A New Naked Canvas

[Willy]

I've been mucking about with the FSX Native rework of Piglet's T-33. I wasn't happy with the bare metal in his "paint kit", so I've been doing some "polishing" around a bit and I'm getting close I think. First look in sim with alpha layers included and no "painted" bits, just the bare metal.









I found some pics online of a T-33 that I'm well familiar with since childhood and thought I'd give that one a go along with a couple of others.

Willy

[falcon409]

Willy, I don't know which paint kit you're using (I did a very detailed one that has been used quite a bit), but the repaints I did for it after the conversion to Native FSX in bare metal looked outstanding. I think I did 5 different ones, including one "Thunderbird" repaint. All are in the SOH downloads area.

[Willy]

What I did was to take the 24 bit bitmaps that Tim provided to paint it with and basically made my own paint kit. I'm still tweaking it around though. Just taking a break to work on the F-80 paint kit.

[falcon409]

What I did was to take the 24 bit bitmaps that Tim provided to paint it with and basically made my own paint kit. I'm still tweaking it around though. Just taking a break to work on the F-80 paint kit.

Yea same here, except I made the texture sheets 4096x4096.

[Willy]

So did I. It's the first one I've done at that size, but you can sure pack a lot of detail in there at that size.

I've also upsized my P-80 and Gee Bee Z paint kits while I was at it.

[huub vink]

Willy,

Although I absolutely don't want to discourage you, but before you put a lot of effort in something which is already there, here a few screenshots from repaints by HenryW based on Ed's (falcon409) paintkit.

Personally I don't think there is much to improve on the bare metal, but that is of course my own opinion.

Cheers,
Huub

[Willy]

Thanks Huub! That is some very nice metal and if I can find the kit, I'll probably use it on the T-33s. Ed does some very nice work.

Every since I first started messing with FS9, I've been on and off messing around with trying to make bare metal look good. The T-33 is just another "do it myself" attempt at something other than a P-80 (a long time favorite). If I can ever get a good handle on bare metal from scratch and weathering, then I might start thinking I know enough to be dangerous at painting for FS.


Edit: Found it along with some other interesting stuff that Ed has done. He's been busy!

[Naismith]

_{Can something be done about the long gauges list with this a/c. I seem to remember a thread ages ago regarding making CAB files. Cannot myself do anything at the moment as I am trying to get FSX to run again, it's having one of its huffs again so it seems - 2 days now.}

[falcon409]

Actually that's not a bad idea. I've always just used them as is, but making a cab file is simple. . . .drop all the gauges into a single folder with an appropriate name, drop that on the cabdir.exe (found in the sdk) file and voila' you have a cab file. You also have to make the changes to the panel.cfg file so that it calls the "cab" rather than the individual gauges, but I believe that's all there is to it.

Just a side note though. . . .any of Tim's aircraft (including any where you might have also incorporated these same gauges) that utilize these gauges will be affected so those panel config entries will also have to amended.

[falcon409]

Just produced a "Piglet_T_33.cab" file in less than a minute. The actual work comes in amending all the gauge entries in the panel.cfg file, lol

NOTAM: It doesn't work as I had hoped. Despite amending the panel.cfg file to show the corrected entries, none of the gauges will load. This is a relatively simple process so I'm unsure as to why it isn't working. Maybe someone else might lend some insight?

[falcon409]

Ok, you can't make a "cab" file with "gau" type gauges evidently. I've looked at other cab files and all are made up of xml and bitmap files, so "Naismith", there's your answer as to why there is a long list of T-33 gauge files. Too bad.

[Willy]

My adventures with gauge modifcations has been mostly to copy the xml and bmp files out of the cab file and modify them to what I want (usually just the bmp). Then I put them into a folder and drop that into the gauges folder. Then it's off to FS Panel Studio to put them into whatever I'm dealing with.

Yeah, that is a rather long list of gauges to approve on the first start up of the T-33. For the AlphaSim F-80, I just replaced those with other period looking (late 40s ish) gauges from other aircraft. I'll probably do the same to the T-33.

[Naismith]

Ok, you can't make a "cab" file with "gau" type gauges evidently. I've looked at other cab files and all are made up of xml and bitmap files, so "Naismith", there's your answer as to why there is a long list of T-33 gauge files. Too bad.

Thanks for trying. Still cannot get FSX up and running here though - gets so far and jst sits and sits and....... no error reports. none of the usual solutions working either. I feel a uninstall/reinstall coming on. Grrrr

[Willy]

Ok, I'm sold. I used Ed's paint kit for this one and it sure beats what I had going.

T-33A-1-LO s/n 51-4025
*1953: USAF 3520th PTW.
*1/1962: Withdrawn from use and
donated to Texarkana, Texas park

(I played on this one as a kid)





This was just the first pass through the sim to check out what I have going. Still some more tweaking to do on it.