Carenado Airplanes in FSX - How to repaint them ?

[MarioR]

HI Guys,

I'm trying to repaint the Carenado Skymaster but I can't find the .dds texture file. All I see under the Skymaster directiry are .bmp files. Can anyone help ?

Thank you.

[cnault2]

I'm in the same situation as you are. I suggest you do what I've done - go to You Tube and enter "Carenado" "FSX "Repaint". You don't need to enter the parentheses. At least two tutorials will be displayed that I've used successfully.


In fact, those tutorials suggested I review what's in "SimmersPaint shop.com" which is why I'm here now.

There is also information on the Carenado Knowledge Base Website and in the "Unofficial Carenado Support" webpage on AVSIM online.

Suggestion - I open a new document in Word or whichever word processor you use. Save it as "Repaint Info" or whatever you want to name it. Copy and paste the URL website addresses to the document as you cruise through these different websites. Or, you can bookmark each one. The idea is to keep track by title what you have found in an order that organizes and makes sense of the myriad of information you'll see. Otherwise, you'll become confused pretty quickly about what to use and what not to.

Good luck,

Mark Nault

[cnault2]

I forgot to mention - AVSIM Online also has a huge Paint Forum dedicated to that task. This forum is in addition to the painting information is in addition to the "Unofficial Carenado Forum" I mentioned earlier that is on AVSIM.

Cheers,

Mark Nault

[MarioR]

HI Cnault2,

Thanks for your reply my friend. I have been looking for days and today I have found my answers. Thanks to you. I have found a utube video in 3 parts on how to change a registration number on a Carenado repaint and I got what I was looking for. All I was missing was to know how to convert the .bmp to be able to paint them and then how to convert them back for fsx to see them.

Thanks again !!

[cnault2]

Can you forward the URL or addresses to me for the aircraft registration you found?

Thanks,

Mark

[MarioR]

HI Cnault2,

This is very easy to do. Open your airplane ''aircraft.cfg'' with notepad in the aircfraft folder of your choice and look for ''atc_id='' and change that nmber after the = sign and save the file.

example: atc_id=N9609T change it to atc_id=C-GFWK and save

Hope this helps !!

Mario

[cnault2]

But changing the ATC_id won't change the texture appearance, correct? The texture itself has to be changed in order to see those registration numbers displayed on the side of the aircraft. Am I right? I can't believe it's as easy as changing the atc_id. I'd be happy to be wrong on this one!

Mark

[MarioR]

HI Mark, you are right. This method only work on the serial numbers you find on the default Boeing 737-800 in FSX. However you have to do it also for the Carenado ACs if you want ATC to call your right call sign and as for the carenado ACs Registration number texture, you just have to create a layer in Photoshop and create your own. Its real easy.

I hope this helps!

Mario

[KevinJarvis]

If you don't mind spending a couple of your hard earned dollars, or whatever currency you use :-), invest in FSRepaint from Abacus.

[jankees]

I wouldn't buy FSrepaint, you're far better off with the GIMP (freeware), though if you only want to do simple paints, FSRepaint might work for you. Myself, I use Photoshop, but that can be a bit expensive.
As for repainting the Skymaster, you'll have to use the textures from the all white scheme Carenado provided. You open those in gimp, apply your paints, ad then make a copy of the white texture, put it above your textures and multiply it. This will make the white transparant, but the panellines etc will remian visible above your paint, save as bmp, and convert them to something FSX recognizes using DXTbmp (another freeware program). You can make them either extended bmp's (so with alpha channel), or dds files, but for that, you need to flip the textures vertically before saving as dds.
Hope this helps,

btw, I made a few textures for the skymaster too:








you can find all of my repaints here

JanKees