Currently, I have not modified the UV mapping or if you prefer the paintkit so currently it's yet possible.
Nevertheless, in the future, I may change some maps, especially the fuselage, because the upper and lower parts, when projected onto a 2D plane, are too distorted; ideally, the fuselage should be divided into four parts: upper, lower, and both sides, thus, each area of the fuselage will have the same precision.
Why hasn’t this been done yet: because I always process the textures at the end of the process, since a 3D model can still evolve, change during development, and so if that’s the case, the textures will have to be redone, so it’s as much as processing them at the end
For personnal purpose I have rename textures files according to my following principles (to respect my usual workflow):
- spec files are not longer used but they can help to create metallic/roughtness textures for the comp textures creation
- glow files are not longer used
For the cockpit, ns_*_l.* (l for light) are rename in dc4_*_emis.*. In fact, almost all the needles of the gauges were in duplicate: one had the diffuse texture and another used the ns_*_l texture. * and the latter was displayed only at night or when cockpit lighting was requested.
Under MSFS, we handle things differently, since each material can have 4 subtextures: albd, comp, nrm, emis. Emissivity can be managed by the value of a potentiometer or by appropriate XML code lines.
The main files used for exterior repaints are :
- ns_fuselage.* (i.e. the diffuse file) in dc4_fuselage_albd.*
- ns_fuselage_bump.* in dc4_fuselage_nrm.*
- ns_wing_l.* (i.e. the diffuse file) in dc4_wingl_albd.*
- ns_wing_l_bump.* in dc4_wingl_nrm.*
- ns_wing_r.* (i.e. the diffuse file) in dc4_wingr_albd.*
- ns_wing_r_bump.* in dc4_wingr_nrm.*
In the basic repaints provided in the addon, a texture.cfg file is yet created to make reference to the others textures needed. You only need to copy/paste in your files.
For your repaint, you can make a Projects file structure inspired by the SDK examples, populate your png files and compile with fspackagetools to have the necessary json files and dds.
The Paintkit files provided byt Flight Replicas homesite are always valuable and you can download them for new repaints.
Currently, the only repaint which is correct according to my point of view, it is that of Air France.
The others were quickly transferred from P3D to MSFS and the COMP files will need to be improved as well as the NRM files (this is a beta version).
For the next version, I will try to improve the NL repaint that is close to my heart for Javis who had sent me a lot of photos and images of the DC-4, which is near his home in Holland.
