Attention Virtavia C-17A Globemaster III Owners! (FSX or P3D)

[Tako_Kichi]

I recently purchased this bird and I am enjoying it immensely, but, the choice of paint schemes reminds me of this scene from the 'Spice World' movie:

Rather than Posh Spice's dilemma we have the choice of: Do we fly the low-viz grey, the low-viz grey OR the low-viz grey!



The only differences are the national name identifiers and respective roundels or stars! I went poking around and found the paint kit for the FSX version lurking on the old Alphasim freeware site and grabbed it to see if the files are the same as the P3D version. They are indeed the same file names so any repaint would be good for FSX or P3D (up to v4.5 at least, but non-PBR). There was a downside however, when I checked the paint kit more thoroughly I discovered that only two of the seven PSD files had the guide layers (without the guide layers complex repaints are much harder to do).

I figured nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I shot off an email to Virtavia tech support to see if it was possible to get the missing guide layers. Less than 24 hours later I got an email back with the full set of guides in a zip file and this was on a weekend too! I can't thank Phil at Virtavia enough as this was customer service above and beyond in my book!

As I was now armed with a functional paint kit I needed some inspiration for paint schemes and started thinking about all the great schemes from the 50s through to the 80s before everyone went low-viz (yawn). Part of the inspiration came from the fact that the 'Globemaster' is a name that has a huge history as does the various 'Transport Command' units on both sides of the 'pond'.

This was among the first ones to catch my eye and started the creative juices flowing:



After less than 2 days of work this is what I have now:





I plan on making the following 'what if' repaints now I have a feel for the paint kit:

RAF Transport Command in the scheme worn on the Short Brother's Belfast (https://static1.simpleflyingimages...._SC-5_Belfast_C1_UK_-_Air_Force_AN2256546.jpg)
RCAF Transport Command from the period (lots of aircraft to copy) (https://media.abpic.co.uk/pictures/full_size_0379/1568625-large.jpg)

If I can get the paint kit to play nicely I might attempt some camo schemes like:

The RAF Beverley Suez Crisis desert camo (https://media.abpic.co.uk/pictures/full_size_0538/1818874-large.jpg)
The RAF 80's green/grey camo (https://www.surclaro.com/modules/Me...hots/FS2004/C-130K_Hercules_RAF_80-s_Camo.JPG)
The USAF SEA 'Nam camo (https://www.flugzeuginfo.net/images/museums/amcm/fairchild_c-123k_usaf_4-0658_amcm14_03.jpg)

If anyone is interested in any of these 'what if' repaints (I know they are not for everyone) I will happily upload them to the library.

 

[Victory103]

Looks great, hope the IRL C-17s get a retro treatment. The C-130s and recently a B-52 got some "throw back" schemes. Most I've seen on the C-17 has been the invasion stripes (PA ANG).

 

[Tako_Kichi]

The second repaint is now complete with this as the inspiration:



I think the A400M looks rather sharp in this scheme!

Here is what the C-17A Globemaster III looks like in the sim:





The paint kit is proving to be quite difficult to use in places as at least one sheet was mapped at a slightly different scale to the rest (it's out by about 0.5 to 1 percent) so it made the blue registration line a bear to match up as it wrapped around five texture sheets! I also discovered that multiple parts were dumped on the same area as the underwing fairing section which meant that when I tried to paint that section white other parts on the aircraft turned white too. Not an ideal situation (I hate multiple parts dumped in the same area and never do it when I map a model) and it could potentially make any camo repaints impossible!

Oh well, we have to work with what we've got!

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Today's update was inspired by multiple different aircraft with slightly different schemes based on the same basic design. Here is my rendition of the RCAF Air Transport Command scheme popular from the late 1940s through to the boring low-viz grey in the late 90s or 2000s. The long text lines caused me some issues on this one as trying to wrap the text across multiple texture sheets with different scaling caused all sorts of warping and distortion problems. In the end I had to try to confine the text to a single sheet each time so this is the best I could do.





I am going to try a camo scheme next but I really don't know if I can pull it off with the way many small parts are mapped to common areas on the sheets. It may take a lot of experimenting with bright colours to see if I can even do it.

Wish me luck!

 

[rohan]

Best of luck, Larry - looking forward to the results . . .

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Unfortunately after a quick and dirty test I don't think any camo paints are going to be possible. I am not sure how many images I can put into a single post with this new forum software so I might have to split this reply into two posts! This is the dilemma texture artists face on an all too regular basis.

Here is an overview of the texture sheet that covers the mid fuselage of the aircraft. The guide layer is active showing where the parts are laid out on the sheet and I have brightly painted the problem areas.



You can clearly see the smaller coloured parts and where they sit on the sheet in relation to the larger parts. IMHO every part should have it's own space on the texture sheet and not be dumped onto other parts because that's the most convenient thing to do! In this case every coloured part could easily be fitted into the open spaces on the sheet without any overlapping taking place. Let's take a closer look at what we have.



This is possibly the worst offender. The orange strip covers SIX other parts and if the modeller had only turned the mapping through 90 degrees it would easily have fitted at the top of the sheet with no issues!

Let's continue.....



Here we have multiple small parts dropped onto other small parts. This is not bad IF all the parts have the same colour but useless if you want to paint each part a different colour!



Above we have a collection of small parts dumped across at least two larger parts that make up the gear bay nacelles/doors.



Finally here are multiple parts dumped together again. It's perfectly fine to put identical parts over one another to save space and so that they pick up the same texture colour but you can clearly see that these are different shaped parts all lumped together!

I will show you what this looks like on the model in the next post.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Here is what the model looks like in MCX.



That orange stripe can be seen appearing in multiple places on the right side of the mid-fuselage area. Yes you could paint over it but whatever you paint over it is going to appear on the straight part, wherever that may be!



Here are all those small parts that were dumped on the under-wing fairing parts. Painting the fairing would affect the colour of these parts too!



It turns out all those parts are in fact part of the undercarriage doors so painting a camo pattern on the wing fairing would add a funky camo pattern to all the gear door edges too!



Finally, where did that big orange strip go to? You can clearly see it in this shot and it looks like it is actually the end face of the inner fuselage floor!

All of the above means any camo paint on the outside fuselage is going to show up on other parts too. Admittedly in this case you would only see the error when things were opened (ramp, gear doors etc.) but this is only one sheet, there are other sheets with the same problem of parts on parts that can't be avoided unfortunately.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Just for confirmation I decided to look at the other problematic sheets.


The overlaid parts on this sheet show up on the inner parts of the ramp so not an issue as long as the ramp is closed but a big issue when it is open.




The overlaid parts on these sheets are a bigger problem as they cover the flap fairings and parts of the landing gear fairings.




Any attempt to paint a camo scheme over these parts is doomed to failure unfortunately!

 

[Jungleace]

those are some beautiful repaints for the C17. Is it possible to download those? Thanks

 

[Tako_Kichi]

I will have to package the paints up and upload them to our library as there didn't seem like much interest originally. Give me a day or so to do that and I will post here when they are available.

EDIT: I had time to pack everything up this evening so the three-paint pack can be found here:

Virtavia C-17A Repaint Pack

This is a pack of three 'what if' repaints for the Virtavia C-17A for P3D v4.5+. It includes the following schemes: USAF MATS RAF Transport Command RCAF Transport Command

sim-outhouse.org

Enjoy!

 

[gray eagle]

Larry,
If it is not too late, I would appreciate it if you please include the Memphis ANG C-17 livery in the collection? I live in the area and have the FSDreamteam KMEM scenery which features the Memphis Air guard area.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

It's already been uploaded Butch, sorry. That scheme you want is just a basic change to the stock boring grey so it should be easy enough to do but I am up to my ears in three other (simultaneous) projects at the moment so I won't be able to get to it for a little while.

 

[gray eagle]

It's already been uploaded Butch, sorry. That scheme you want is just a basic change to the stock boring grey so it should be easy enough to do but I am up to my ears in three other (simultaneous) projects at the moment so I won't be able to get to it for a little while.

Okay, I will wait. I had just discovered you were into the C-17 projects. Will these be PBR enhanaced? Thanks.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

No PBR as I don't have permission to modify the payware model to turn on PBR materials/textures.