idiot's tutorial to skinning aircraft, pilot etc for DCS.

[leafer]

Is there such thing on the net? I've searched and found a few but they were really confusing to follow. I would like to paint the flightsuit and aircraft. I'm also seriously thinking about doing some wwII war machine models, but I'm a beginner with 3d max so a tutorial on that would be much appreciated as well.

[Grimes]

There are TONS of tutorials on the subject, but which part of texturing do you not understand?

 

-Working with existing models/textures within DCS?

or

-Texturing new models you have created?

[leafer]

Both if I could. I'm brand new to this and do not understand a thing. A lot of the tutorials I've come across does really bad job at explaining it to a complete novice. Some that seem to be catering to people like me are the paid ones.

[MTFDarkEagle]

What is it you don't understand?

[leafer]

Ok. Let's say I want to pain the P-51. I have the template. So for starter, I'm not sure how to get the paint to stay inside the skin when all the parts are stuck together without border. All I see are the panel lines and rivets. Some of the parts overlapped one another on some of the skin I've seen.

 

This video is pretty good but he doesn't explain why he did what he did, for example, remove white.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=091RJs4nQtk&feature=related

 

Also, I guess I don't know much about gimp and photoshop as well.

[Grimes]

Wow, didn't even realize the template was out. It makes things MUCH easier to work with in terms of texturing. Also it makes the "remove white" thing is pretty much pointless when using the template, so just ignore it.

 

IMO, the best way to create new textures is to setup your files for a new livery, so you don't overwrite files in the sim. I also prefer to use the model viewer to do iterative work with the texture, its much quicker than loading into the sim each time I want to check a texture change.

 

The "ware" layer shows the flattened wireframe of the 3d model. Use this as a guide to know where different parts of the aircraft model start and end.

 

The layers you should be modifying are in the "Dif>Color>colorscheme>USAF Hurry home honey" As you can see these are the very bottom layers of the file and are the base colors for the entire model. Everything else is rivets, lines, grunge, and stuff like that.

 

Since you are new to the practice of texturing, a good idea is to just experiment with the model. A good starting place is to set a different obvious base color on each of the files. This allows you to easily see where one file starts and another ends. It is also especially useful for identifying where smaller objects are in the texture files. From there, its basically just painting.

 

 

As for the actual 3d Max stuff, the process is basically.

Modeling > UVW Unwrapping > Baking > Texturing > Finished model

 

Modeling should be complete before you unwrap and object. If you change the model after you unwrap it you generally need to unwrap it again. All parts of the model that will be used for independent animations should be different models in the scene.

 

UVW Unwrapping is simply the process of flattening the 3D mesh onto a flat surface so it can be textured. Unwrapping for use in games takes a bit of time and skill to truly understand as the goal is efficiency of space. Start with more simple objects like boxes or stuff with alot of right angles to it in order to get an idea of how it works.

 

Baking is something generally used in games to "bake" the appearance of computer intensive rendering directly onto a texture. Typically ambient occlusion (how much light contacts the surface) is baked in.

 

Texturing is pretty much you making the texture from scratch if its a new model. This is where gimp and photoshop skills come into play. I like to use Illustrator or other vector based graphics editors to create the lineart or to add detail to the ambient occlusion layer.

[leafer]

no no. the template isn't out. I was just using example of the skins I've seen in videos.

 

Thanks for taking the time, Grime.

[Grimes]

http://files.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/181018/

 

:D

[leafer]

Well, sherlock... :D

[leafer]

Ok. The templates have paint on them, so how do I get them white or is that not necessary?

[Grimes]

Its just a painted layer found it "Dif>Color>colorscheme>USAF Hurry home honey"

 

You can delete the layer, re-color, change the camo design, or do whatever you want. There is no need to make it white.

[leafer]

Ahh. Thank you again.

 

can't give rep...

[leafer]

How do you get the skin to show up if painted using ED's template? It shows yellow skin with white stripes and missing texture written on it.

[Col.Flanders]

Hey guys.

 

About to begin with doing my first DCS A10 skins. I've done quite a few FSX ones and I work with photoshop day to day so I do have an understanding of how it all works but I have one or two questions if you don't mind:

 

Grimes, you mentioned the model viewer. I can see the obvious major time-saving benefit in using this unfortunately I can't seem to get it to work. Do you simply run gameDir\bin\ModelViewer.exe? If I do this I get a 'DCS has stopped working' error. Is there another way I should be launching it - from within DCS perhaps?

 

I have the A10 PSD template files and there are 12 of them. Are these all for one complete model?

 

Thanks