Help
Since the question, "How do I make a paint scheme of my favorite airline.", seems to pop up on a regular basis, I thought a simple tutorial may be beneficial.
First, let me say that this is by no means an exhaustive 'how-to' manual by any stretch of the imagination; rather, it's a simple "guide," bringing the basic principles and techniques to light, with the ultimate goal of helping people to make liveries of different airlines, ultimately to share with the X-Plane community.
OK, let's go.
Since I use Photoshop CS3, I'll be using screenshots from that, but you should be able to follow along in whatever ample photo editing app you have. In case you don't own Ps, and don't want to fork out $$ to buy it, consider one of the following freeware/shareware programs:
MAC:
Pixelmator
Gimp
Adobe Photoshop Elements
PC:
Gimp
PaintShop Pro
Adobe Photoshop Elements
Now, if you are completely unfamiliar with photo editing techniques, I won't be describing them here - you should be able to find generic tutorials applicable to you editing program of choice through a web search. Anyway, I'll try and keep it as simple as possible.
First off, you need choose the kind of plane you want to paint. Let's say I want to paint an MD-80. My favorite is XPFW's, so I'll go ahead and download that. Next, I need to decide exactly what airline livery I wish to make, and since I kind of like the JAL (Japan Airlines) scheme, I'll go to Airliners.net and grab a nice clear side view photo from there. Note: since I'm not going to use this photo from Airliners.net as a texture on the model, I don't need to ask permission. However, if I were to copy/paste any part of the photo and use it on the paint scheme, I WOULD NEED TO ASK PERMISSION!
Next question is: "What do I use to texture file do I use to paint the plane?" OK, fair question. Fortunately XPFW have (they will have soon!!!
) uploaded a 'paint kit' specifically for painting the MD-80. This will contain a fully editable .psd file which I can open in Photoshop (many other P/editing programs will recognize this format), and this file will contain plain unpainted MD fuse/tail ready for painting (otherwise you would have to painfully 'erase' the livery markings from the old paint, and then paint your custom livery on - more on this later). This .psd file will also come arranged/grouped in a friendly manner to enable you to simply 'paint' your livery on top of the base textures.
Now it's time to open that side view from airliner's.net inside Photoshop. Then open the editable .psd base paint file you got to paint the MD from XPFW. The copy/paste the airliners.net photo on top of the .psd paint file. Resize the photo to fit the white MD fuse. Now you need to reduce the opacity on the overlay photo in order to see through to fuse you're wanting to paint onto. Do you see where we're heading? We want to get the actual outline shapes of the different paint markings from the photo and use these as the outline for the fuse. Basically it's like tracing. We're only using the photo to get the correct position of the markings. If you're good enough, you can just look at the photo and guess the location of the shapes, but it's more accurate to superimpose the photo on top.
The rest is easy. Provided you've picked and easy (simple shapes) airline scheme, you will now 'draw' the markings. (BTW, I'm assuming you are familiar with 'layers' and 'groups' and the ways of organizing your textures and basic stuff like that.) Make sure you're on the correct layer (indicated as "your paint goes here" or something), then use the selection tools to trace the shape of the markings on the plane (methods will differ here - use what ever you're comfortable with - I just chose what I thought would be easiest for beginners). This one's pretty easy. It has a simple 'metal' underbelly extending from the back nearly to the front. It might be easy to draw a simply square and them trip to shape. Of course, you'll have to get the color and gradient right to get the metal effect - but that's comes with practice.
Next you'll have to accurately match a type font from your font library with that which is used on the real airline. Type the text "JAL" in and correctly place it.
Then you'll need to make the curved logo. I'll leave that up to you how you do it. You could you the 'trace' method again, or vector draw it in Illustrator - your call. Obviously you'll also have to put the logo on the tail too. Just find the correct texture file, and place the logo correctly.
OK, that's the right side. Now for the left side. All you have to do is copy your work, and horizontally flip the text - that way it will appear correctly on the left side.
Then you'll need to put the logo onto the tail as well.
Now you'll have to save your work! All there is to this is to take note as to the original paint format used in the model (in this case .png), and save it with EXACTLY the same name and file name extension. Now, make a copy of the whole aircraft folder, but give the folder a different name denoting the airline such as "XPFW MD-80 JAL." The move both the tail and fuse .png texture files into the applicable location of the JAL MD-80 folder OVERWRITING/REPLACING the original .png's.
That's the basics of making custom liveries for X-Plane airplanes! Some will be harder though, as the plane texture won't be conveniently arranged in PSD format just ready for you to paint your textures on. Instead, you'll have to erase all of the original livery that the plane came with, and then put your custom paint on. It's by far the harder way, but we always used to do it this way. Sometimes, you will be able to contact the author and ask for a editable PSD repaint file, which will make things a lot easier.
The other thing you may want to do is create a custom night texture. In other words, a texture that is visible only at night with lighted parts on the fuse etc. where the aircraft lights are shining. That's easy. Just go back into Ps, open the base paint file you've just done, make a new black layer over the top of everything, reduce the opacity to around 85-90 percent, and 'cut/erase' holes in the black layer in the places where the light should shine. Once you're happy with the results, save the file in the SAME location as the base paint texture, and with the SAME name, except with the suffix "_LIT" and then the file format of the original paint. So for a png file it would be "_LIT.png" prefixed by the name of the original base paint texture.
Example:
Day texture: MD-80.png
Night texture: MD-80_LIT.png
So, you're an expert right? Well, you're sure well on the way to becoming a great painter. I hope this gets you started but if I haven't been clear (quite likely) just post below for clarification.
Cheers,
Reuben
Actually, there is currently no official paintkit. If you require it, PM me, and I can help. Officially though, it's not out, but expect it around Beta 2 of the MD-80.
I just got a photo with a metal texture with the same contour, and looked very carefully at the colors and gradient nature. Then use the "Gradient" tool in Photoshop to imitate it. There's a certain amount of trial and error to it as well...if one color looks a bit 'off' just adjust it. But the trick is the gradient pattern that you can mimic by looking at a photo.
