Paintkit stuff

[CRANKPIN]

As I've said elsewhere I love this paintkit and the superb default liveries supplied. But and it's a very small but, out of the 9 files with >1000 layers I've noticed a few things.

1. 02.psd seems to be missing it's UV layer.

2. Not strictly a paint kit issue, but the pic below shows the rear seat with some crazy lighting (?) On the internal texture sheet 'cessnaT50_int_08_diffuse.dds' which has all the seat textures the front seats are much the same color as the rear, but in the sim .... not. The pic is of a default livery and 'should' be free of any tinkering I've done, but it is possible that this and (1) above are my fault though I don't think so.



Then there's a couple of things that would have been 'nice' to have.
Like a layered propdisk.psd and some unmarked sample/base alpha channel reflectivity examples in the .psd's. Yes all of that is doable with what I have, it'd just be 'nice'.

[CRANKPIN]

And another 'lighting issue' that's caused a bit of frustration. As you can see in the screen shots the tail feathers appear much more shadowed/darker relative to 'same facing' parts of the fuselage. It's much more obvious the lighter the base colour so the cream/white of what I'm working on here shows it at it's worst, but the effect is there in all the default liveries as well shown by the second screen shot. After trying everything I could think of and resorting to tinkering with specular and the alpha channel of the diffuse I 'think' I've found the culprit. The alpha channel of diffuse_03 does not seem to be tied to/doing it's job with reflectivity/shine as do the other diffuse texture sheets, in 03 it just affects the colour of the RGB layers - not adjusts the reflectivity. When I tried to add some shine to the tail feathers (darkening in the alpha) all that happened was the feathers got darker - no reflectivity - just darker. Now that experiment did give me a work around to let me get a result that looks 'good enough - just' but I still think there's a issue with lighting/the alpha channel/model properties and texture sheet 'cessnaT50_ext_03_diffuse.dds'
Not asking for a fix or such here (as I found a work around) but I would like to know if the issue is in the model texture handling or if I've missed something here and sheet 03 alpha channel management is different to the others by design.

[Krazycolin]

We will be looking at these tmrw

[CRANKPIN]

Thanks for that Colin glad to hear they are on the agenda. I have just one more niggle I call the 'cowl anomaly'.

At the aft end of the engine cowls there's a riveted panel that closes off the back of the cowl. There's a texture on ext_01_diffuse for this. It's mapped perfectly for the left engine but apparently not at all for the right engine. Using Songbird as an example, flicking between pilot seat and co-pilot seat and looking at the back of the cowl - the difference is pretty easy to see.

[N4GIX]

I've checked and can only note that evidently the object you point to must have somehow gotten left out during that compilation of the interior model. I can verify that both left and right objects are present in the both the exterior and interior models now.


I've also added a Parking Brake to the pilot's lower left panel.


I found the issue with the tail feathers...
The FSX Material had some minor differences from the FSX Materials used for the rest of the fuselage. I've now matched the settings.

[N4GIX]

2. Not strictly a paint kit issue, but the pic below shows the rear seat with some crazy lighting (?) On the internal texture sheet 'cessnaT50_int_08_diffuse.dds' which has all the seat textures the front seats are much the same color as the rear, but in the sim .... not. The pic is of a default livery and 'should' be free of any tinkering I've done, but it is possible that this and (1) above are my fault though I don't think so.

What sim version is this image of the rear seat from? I can't duplicate this here on FSX/A. I haven't tried yet in P3D since it's only on my library room's computer.

[CRANKPIN]

Hi Bill
Thanks great stuff.
Sim is FSX Gold Sp2 so pretty much vanilla FSX.
i7 Nvidia 980Ti Win10 64bit Pro

As you can't replicate the rear seat thing, I'll re-download and re-install the Bobcat to make sure I'm on the same page.

[CRANKPIN]

Ah Bill

Oh Dear! You've got me on the back seat one, My Bad, My Very Bad. I had 'DX10 preview' turned on, that was it, DOH!

Oooops
John

[N4GIX]

Ah Bill

Oh Dear! You've got me on the back seat one, My Bad, My Very Bad. I had 'DX10 preview' turned on, that was it, DOH!

Oooops
John

Unfortunately, that still begs the question of why DX10 didn't affect the front seats and frame...

[CRANKPIN]

Unfortunately, that still begs the question of why DX10 didn't affect the front seats and frame...

hmm yes... but beyond my level of technical competence. Only thing I could add is that I hadn't 'fixed' DX10 Preview in any way, just turned it on in FSX.

[N4GIX]

Unfortunately, that still begs the question of why DX10 didn't affect the front seats and frame...

hmm yes... but beyond my level of technical competence. Only thing I could add is that I hadn't 'fixed' DX10 Preview in any way, just turned it on in FSX.

Well! I enabled the DX10 Preview mode and then found and fixed the problem. Somehow along the line the FSX Material for the rear seat and frame got the option "Bloom material modulating by alpha" turned on...



One other somewhat minor issue isn't so easily solvable. A few have noticed that the seat belt buckles appear to 'glow in the dark' whenever either of the overhead flood lights are used. The reason is that there is only one texture for the metal parts of the seat belts, and whenever the front buckles are lighted, so too are the rear seat buckles.

[CRANKPIN]

Aaaagh there's always something, but I for one agree to not notice

[Krazycolin]

Bill, make a separate material for the ones back...

[N4GIX]

Bill, make a separate material for the ones back...

Done. The metal parts are now on an "unlighted" material. I looks much better now.