft was available in the User Files. It might seem like much but as a company ED should definitely look into helping out livery makers rather than hindering them.

Why would ED care if you messed around with their new skins?  You have to buy the upgrade to use them because of a new format right?  What are people doing that require encryption?  Uploading skins to another sim?

[Rudel_chw]

7 minutes ago, Annelid said:

What are people doing that require encryption?

 

I understand that there is people that takes an existing livery, copy-pastes a few logos and stencils, and then shares the result as if it were his own creation, credits be damned   

[Bucic]

11 minutes ago, Rudel_chw said:

 

I understand that there is people that takes an existing livery, copy-pastes a few logos and stencils, and then shares the result as if it were his own creation, credits be damned   

Encrypted skins? What are you guys talking about? My state of knowledge is that only 3D models are encrypted, which is understandable.

[dSAF Dancer]

40 minutes ago, Bucic said:

Encrypted skins? What are you guys talking about? My state of knowledge is that only 3D models are encrypted, which is understandable.

no, the skins including their textures and their description luas are encrypted.

[Wyvern]

2 hours ago, Bucic said:

NineLine said there's going to be A LOT more information on the update. One may reasonably expect there's going to be some information on the ModelViewer capability with regard to the "new 5" assets. The template has already been confirmed.

The issue is that the modelviewer problem already existed when the new B-52, B-1B, and S-3 came out.

1 hour ago, Annelid said:

Why would ED care if you messed around with their new skins?  You have to buy the upgrade to use them because of a new format right?  What are people doing that require encryption?  Uploading skins to another sim?

There has been 3d model theft in the past. There is websites where you can casually buy DCS models, that have been accquired illegally.
Almost every game has that problem, and now ED tries to counter it, while also taking away the communities ability to actually make high quality liveries.

Edited December 5, 2024 by Wyvern

[Wyvern]

Of course ED has the right to protect their assets.
However the question is, at what point will it start taking away the communities ability to create content for DCS.

Just to put it into perspective, 
there is a total of 23046 files uploaded to the user files as of this moment.
13172 out of those are skins, although some uploads will have multiple skins in them, so its probably closer to 15.000 skins.
It probably is fair to say that encrypting the models without giving us a tool to actually make skins is going to slowly kill off that part of the community.
Especially if future models are going to be treated the same way. 
 

Edited December 5, 2024 by Wyvern

[YoYo]

Btw.

[Rudel_chw]

10 minutes ago, Wyvern said:

Of course ED has the right to protect their assets.
However the question is, at what point will it start taking away the communities ability to create content for DCS.

I agree .. and it goes beyond just liveries, I enjoy editing training missions but with this new F-5 I can’t load its cockpit model on modelviewer 2, making it impossible to check which arguments each cockpit element uses .. so, no more missions of this kind for me  

[Wyvern]

4 minutes ago, YoYo said:

Btw.

The problem is that there is nothing being said about the modelviewer by ED.

It wouldnt surprise me if they ran the competition, without actually modifying the Modelviewer to use EDCE files.

[Megalax]

1 hour ago, Annelid said:

Why would ED care if you messed around with their new skins?  You have to buy the upgrade to use them because of a new format right?  What are people doing that require encryption?  Uploading skins to another sim?

I think what they're worried about is the 3D model more than anything. 

[MAXsenna]

Of course ED has the right to protect their assets.
However the question is, at what point will it start taking away the communities ability to create content for DCS.

Just to put it into perspective, 
there is a total of 23046 files uploaded to the user files as of this moment.
13172 out of those are skins, although some uploads will have multiple skins in them, so its probably closer to 15.000 skins.
It probably is fair to say that encrypting the models without giving us a tool to actually make skins is going to slowly kill off that part of the community.
Especially if future models are going to be treated the same way. 
 

I absolutely see your point, and I agree. But those numbers... Wading through fictional liveries is pretty tedious. Now, if ED could have us filter them out though...

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[Archangel44]

4 hours ago, Wyvern said:

The problem is that there is nothing being said about the model viewer by ED.

It wouldn't surprise me if they ran the competition, without actually modifying the Model viewer to use EDCE files.

 

I hate to be the one to spot out something odd in the room, however...

Question, did the Dev's know this skin thing was going to be an issue before it went live? ( Me thinks they did ) I maybe wrong here but I haven't seen one post from them about the skins being an issue with this new rendition of the F-5 Tiger II before it went on sale.

Hopefully someone can point me to one of their posts saying something to the fact of, "Hey we got this new $10 upgrade for the Tiger II, however, all the skins y'all have, either by creating them or downloading them from others...Ahhh, they ain't gonna work anymore. 

I hope I'm not speculating here, please correct me if I am, however; if this issue was not disclosed before it went live, I want a refund.

Thank you,

 

Edited December 6, 2024 by Archangel44

[Stackup]

2 hours ago, Archangel44 said:

I hate to be the one to spot out something odd in the room, however...

Question, did the Dev's know this skin thing was going to be an issue before it went live? ( Me thinks they did ) I maybe wrong here but I haven't seen one post from them about the skins being an issue with this new rendition of the F-5 Tiger II before it went on sale.

Hopefully someone can point me to one of their posts saying something to the fact of, "Hey we got this new $10 upgrade for the Tiger II, however, all the skins y'all have, either by creating them or downloading them from others...Ahhh, they ain't gonna work anymore. 

I hope I'm not speculating here, please correct me if I am, however; if this issue was not disclosed before it went live, I want a refund.

Thank you,

If you expected a brand new external model to still work with skins designed for the old model, that's on you.  It should have been obvious this was the case in my opinion, because changing the 3d mesh changes how the liveries interact with the model and would result in a different layout of the livery template.  So even if the old skins worked on the new model because the file names weren't changed, they likely would not even line up properly as the basic model template was changed.

To me, the fact they didn't explicitly mention this isn't odd at all because they shouldn't have had to as it should have been obvious.  New model=new skins.  I agree it sucks, but there's nothing to do about it right now. 

As to whether they knew about the encryption preventing new skins from being made, the answer is of course they did.  The same problem exists to a lesser extent with the S-3B, B-1B, and B-52H as well as all ED assets added with and after them and we complained about it then too.  We could still make liveries for them although it was significantly harder.

[Rudel_chw]

6 hours ago, Archangel44 said:

Hopefully someone can point me to one of their posts saying something to the fact of, "Hey we got this new $10 upgrade for the Tiger II, however, all the skins y'all have, either by creating them or downloading them from others...Ahhh, they ain't gonna work anymore. 

Prior experience with the C-101, the A-10C II and the Blackshark 3, had taught me that skins are specific to a 3D model.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

1 hour ago, Rudel_chw said:

skins are specific to a 3D model

Being a human being can also teach you that: look at people who lose weight too quickly...

[Flаnker]

Perhaps the "model viewer" simply does not support modern ED models, so it cannot open them. It seems to me that if there was some kind of encryption of models, then other models would not work either.

@BIGNEWY Can you bring this issue to the attention of the ED team? Thank you.

 

[BIGNEWY]

I will ask the team 

thank you 

[Megalax]

27 minutes ago, Flаnker said:

Perhaps the "model viewer" simply does not support modern ED models, so it cannot open them. It seems to me that if there was some kind of encryption of models, then other models would not work either.

@BIGNEWY Can you bring this issue to the attention of the ED team? Thank you.

 

Its not just a problem of supporting them its the problem of them being hidden. All .edm models were accessible until the last few model updates which included the new S-3, B-1B and B-52, and now this one. I also forgot to mention earlier that not only do we rely on the Model Viewer for its ease of use and functions, but we also rely on the texture folders in order to modify such things as pilot patches, helmets and flight suits. Some people add mad details to other parts of the models such as landing gear as well and they benefit from having access to those textures in order to modify them.

 

If the Model Viewer had a functionality like the Mission Editor does where the models are accessible through a drop down that should solve the problem for them where they get to continue encrypting things but make them available for skinners.

[Flаnker]

20 минут назад, Megalax сказал:

Its not just a problem of supporting them its the problem of them being hidden. All .edm models were accessible until the last few model updates which included the new S-3, B-1B and B-52, and now this one. I also forgot to mention earlier that not only do we rely on the Model Viewer for its ease of use and functions, but we also rely on the texture folders in order to modify such things as pilot patches, helmets and flight suits. Some people add mad details to other parts of the models such as landing gear as well and they benefit from having access to those textures in order to modify them.

 

If the Model Viewer had a functionality like the Mission Editor does where the models are accessible through a drop down that should solve the problem for them where they get to continue encrypting things but make them available for skinners.

Got it. It was just a guess. I haven't tried to open new models. I've been using this tool since 2007 (when I started drawing skins) and I want it to work properly too.

[dSAF Dancer]

57 minutes ago, Megalax said:

but we also rely on the texture folders in order to modify such things as pilot patches, helmets and flight suits

yep for example the new generic livery has a wrong registration in the cockpit and as the cockpit textures are encrypted, if they are not part of the paintkit, we can't change this (hope they are but we will only see with the paint kit release)

[Archangel44]

7 hours ago, Rudel_chw said:

Prior experience with the C-101, the A-10C II and the Black Shark 3, had taught me that skins are specific to a 3D model.

Thank you for your reply as I'm still kind of new here. 

[Archangel44]

12 hours ago, Stackup said:

If you expected a brand new external model to still work with skins designed for the old model, that's on you.  It should have been obvious this was the case in my opinion, because changing the 3d mesh changes how the liveries interact with the model and would result in a different layout of the livery template.  So even if the old skins worked on the new model because the file names weren't changed, they likely would not even line up properly as the basic model template was changed.

To me, the fact they didn't explicitly mention this isn't odd at all because they shouldn't have had to as it should have been obvious.  New model=new skins.  I agree it sucks, but there's nothing to do about it right now. 

As to whether they knew about the encryption preventing new skins from being made, the answer is of course they did.  The same problem exists to a lesser extent with the S-3B, B-1B, and B-52H as well as all ED assets added with and after them and we complained about it then too.  We could still make liveries for them although it was significantly harder.

 

I thank you for your input and your knowledge, but some of your replies to others and now myself leave much to be desired. You assume too much and your reply to me is borderline disrespectful, laced with conceit and high mindedness.

I am not a computer jock and knowing new models, 3D meshes and skins, the fact is, I haven't been here long enough to see these things first hand, as Rudel pointed out with the Black Shark and A-10, I didn't even know DCS existed until about a year and a half ago.

You would do yourself well and the others here by not assuming, showing a bit more respect and humility.

I standby my statement, ED should have disclosed this fact while pushing their video's and news letters instead of as you say, "It should have been obvious." If they did disclose this, I will be the first to apologize but if they didn't, perhaps the Dev's are assuming too much from their customers knowledge base and more consumed with pushing products that after have been purchased and installed; "Well...We forgot to mention that little fact, we will fix it when we have time."

As for now, I have relented from wanting a refund, I learned something today..."Buyer Beware." Hopefully you have leaned something to today about how to interact with others.

"Tell us the whole story Dev's, quit selling us un-ripened fruit that you happily show as ripe and after we have paid for and taken a bite,"....."Oh ya... I assumed it should have been obvious to you Mr. customer, it's not completely ready." I hope the Dev's will take note and knock off this kind of BS.

At least with the early access, we as the customer know we are getting a "Work in progress." As for this F5-E, no such word was given and for $10...It's the principle and business practice that counts.

Out!

[virgo47]

20 minutes ago, Archangel44 said:

I standby my statement, ED should have disclosed this fact while pushing their video's and news letters instead of as you say, "It should have been obvious." If they did disclose this, I will be the first to apologize but if they didn't, perhaps the Dev's are assuming too much from their customers knowledge base and more consumed with pushing products that after have been purchased and installed; "Well...We forgot to mention that little fact, we will fix it when we have time."

I agree with this sentiment. It would be much easier to release the module with some disclaimer/known issues/todo commitments. It was not in the release notes, luckily it was clarified in the forums and I'm looking forward to the previous set of skins - which should be available eventually not to make this a downgrade in some aspect. I understand the new model requires new template and old custom skins are gone, that makes sense. But again, it would be easier if it was stated in the release notes. But everybody's learning all the time, perhaps next remaster will be handled better by ED.

I'd not expect, or even require, people on forums to understand this implicitly. Why should they/we?

Fortunately, no big deal in this case. The skins are coming.

[dSAF Dancer]

1 minute ago, virgo47 said:

Fortunately, no big deal in this case. The skins are coming

not really, only  few of the old default skins are confirmed, many more are not

[ST0RM]

How about updated skins from current users? 

VFC-13 flies F-16s now and their jets went to VMFT-401 and VFC-204. 

TacAir bought Jordan's Tigers, along with Saudi. 

Switzerland is no longer flying the F-5N and sold then to the US to fill VMFT-401/402, VFC-111 and VFC-204 stocks.