Still Spilling Paint

[Willy]

It's rainy today, can't get out to do much and I've been scratching a Howard 500 itch lately. I've been working on replacing the default Learjet AI traffic with Howard 500s and decided I needed more paint schemes to go with the dozen or so I already have been using. You can't have too many H500s sitting/flying around in the background.

I'm not sure which or who's model I'm using other than it's FSX native and uses the original texture mapping. I kind of got 'em all mixed up. I did the basic fuselage paint for this some years ago in FS9 and forgot about it. It's still a work in progress and I'm pretty sure that the bare metal on the front of the engine cowling is gonna go and some of the details will get moved around some. Otherwise, it's pretty much there, just needing a wee bit of tweaking...

[Willy]

Getting there. Darn cowling bezels are apparently a lot more reflective than I thought they were. The textures are red until I look at them in the sim. Looks like I'm going to need really lighten up on the alpha there. Other wise I think I'm darned close on it.

[TuFun]

That's one of my favorite Milton aircraft! There's about 34 repaints for the Howard 500. The cowl and flap (mirrored) area are no fun to paint. The exhaust ports were not align up right with the wing-root making the strips hard to do correctly. Would be cool if this model got updated to FSX/P3D with the 2013 revised model. The tail mapping and proper sized crew were done on that one.

This one I couldn't finished due to issues with the mapping.

[Willy]

N500HP, before it was N500HP!

Someone did that paint for it early on in FS9 and I was going to take a shot at it myself as the old one was kind of rough in spots. I've been using the old FS9 paints for AI purposes (the H500 works quite well as AI as do everything else of Milton's I've tried) and that's one I've got flying about.

I've been detaiing the original paint kit into one that's more to my liking. Just mucking about, I did a fictional take on TWA's only Lodestar updated to '50s white top paint scheme on the Howard a week or so ago. I never did sort out the mapping of the inside areas of the vertical fins and just left them in white with no stripes as I couldn't get the one texture to line up right on both sides of it.

I've had more problems with bottom of the flaps as bare metal than anything else. Painted, those seem okay. The bezel texture for the front of cowl as I mentioned before is not wanting play nice, but I'm confidant, I'll get it figured out sooner or later.

[TuFun]

Yep, now N500HP. Most difficult to paint that area under the wings on the nacelles. Had red bleeding thru the top nacelles on that N4362F. Maybe it's the model version I was using. It's an old model done a lone time ago.



The real aircraft, notice the exhaust stacks are below the wing-root.

https://www.airhistory.net/photo/18543

[Willy]

I've figured out my bezel texture problem is in the FSX native model. If I use a FS9 model the red shows. The FSX native shows bare metal from I assume the shared textures folder which is where I stash the bare metal exterior textures.

The FS9 model though throws my alphas all out of whack so I'd have to start from scratch if I went to that model.

Got some thinkin' to do on it, but I'm probably got a lot of redoing alpha layers ahead of me.

[TuFun]

Seeing your work it will all come out exceptionally well! This is what I was talking about the red on the upper nacelles peeking thru. Pretty much killed the paint job sad to say.

[Willy]

Which model is that?

[TuFun]

This one, has updated tail and crew although they are twins.:wiggle:

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php/77998-Howard-500-with-fix-zip

[Willy]

Thanks! That's the one I'm mucking about with now, cooking up a paint kit for it.

[TuFun]

Going thru my photo albums and found this and was learning how to using Paint.NET doing this aircraft 5 years ago. Man time flies! This was 2048 res and didn't know anything about paint kits then. Difficult to find any good rear fuse/tail section for the pattern so I think the that area is not correct. Anyways at the time I tried.

Some test pics back then with pillow effects...

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1948/45375296131_c844d19879_h.jpg

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1915/31499852588_4bd4d63ecc_h.jpg

[Willy]

I had to do a htail layered template which is probably going to cause mission creep to make it all match up. Shame as I finally got the metal on the FS9 textures where I liked it. But it gives me a chance to try out a few new ideas.

I had the htail all riveted up yesterday afternoon and when I got back to it last night, they were gone. There went a couple of days work.

[TuFun]

Yep, remember doing that. Working in PS and closed it, but forget to save it. Thought I did. On those 4k projects I had out of memory issues at times and couldn't save it. It was hitting 8 GB of ram out about 96% and stopped. Bumped up to 16 GB of ram solved it. It was using 12 GB of ram to save a project.

[PRB]

Good stuff shipmates. One of the most fun planes to come from the Milton Industries factory! :very_drunk:

[Willy]

I agree Paul. It's always been a hoot to fly.

There's the TWA paint I did a couple of weeks ago for the FSX Native model.

[Willy]

Decided I could do better on the side stripes on the black 'n red one. This is with the Alan Richards FSX model. I'm still sorting out the alphas on the 2013 version.

[warchild]

I agree Paul. It's always been a hoot to fly.

There's the TWA paint I did a couple of weeks ago for the FSX Native model.

Willy?? May I have a copy of that TWA Livery?? I fly withTWVA and this would be awesome :)..
Pam

[Willy]

Pam, check your PMs. It's a nearly completed work in progress, but I'm really not sure that there will be any more changes to it. Just giving it some time to stew a bit more before it's released.

Willy

[delta_lima]

Love that TWA paint, Willy - spectacular! Looking forward to that one!

Any other repaint plans for the lovely 500?

dl

[Willy]

Love that TWA paint, Willy - spectacular! Looking forward to that one!

Any other repaint plans for the lovely 500?

dl

Yes, I've a few, but I need to get my "paint kit" where I want it before I can go into production. I've been redoing the bare metal to where I like it. Once that's done, I hope to be flinging and slinging paint.

There's a Howard 250 paint (N177L) scheme that's intriguing and I think will fit a 500 quite nicely . And a few of the Lodestar paints I did would look good on a Howard as well. And I'm thinking there's probably a Navy Admiral out there that is allergic to kerosene and needs a new personal transport.

I'm also wanting to do some actual H500 paint schemes and have been gathering data and pics that I can find on them. I'm thinking that N130P will probably be the first of those. And N500LN's new scheme is also intriguing. TuFun did N500HP and N137U quite nicely so I've no intent on doing those. Some of the paints that were done for the FS9 original haven't faired well over the years. Those paint schemes I don't mind doing my own take on.


And I'm working on an AI project to replace the default Learjets with Howards. There's a lot of good paints that were done after Milton originally released the Howard that still work in FSX.

Edited to add: In addition to the surviving airframe of N130P which is in Chandler AZ, N5831Y got caught up in Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans while at Lakefront Airport there. As far as I know, the airframe still survives and rumored to belong to TP Aero which owns N500HP, N500LN and N137U. A few minutes ago while looking at H500 pics for some detail work I ran across a pic of N5831Y in flight which along with another pic I have of it in the same paint scheme should give me enough to take a stab at it. So that gives me 3 actual 500 paints and a H250 scheme for the short list. Should keep me busy and out of trouble for a while.

[Milton Shupe]

Hello Gents ;-)

I really do apologize for all the anguish I have caused painters with the Howard 500. I was early in my modeling/mapping career in 2003-4 and I was trying to map to photo-real textures at the time. That is why there are so many anomalies.

So, the model really is 14-15 years old. :-)

Here is one of the original screen shots of the cargo paint in July 2004.

BTW, here are the textures I run, many from Damian "windrunner" Radice.

[Willy]

Milton, no anguish here from your work. It's the Alan Richards/FSNorthwest FSX native one that's been giving me fits. I still have no idea why the cowling bezel will only show bare metal and not a painted surface. I even tried it without using shared textures and still showing a bare metal bezel. Like they say, it is what it is and other than the challenge of figuring out how to make it work, I'd have binned it already.

Damian did some outstanding work on his Howard 500 paints. I've got a bunch of them including a couple that he never released. I think I've got probably around 40 paints for the Howard stashed. Com-Central did a pack of about 34 that they put together, then there's a few others like the SOH-RTW "chase plane".

[TuFun]

It was the best model of it's time Milton and Damian's photo real repaints were the best... still is today! It's a classic!!! I've enjoyed the Howard for 14 years minus this year since no flying.

[Milton Shupe]

Milton, no anguish here from your work. It's the Alan Richards/FSNorthwest FSX native one that's been giving me fits. I still have no idea why the cowling bezel will only show bare metal and not a painted surface. I even tried it without using shared textures and still showing a bare metal bezel. Like they say, it is what it is and other than the challenge of figuring out how to make it work, I'd have binned it already.

Damian did some outstanding work on his Howard 500 paints. I've got a bunch of them including a couple that he never released. I think I've got probably around 40 paints for the Howard stashed. Com-Central did a pack of about 34 that they put together, then there's a few others like the SOH-RTW "chase plane".

Regarding the bezel statement, my AR version shows an extra folder in his original texture folder named Chrome. It has a couple of variants of chrome_t_dds and a bump map.
You may recall that the I used bezel.bmp for that cowl ring/bezel.
Looks like he remapped it to use chrome.dds ... just a guess.

[Milton Shupe]

It was the best model of it's time Milton and Damian's photo real repaints were the best... still is today! It's a classic!!! I've enjoyed the Howard for 14 years minus this year since no flying.

Thank you TF.

Actually, Joáo Paz did the original Howard 500 green/yellow/white textures using RW photos the pilot, David Cummings, took and sent to us. JP did a fantastic job with that. Damian and I hooked up later after I recognized all his beautiful repaints on this and other projects of ours.

[Willy]

Regarding the bezel statement, my AR version shows an extra folder in his original texture folder named Chrome. It has a couple of variants of chrome_t_dds and a bump map.
You may recall that the I used bezel.bmp for that cowl ring/bezel.
Looks like he remapped it to use chrome.dds ... just a guess.

That nakes better sense than some of the theories I was coming up with and is probably what happened. Although I was kind of fond the idea of using chicken blood to voo doo it into showing some color.

I'm getting some progress on the htail textures, but I'm sure going to need to tone the alpha down a bit as it's shinier than a lot of chrome at the moment.

[TuFun]

Willy if you want to add those nacelle strips, this is the pattern to use... works well for 2k and up.

[Willy]

Thanks! That verifies what I was seeing on one of Damian's old paints. I figured I'd give it a shot.

I got a good start on N130P last night. It's the one at Chandler AZ that got caught up in an ownership dispute and while the legal wrangling is going on, it's been heavily vandalized. Fortunately there's a bunch of pics of it before the taggers found it. It's sat out in the desert for a long time now so maybe there's still some good bones there should they ever figure out who actually owns it now and someone would decide to get it airworthy.

[delta_lima]

Great news Willy. Looking forward to whatever you paint up for the Howard.

[Willy]

I'm starting to see what yall mean about the cowlings, nacelle and the wings. I should be able to get 'em reasonably close.

[TuFun]

Took me awhile to figure out the rivets and screws since some had to be shape into footballs. :biggrin-new: Look at the bezel_t, cowlring_t, and eng_t.
I didn't bother on the lower nacelles due the extreme stretching under the wing.

This one would be a challenge, multi color with thin pin-striping between some of the colors and that tail. This would be a great paint job in 4k!!!

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ee3ee3af208515ed228341aa020af589

https://books.google.com/books?id=Ube41zSkatwC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=%27howard+500:the+airplane+turbines+killed%27&source=bl&ots=mGz_MS9sGn&sig=3fH5xxMWXNlRWGqenEAV_mwYwu0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UCdcUfLhKsS1qgGT04CYCA&sqi=2#v=onepage&q='howard%20500%3Athe%20airplane%20turbines%20kill ed'&f=false

[Willy]

That's serial number 110, N5831Y and the last I heard it was at Lakefront Airport in New Orleans in 2011. It had previously been at the Lone Star Air Museum in Texas. Supposedly it was in New Orleans for Katrina and took a heavy beating. Rumor has it that the it was going to be sold the the guy who has 500HP, 500LN and 137U as a parts plane. The most recent pic I've seen of it was in bare metal and pretty much stripped out. I was figuring on doing it next, but if you want to give it a go, I'll probably be a bit on 130P as I'm using it getting the .pdn files where I want them.

On the 2013 model revision, does anyone know where the rear tip of the fuselage is in the textures? I was checking out my latest changes and discovered that I could easily check the rear tire air pressure. The area circled in red in the pic.

[TuFun]

I'll leave all the repaint projects to you. Not able to do any projects until a new computer is built, maybe early next year. No hurry since most of the wip projects I've seen here at SOH takes years to be completed.

[Milton Shupe]

That's serial number 110, N5831Y and the last I heard it was at Lakefront Airport in New Orleans in 2011. It had previously been at the Lone Star Air Museum in Texas. Supposedly it was in New Orleans for Katrina and took a heavy beating. Rumor has it that the it was going to be sold the the guy who has 500HP, 500LN and 137U as a parts plane. The most recent pic I've seen of it was in bare metal and pretty much stripped out. I was figuring on doing it next, but if you want to give it a go, I'll probably be a bit on 130P as I'm using it getting the .pdn files where I want them.

On the 2013 model revision, does anyone know where the rear tip of the fuselage is in the textures? I was checking out my latest changes and discovered that I could easily check the rear tire air pressure. The area circled in red in the pic.

Yep, it's a see thru hole. :-)

Bottom center of the htail_t.bmp is where I mapped it but uncertain if that got changed, because I do not know which model you are using. I assume M.A. Richards.

[Milton Shupe]

I'll leave all the repaint projects to you. Not able to do any projects until a new computer is built, maybe early next year. No hurry since most of the wip projects I've seen here at SOH takes years to be completed.


LOL For sure; it's not getting any easier, and folks seem to have less patience and tolerance.

[Willy]

Thanks Milton!

I decided to quit beating my head against the wall with the Richardson model and am now using two different models in separate folders (for now). A flyable one and another for AI purposes.

On the flyable ones, I'm using the 2013 revision with the htail textures now as at least I can get the engine cowling bezels properly painted with it. So, is there a tail light lens texture that apparently I haven't found yet? But I'm not that stuck on this model if something else comes along that works better for me. I've kind of figured out how to work with the ruddertail textures and while they are kind of limiting in what you can put on the inside surfaces, at least anything I paint there does show up unlike the bezel_t textures on the Richardson model. Besides, who looks that close at the tail anyway? lol

The AI paints that I'm doing are for the original no vc model. I figured that it would be easiest on frame rates and as they're usually viewed from a little distance anyway, the detail isn't so critical, so I can go with smaller texture sizes which also have a lesser impact on frame rates.

I found out that one of the real Howard 500 paint schemes (N500LN's new blue one) is copyrighted by the company that designed it. I've contacted them for permission to repaint the FS Howard 500 in it. We'll see how it turns out, but if the answer is no, then I won't do it. First time I've heard run into that, but when you think about it, it does make sense. They make their living from designing custom paint schemes for aircraft. Much like a payware developer for FS Aircraft makes their money from that. I won't knowingly break anyone's copyright. I didn't like it when mine was pirated either.

[TuFun]

Wanted to try that scheme on Tony's Albatross years ago, but same situation. Never did contact them for permission. Also at that time wasn't proficient enough with painting anyways. Would be a tough one to do.

https://www.schemedesigners.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Albatross-N98TP-1.jpg

[Milton Shupe]

Thanks Milton!

So, is there a tail light lens texture that apparently I haven't found yet? But I'm not that stuck on this model if something else comes along that works better for me. I've kind of figured out how to work with the ruddertail textures and while they are kind of limiting in what you can put on the inside surfaces, at least anything I paint there does show up unlike the bezel_t textures on the Richardson model. Besides, who looks that close at the tail anyway? lol


The tail light lens texture is glass_t.bmp.

I mentioned above that his model remapped those bezels to chrome_t instead of using the bezel_t (I think).

[Willy]

Wanted to try that scheme on Tony's Albatross years ago, but same situation. Never did contact them for permission. Also at that time wasn't proficient enough with painting anyways. Would be a tough one to do.

https://www.schemedesigners.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Albatross-N98TP-1.jpg

Oh yeah, but I figure the hard stuff in life is what we learn from. I like a good challenge just so long as I think I have a chance at overcoming it. Keeps things interesting.

[Willy]

The tail light lens texture is glass_t.bmp.

I mentioned above that his model remapped those bezels to chrome_t instead of using the bezel_t (I think).


Thanks again. I was just wondering if I'd missed a texture somewheres. And that's I'm thinking too on his bezels. It makes better sense than anything I'd come up with on it. I like chrome well enough, but sometime you need to just slap some paint there.

[Willy]

I was chasing Howard 500 pics with google tonight and came across a more recent pic of N130P than I'd seen before. Apparently someone decided to build a fire in the cabin. There might still be some good parts there still, but it'll never fly again. Except in FS.

[TuFun]

Oh yeah, but I figure the hard stuff in life is what we learn from. I like a good challenge just so long as I think I have a chance at overcoming it. Keeps things interesting.

At that time didn't have the experience, but if done today easy peasy since using PS6. Mostly now is getting enough photos of every angle of an aircraft. Especially the top/bottom of wings with those fancy patterns. Howard 500 N277X in the above post would be a very cool one to do!

The Howard 350's had some cool paint jobs also that would work on the 500.

https://abpic.co.uk/pictures/view/1395429

[TuFun]

This is interesting a Howard Super Harpoon. Does have the two piece windscreens and glass on top of the cockpit with drop tanks. Harpoon tail fins also. How rare is that one? In the background their is a Howard 250/350, not sure which. The Howard 500 has three piece windscreens.


https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/10869637_10203814681715722_4821844259295159444_o.j pg?_nc_cat=103&_nc_ht=scontent-sea1-1.xx&oh=7947a82eedd56039b2fe04bbb6df3d6f&oe=5C86968B

There's a little history about this plane in the comments at facebook link below.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10203814681715722&set=p.10203814681715722&type=3&theater
(https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10203814681715722&set=p.10203814681715722&type=3&theater)
https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/10530685_970119433016613_1587101294016876244_n.jpg ?_nc_cat=103&_nc_ht=scontent-sea1-1.xx&oh=2b71a478e77c99c80fe94d36341afae2&oe=5C816C92
https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/10530685_970119433016613_1587101294016876244_n.jpg ?_nc_cat=103&_nc_ht=scontent-sea1-1.xx&oh=2b71a478e77c99c80fe94d36341afae2&oe=5C816C92

After
https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5796/20299475054_75d9878d42_b.jpg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/qfa744/20299475054

[TuFun]

Pic of N277X with C-GTIP markings...

http://www.goodall.com.au/photographs/80slockheed-twins/PV-1-Howard-500-C-GTIP-Opa-Locka-21.10.81-KKK.jpg

More here 1980's, 250/350 and 500...

http://www.goodall.com.au/photographs/80slockheed-twins/us80slockheedtwins.html

[Willy]

Sorry, I haven't posted here in several days. I've had some r/l issues pop up that leave me little comp time and then only a few minutes at a time. I haven't been able to get any FS work in at all as I really hate to pick something up to have to drop it in 5 minutes or so.

Thanks for the new pics TuFun!

[TuFun]

No biggie... r/l issues come first. This about the best image of this one paint wise. Looks well maintained!

https://www.airteamimages.com/pics/119/119706_800.jpg