da Rock

Have you seen the new paintjobs being done for RealFlightG3? They're kewl. I've done some of them for myself. They ain't exactly easy to do for a couple of reasons, but the reason that stands out can be solved fairly easily.

You see the uploaded image below? It's a template. I've done a bunch of paintjobs for a racing sim. The sim is of the NASCAR series. It originally started out for the Winston Cup series, and has been expanded to include the Busch series, CTS series, changed to keep up with the Nextel Cup series and a number of others. Almost all the detail work to make all those has come from us internet guys.

For example, the Craftsman Truck Series was created and sold by the mfg back in 1998 and basically dropped by the mfg. The guys who liked it kept it alive by painting trucks each year that were exact paint jobs of the trucks that were running in the series that year. Same is true of all the other mods to the basic sim. There is a very large community that pumps continuing life into that game. That game was last sold in 2003 in it's "latest greatest" version. Since then, the community has kept it alive.

One thing that community did that was very important was the creation and sharing of templates. The image is one of those. I created it in layers, so what you see is the total of a bunch of layers. One of the most valuable features of the layers is that they "mask". When I paint a new truck, I can simply "flood fill" the base color in the base color "mask" and start dinking with the other details.

It would really be a good thing if the airplanes in RFG3.5 had a resource of templates available. Anyone think that's worthwhile?

da Rock

What is needed is sorta simple yet not easily explained.

See the gray background in the above? It's what makes templates so effective. It's visible because the masks of the overlying layers have kept that area of the overlying layers from having anything in them.

It's extremely useful to guys like me who paint their own airplanes into RFG3. And it's guys like me who could get together and create a database of templates for G3. It would also be great if Knife Edge would get involved, but I haven't gotten over there to bring up this idea.

See the image below? It's the "template" for the P40 that's in G3. It is only one layer. There are no layers and no masks. Yet. To paint that P40 took me roughly 10 times as long as it took me to make Johnny Benson's #23 Toyota Tundra, the latest red one. Since painting that P40, I've been layering that template and creating masks. But I've been doing it for the Ultimate. I'm doing one with the World Models color scheme from my "full scale model" 40S Ultimate. When I get the template done, I can then make the yellow/white version of the WM offerings, or any paint job of any model in lots less time. And more importantly, much more accurately.

Anybody?

da Rock

What the suggestion is..........

It'd be good to gather up a community of the guys who are doing paints for G3.5 and create a data base of templates. It would be even better if Knife Edge would share info that'd make template making lots easier.

I figured to work up the idea here before trying to present it to KE.

Anybody.........