For the mods: Is the Pilatus PC-7 considered a "classic"?

[Tako_Kichi]

I just put up a webpage covering what I discovered with this 'paint pulling' problem on the PC-7. It took me longer than expected as I was working on it yesterday when my debilitating illness decided to flare up :@ . Once my body decided to calm back down (I have no control of it when it decides to throw a wobbly) I went to bed to sleep off the after-effects and slept for a total of 18 hours straight :o . If anyone is interested the page can be found here......

http://larry.green.franva.org/Repainting.html

[TSR2]

Thats a great article Larry! I hope you are able to continue.

Thanks!

[Tako_Kichi]

Thanks Ben, I may add to it as I discover more little gems on my trip along the repainter's learning curve!

[RAF_Quantum]

Hi Larry,

Very interesting article. One quick thing to speed things up for you. I have a permanent texture folder in my FS9 DC-3 folder which is named 'texture.a.current wip' with the associated entry in the aircraft.cfg file. The 'a.' after texture is to keep it always at the top of the list. Whatever repaint I am currently working on I use that folder for viewing in FSRepaint. Betweeen adjustments to my current wip repaint I do a 'save copy as' and save it as windows bmp directly to 'texture.a.current.wip' and named as the correct texture for FS9. For FSRepaint there is no need to convert it from a bmp as it will see it just fine. By doing 'save copy as' it preserves your current file in your paint programme and leaves it displayed on your painting workspace still in your paint prog format. If you did 'save as' you would then be looking at the 'saved as' texture and would then have to close that and re-open your paintshop image to do more edits each time. The other good thing is once you've done a 'save copy as' during your session, the next 'save copy as' goes straight to the last place you 'saved copy as' with the last used file naming convention. So, you make a quick change to a the position of a fuselage line that you are repainting and you want to see what it looks like - file>save copy as>browse to folder and name it>save. Open fsrepaint and assuming that the aircraft prior to alteration is the current displayed aircraft, hit F4 and the texture gets refreshed with your alterations. Takes just a few seconds and you can see the results.
Once you are completely happy with the repaint, copy texture folder 'texture.a.current wip', paste and rename and then make the necessary edit to the aircraft.cfg, go back to FSrepaint and hit F5 to refresh the list of aircraft and then select your new repaint. Then all you neeed to do is convert the bmp image to whatever output file you want for FS9.

Rgds

John

[Tako_Kichi]

Thanks for that info John, I will make a note of it.

Here's a little trick I discovered re. FSRepaint, you don't have to point it at your FSX/FS9 folder in order for it to work! :o

I like to keep one partition on my HD just for games and I use a different partition (on a different drive as it happens) for stuff I am working on. In my 'painting' folder where I work on my repaints I created an 'Aircraft' folder and copy the specific aircraft folder I am working on into there from either FSX or FS9. As long as you have a folder named 'Aircraft' you can point FSRepaint to it and it will work quite happily. By doing that I am always only one folder away and it saves a lot of clicking when you want to save changes for testing. What I end up with is something like this:

Repaint Folder

• Aircraft - Folder(s) from FSX/FS9

• Project 1 - WIP stuff, research material, etc.

• Project 2 - WIP stuff, research material, etc.

• Etc.

I save my WIP files in the project folder(s) and can quickly drop them into their respective 'Aircraft' folder for testing in FSRepaint. Once the job is done I can copy and paste the entire folder back into FSX/FS9 for use in game.

It works for me at least!

[Tako_Kichi]

John, I tried your tip of bypassing the DXTBmp stage and saving as a copy direct to the folder FSRepaint uses and the savings in time were phenomenal! I got a huge amount done this evening simply because I didn't have to wait for DXTBMP to load and save each time I wanted to view changes.

I really appreciate the tip so have a virtual pint on me! CHEERS

[RAF_Quantum]

Cheers Larry :drinkers:

Rgds

John

[Tako_Kichi]

If anyone is interested I just completed another repaint for the PC-7. All my tests regarding the paint pulling problem were carried out in order to get the underside done on this repaint. It's not 100% correct but as close as I can get it given the constraints I had to work with. I started a thread with pics of the paint job over on the Sim-Outhouse forum here....

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/s ... post555107

I am quite pleased with it considering it's only the third repaint I have attempted.