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Post by Kevin on Mar 21, 2008 9:19:01 GMT -5
I decided to have a go at painting the AIA DC-9-30 in the colours of KLM, from the 1980's. As I have never even attempted to paint a flightsim model before, it probably has a lot of rough edges and certainly has a long way to go.  Any advice would be greatly received. Also, what is the best format to save the textures in? These are DXT-3. Is this too much for an AI model? Is there a recommended way to get airline logos? Regards Kevin |
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Post by Christian Page, RAI on Mar 21, 2008 14:13:02 GMT -5
Logos? Try www.aerosite.net for some, just credit them for using it if you put the repaint out. The best way to get logos and logotype, in my experience, is from timetables. There are two real good timetable sites with many scans - www.timetableimages.com and www.airtimes.com. If you get real good at it, you can even use actual photographs of aircraft for logos. I have had to do this with several logos for the new site - but it requires knowledge of flood tolerances and anti-aliasing to modify an actual photo into a usable image for repaint or website use. Let me know if there's one you can't find and I'll work it up for you, I've provided logos and type for several repaints over the years. A good number of Braniff repaints incorporate work I did  Oh, and my avatar - that's a modified timetable image, so that shows you can get some good-lloking logos out of them with a bit of tweaking. And, BTW, we strongly commend botn you and Kov for taking the initative to tackle repaints for missing planes - we can't do everything, so we all welcome your work! |
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Post by chrisP on Mar 21, 2008 15:30:10 GMT -5
Another good source for logos is www.brandsoftheworld.com - they don't have everything, but what they have is in vector format, so the quality is top ntoch. Ditto on picking up the brushes |
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Post by Kevin on Mar 21, 2008 16:01:46 GMT -5
Thanks, Guys As well as looking at your recommended sites, I've also found logos at Wikipedia. My little project is progressing well, though still not finished -    And, BTW, we strongly commend botn you and Kov for taking the initative to tackle repaints for missing planes - we can't do everything, so we all welcome your work! Ditto on picking up the brushes And thanks for the encouragement. I'd honestly never painted anything before today, but have learned a lot and gained a lot of confidence. I know it's not perfect, but I'm very pleased with it. Regards Kevin |
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Post by Christian Page, RAI on Mar 21, 2008 17:25:41 GMT -5
The good thing about AI painting is that the standards of detail are nowhere near as high as flyable aircraft. You simply don't see the planes up close that often, and frame rates are a bigger concern than detail for most of us especially at heavy traffic airports. So, starting out with AI gives you ample time to learn all the tricks before moving on to detailed flyable repaints.
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Post by Kevin on Mar 24, 2008 9:52:59 GMT -5
A little update... I haven't abandoned it...just been away for the Easter weekend. I have managed a little progress 1. Horizontal stabiliser is now white. 2. Slightly darkened lower fuselage, allowing white stripe to show more clearly 3. Added 'Royal Dutch Airlines'' titling in white stripe 4. Added 'Day-Glo' to wingtips 5. Added flag and registration - may need moving aft and registration enlarging slightly.  To do.... 'Douglas' logo and 'DC-9' lettering to add to engines. EDIT And a little more... 5. Thinned the blue stripe. 6. Adjusted the white stripe to match. I just need to add the engine details and then I think it's finished.  I have saved the textures using DXTBmp as DXT3. Is this OK for an AI aircraft? Regards Kevin |
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Post by chrisP on Mar 24, 2008 10:35:53 GMT -5
DXT3 no mips is fine. Be careful with DXTBmp, since it tends to add a green tint when converting back and forth. I always use Imagetool (from the MS flightsim SDK). What I do is do all my texturing in 32-bit with Photoshop (checking the results with ACM). I only convert to DXT when the repaint is finished. Nice looking nine, by the way |
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Post by Kevin on Mar 24, 2008 15:05:31 GMT -5
Thanks for your advice, Chris. As I've worked, the textures have been saved as Photoshop PSD files, preserving the layers. I have also saved them as bitmaps and then converted them to DXT3 files using DXTBmp, in order to view them in FS9. I haven't converted these back to bitmaps or PSD's, just altered the PSD and re-saved. Now that it's finished, I've found that someone uploaded a KLM DC-9-30 to Flightsim about a week ago - Oh well! The last touches that I've added are 1. Detail to engines (anti-aliased the 'DC-9' text). 2. Anti-aliased the 'Royal Dutch airlines' and PH-DNK text. Well, here it is...  I'd still like to upload it, if it's good enough. Regards Kevin |
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Post by Christian Page, RAI on Mar 24, 2008 17:49:11 GMT -5
Well, the ones on Flightsim are about as close to an "official" repaint release that we have, since they were done by Jason King of the RAI staff. Honestly, I had no idea he was doing them - or completely forgot if I did - but that doesn't mean your work was for naught. Go ahead and release it - I encourage variety in repaints. That's part and parcel of why we don't officially offer repaints - we want people to be able to choose what planes they use. It does turn out that we often do release repaints off the RAI site because some of us work to close the gaps in fleets as we do the flight plans.
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Post by Kevin on Mar 24, 2008 18:55:11 GMT -5
No problem, Kristopher
Jason had uploaded his textures before I started mine.
Had I found these, I wouldn't have started.
Then, I wouldn't have learned some of the basics of repainting and I wouldn't now be planning further projects.
I would still like to upload my repaint. Please don't take this as any comment on Jason's textures, which are excellent.
It's just that this is my first attempt, and would like it to be available to all (no matter how poor it is).
Thanks to all at Retro Ai for all the help and encouragement.
Hopefully, you'll like my next project.
Regards
Kevin
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Post by ElliottD on Mar 25, 2008 11:59:51 GMT -5
Nice paint! its always good to have a go and the more retro painters we have the better! Just a quick question, have you deliberately not done the metal on the engines? I know its very difficult to do and I still cant get it as good as id like.  Get used to painting DC-9s! It seems that the retro world revolves around them. I have almost finished 3 that Im going to preview soon. Before them I painted another DC-9 and come to think of it I've painted more of them than anything else! |
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Post by tgibson on Mar 26, 2008 11:34:04 GMT -5
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Post by ElliottD on Mar 26, 2008 12:00:48 GMT -5
Yeah I was wondering if there was a variant without metal engines, I just didnt have time to look Good job anyways |
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Post by Christian Page, RAI on Mar 26, 2008 13:11:30 GMT -5
Nice paint! its always good to have a go and the more retro painters we have the better! Just a quick question, have you deliberately not done the metal on the engines? I know its very difficult to do and I still cant get it as good as id like. Get used to painting DC-9s! It seems that the retro world revolves around them. I have almost finished 3 that Im going to preview soon. Before them I painted another DC-9 and come to think of it I've painted more of them than anything else! You always hear about the 737 being the most prolific jetliner, but it seems like EVERYONE around before 1990 except Southwest had at least one DC-9 variant at some point. Even Braniff, long associated with the 727, had a single ex-Eastern DC-9 during its third and last incarnation. |
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Post by Kevin on Mar 26, 2008 13:30:57 GMT -5
Thanks for the comments, guys Just a quick question, have you deliberately not done the metal on the engines? I know its very difficult to do and I still cant get it as good as id like. Actually, I had completely forgotten about the engines other than the Douglas logo and DC-9 lettering. I have no idea how to do metal textures - everything I've done so far has been by trial and error. Any advice would be a great help *I'm missing the dayglo wingtips. oops! I added these at the last minute. Not sure whether it's a bit over the top for an AI paint. The KLM scheme seemed to represent a relatively straight forward intro to painting (apart from the engine textures that I forgot), as there were no complex curves. I hope to finish this one soon and post it. For my next project, does anyone know of a DC-8 paintkit (ideally a series 21, but any short body should do. Regards Kevin |
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