Simviation Forums

Hi de ho fellow campers!

Been spending some hours working on the alpha of my personal favorite repaint that ive done so far - Just wondering what you guys think!

In some lights it looks 'too much' but in low light it looks awesome and so real (i thought anyway!)

Toned it down a fraction and added some wing root detail as per the real thing - lost its 'too muchness' in daylight - seems a good balance.

Looking at the real thing, especialy the early 747's on a video i have, they come out of the factory with an almost mirror finish - but it just doesnt seem to look 'right' in fs.....

But i think the shots are nice anyway and worthy of posting rather than my usual 'blowing my own trumpet' and i really do like how this has come out! (mainly thanks to garryrussell and his alpha tips!)

Comments welcome - and any more tips on bare metal finishes!

Looks really nice! I like this paintscheme, and the bare metal finishes it nicely for me. Don't worry about it being not too shiny, aluminium will oxidise rapidly..

As for alpha tips, you might want to consider making subtle differences in the alpha for the components of the fuselage, and give the texture file a bit of a shading. Check my 'stangs for bare metal images and effects

Okay cool! Ill certainly have a look at some of your work....im finding the alpha is as much of a challenge as the main textures themselves!

When you say give the 'texture file a bit of a shading' what do you mean exactly? Ive used all the shadow.dirt/shades/ and so on layers that were in the kit, although these shots dont really pick them up i guess

Here's what I mean, the first two (small, sorry) pics are of the texture file (first one) and the alphachannel (second). You'll see that the texture has a  gradient in the gray, where the alpha is overall the same gray. This gives you the idea of a bit of shade on the round part of the aircraft. This part has a very small curvature, so the effect is small, but still very nice I feel. had it been more round, you could give a bigger gradient, so a darker grey at the bottom.



This is the end result, so the combination of texture and alpha, the gradual darkening of the fuselage toward the bottom gives the impression that it is rounded, which it is.
You can also see the slight differences in color/grey of the different metal plates that make up the aircraft, partly in different shades of gray in the textures, partly slightly different grey in the alpha.

Aha yeah i see what you mean. Ive sorta been doing that unknowingly due to the way im constructing the alpha, using various numbers with the 'magic wand'  - transfers over individual panels or indeed several at a time, and ive been colouring them various shades of grey mainly 'to see what happens' although i did convert the lot into the same shade mainly just to see what the overall effect was like, this being the first time ive dabbled with alphas :-?

But thanks for the info ! Appreciated Certainly will have a crack at this when i re-do the belly

bare metal is probably one of the harder things to do when painting planes for FS. what i did for my unofficial texture update for the POSKY 747 SCA was i found a nice chromed out engine on A.net and just went straight up photoreal. which is what you might want to do.

heck if you want i can send you the PSD for the engines!

Yep okay, ill give anything a go if its worked for you!

can you email it? todayshorse@msn.com.....cheers!

ok i sent it to you.

Received, thanks very much!

well i hope you like them they took hours to get right (actually they only took like 20 minutes )

LOL im just about to get stuck into it and see what i can do  with them, as i was already in the middle of a alpha re-do when i got them - but theres some serious bare metal stuff in there!  Those things at the bottom of the PSD, the bits that stick out the back of the fan on the PW's - they look amazing!

And what are these colour balance bits on the layers? Ive not come across that before?

Oh and ive just found the 'blue hue' - thats neat! So you dont need to faff with the alpha for these as i am doing at the moment? If i converted these to the belly on the 747, and left the alpha white would it look ok?

well the blue hue was for the SCA engines because they have a blue hue to them. if you want just get rid of that and it should be good to go.

yeah not much alpha if any is needed for those textures. you should show what you have now. i am intrigued

AR*E! ive somehow managed to save the full fuselage PSD's that i was working on as flattend images, and have lost the layers

Both the port and the starboard

So it might be a day or two before i re-do using the engine textures....but i will get round to it And i guess i can correct some slight smudged lines and stuff that ive noticed!

Oh well!