Opinions? Suggestions?

[Willy]

I've always liked the Fw 200A Condor propliners. Hauke Keitel did an excellent job with his version, even if it's getting a bit dated. I was getting it ready for our nightly online flights and decided to see if anyone ever did any improvements or updates to it and found a pack of paints that Manuel Villa did for the FSX conversion of it. Now, I've had fairly good luck with paints like these once I get them converted from .dds and a few other tricks. (I'm not that great a painter and if I can find something good that someone else has done, I'm all for it) Anyway I've got one of the paints converted to FS9 as a test subject to make sure they'll work. I like the new look. But I'm kind of iffy on the bare metal. Don't get me wrong. Manuel did an outstanding job with these but converting from dds to DXT3, sometimes things get a little funky.

Here's the original Hauke Keitel:

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/attachment.php?attachmentid=19685&stc=1

And here's the Manuel Villa FSX reworked for FS9 with alpha layers that I did for it:
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/attachment.php?attachmentid=19686&stc=1

I basically love the metal, but I'm concerned that it might be a bit too bright. Opinions? Suggestions?

Oops, just realized that I used the wrong cowlings on the engines.. that'll be an easy fix though.

[MattJeo11]

Good work. Would appreciate it if you tried retouching Hauke Keitel's Ju 90s as well.

[tgibson]

In my experience, you need to lower the metal shine (i.e. make the alpha channel lighter) for FSX to FS9 conversions.

Hope this helps,

[Willy]

Thanks Tom. The other one I've done didn't have hardly any bare metal so it wasn't an issue.

[Blackbird686]

Hey Willy --

Like Tom suggested, reduce the shine in the model AND be sure when saving anything to DXT3, save without mip maps. That will really crisp up the textures on the model and help to get rid of the fuzzies in the spot view... A note on saving DXT3 without mips, sometimes a dark alpha channel on the textures can cause the model to look transparent in the spot view.... only sometimes. I usually invert the alpha and then save to DXT3 without mips when that happens. Good luck, mate.

BB686:US-flag:

[tgibson]

If you find unexpected transparency (usually at dawn/dusk/night), the texture needs a small black night texture included. This usually fixes it.