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Repaint FSX Aircraft

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How To...Repaint FSX Aircraft

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How To...Repaint FSX Aircraft

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by Nels_Anderson Published on 02-29-2012 05:51 PM

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How To...Repaint FSX Aircraft

By Ron Blehm
February 29, 2012

A Very Simple, Very Basic Introduction To Aircraft Painting In FSX

his How To is for those who may want to try learning how to do some very basic repaint jobs in FSX. Yes, I know, repainting articles have been done before by guys who are way smarter than I am; but this is a very simple, very basic introduction for those who may have been scared or just overwhelmed in the past.

You may have read my Head-2-Head report about the PAD vs. AIA EMB-190 challenge. You may have read my report called, "For the Love of Flying" about how happy I am with my simple little EMB-190 model. Later in this article you will see why I mention these two previous articles. First off, aircraft in flightsim use some kind of a complex display called a DXT. I have no idea what this is or what it means but think of it like some kind of super-special Paint BMP file. These DXT files can't just be modified without getting all scrambled (don't ask me why, they are just too complex to be messed with). So, for those like me that lack the technical genius to mess with such files, other technical geniuses wrote programs that allow us to mess with DXTs without screwing them up - well, mostly. I use a program called DXTBitmap which you can download for free from several sites (such ashttp://dxtbmp.softpedia.com/). I saved this file into a folder in my "repainting" section of FS (image below). Basically this file takes that "super-complex Paint BMP" and turns it into a "regular old Paint BMP" which I can mess with using the default Windows paint program. When I'm done, I refresh or reload the DXT which adds all the "super-special" parts back in.

Let's have a go. First, I recommend that you have some idea of what you'd like to repaint - I recommend going with something really basic and simple; like an AI Aardvark-made-flyable EMB-190. (See prior articles.) More complex aircraft have more detail (duh) and I've seen models where there are no fewer than five BMPs for the fuselage plus others for tail and wing roots and etc. If you want to paint a line or stripe across all these sections you will NEVER get things all lined up so don't even try. (The Dreamwings Dash-8 Q400 for example has three files for fuselage and I can't get a line to cross all three with any amount of effort; I end up with lines all over the place and the plane looks like it was painted by a pre-schooler.) Anyway, if you want to add your own colors (which we do) I recommend downloading someone else's paint job that has a lot of white on it. I chose the Augsburg Airline repaint by Boris Le Veve (image below, left). I save and unzip this into my EMB-190 folder (which I have already zipped and moved into a back-up area; see image below right).

Next, what shall we repaint it as? I'm thinking Mexico-something this time. Something a little ... Aztec. Aztec ... maybe some orange and yellow or gold ... maybe a little green thrown in. I head to Google Images and quickly find a nice logo which I save to my repainting folder as aztecsun.bmp file (image below, left). When we extract the download we find the texture folder which contains the day and night textures/paints for this aircraft. (See image above, right) The Tfiles are for normal daylight and the Lfiles are for night. I don't know why but most commonly that's what you see. You'll also notice that I can't see anything on these files; that's because they are in the fancy DXT format. Anyway, I rename the folder, texture.Aztec and drag that into my main EMB-190 folder (image below, right).

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Next, I go to my DXTBmp program and open it. I get a blank screen. In the top left I click on File > Open and get a new window. I scroll to FSX > Sim Objects > Aircraft > EMB-190 > texture.Aztec and open the file with the "-t" at the end (below, left). Ta-Da! I can now see the fancy DXT file! But I can't work with it. So I click on, "Image > Send to Editor" and the program removes all the complex DXT stuff and opens the textures in MSPaint (below, right).

First thing to notice is that if I click and try to paint the whole thing blue (for example) the whole thing doesn't paint (below, left). The little bolts and flecks of dirt and bits of texture details are still too complex for MSPaint. If you wanted to learn a new photo-editing program you could deal with all that but this is a "simple introduction" so we are going to carefully box-out and delete as much of the old texture as we can. We want a blank canvas that is shaped like an EMB-190 (below, right). In doing this, we are going to loose a lot of details like dirt on the nacelles and intakes on the underbelly but again, this is a very basic, very simple introduction only; we're aren't about details this time. Also, if there is any chance you may be doing other repaints, I highly recommend that you save this blank white aircraft into a Blank Textures folder as noted in the very bottom-left of the photo above.

Okay, once you have it all blanked (and saved) you can start repainting. I opted for red/orange below and gold on top; I start with making a dividing line where it looks best. Then I copy that section (with window) and drag it to other parts of the fuselage so that it will all line up in the end (below, left). Next we can use simple MSPaint functions to fill in the blanks and add text and logos (below, right).

When we are done and we close the Paint program we click YES to save (below, left). Then in DXT we select "Reload after Edit" (below, center) This reloads our work and we save back into the complex DXT file (I use the 32-bit textures for FSX, image below right).

Finally, we need to add the texture to the aircraft.cfg file and be sure to give the original author/painter credit for his hard work.

Next we need to take a test drive and once we confirm a good job.

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We can move on to the next repainting challenge.

Ron Blehm pretendpilot@yahoo.com

Tags: repaint

1 Comment
khairulnizam - 05-22-2012, 01:27 AM can do it as a PDF format, easy to download and print for keeping purpose
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