Repainting static aircraft

[Bendo]

I am developing scenery for Scone and the Upper Hunter Valley in NSW, Australia ... and I am trying to create accurately repainted static acft in their regular spots.

There are several multiples of types: 2 C172s, 4 C182s, 4 C185s, 2 PA-28.

I want to repaint each one correctly BUT:

that requires separate textures for each aircraft, and
the .mdl or .air file will only look for the textures by their original name, so now all C172s look like VH-IEB.
Which file do I edit, and how, to make my VH-XTP .mdl look for XTP.0AF-XTP.CAF?

[RollerBall]

Assuming you have created each one using M98toBgl or MdltoBgl, you just give each API a different name and paint its textures separately!

[Hagar]

It might be an idea to use different texture names for each variation to avoid the chance of texture conflicts. You can do this quite easily by manually editing the API macro in Notepad or Wordpad. This would need doing carefully to make sure you get them all & rename them correctly. The Search/Find feature is very useful for this job.

[RollerBall]

Doug thanks so much. I did a very quick reply before dashing out this morning and of course you would need to do that.

It's not difficult. Here's the top section of a Phantom API I created some time back using MdltoBgl.

; ------------------------------------------------------------------------
; XXXXX.API SCASM macro for Flight Simulator v6.x/7.x
; & Airport 2.60
; Generated by MDLtoBGL  Copyright 2001 Trevor de Stigter
; ------------------------------------------------------------------------
; Airport Parameter 0 = if used & not Zero means use Parameter 1
; Airport Parameter 1 = Replacement Texture File Name (excl extension)
; Airport Parameter 2 = not used
; Airport Parameter 3 = not used
; Uses the following .r8/?af Texture files:
;      f-4b8408.0af
;      f-4b8408.1af
;      f-4b8408.2af
;      f-4b8408.3af
;      f-4b8408.4af
;      f-4b8408.5af
;      f-4b8408.6af
;      f-4b8408.7af
;


All you do is use the texture list as a reference and do a search and replace of every instance of each one and then resave the file.

You can rename the files to almost anything. Just make sure you keep the file type (ie .{n}af)

[Bendo]

Rollerball and Hagar:

Thank you! I have tried this I think  ::) but I will try again  ;D

cheers

Bendo

[Bendo]

Hagar, Rollerball: Beautiful result, thank you very much.

Question 2:

the designers of the original FS98 aircraft I am tampering with painted some of their polygons particular colours; usually spinners and wingtips.

I think I have found the lines of the *.API which refer to those colours but I am unwilling to experiment blindly...

Any further?



With thanks!

[Hagar]

Glad we could help. I have changed the polygon colours of some FS98 aircraft with a little utility named Polyfix. http://www.simviation.com/fsutilities_gen1.htm

This will only work with very simple models & you would need to change the colours before converting the MDL into an API macro. If the model is too complex it might help you identify the colour codes so you can manually edit the macro. The problem will be in identifying the polygons you wish to change.