Epic LT Fascia Panels

[Tako_Kichi]

While working on the 'hot-rod' repaint in another thread I also created a bunch of new fascia panels for the cockpit based on different themes.

They may not appeal to everybody but I had fun making them and if anyone fancies a particular panel I can send them to you if you PM me with an email addy. Failing that I can always lump them all together and upload them here of course.....lol.

Anyway, here's the first batch of leather fascia panels...the rest will follow.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Here are the metal fascia panels.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

The marble themed panels.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Finally the wood effect panels.

 

[Techy111]

Cool.....Any chance of a Leopard skin version mate.....?

:d

Tony

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Cool.....Any chance of a Leopard skin version mate.....?

:d

Tony

LOL....Trust you!

Sure I can do that...provided that I can keep my supper down long enough!

 

[Lionheart]

Nice work Larry.

:ernae:

Alot of selections there to choose from! I especially liked a couple of those wood panels.


Bill

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Nice work Larry.

:ernae:

Alot of selections there to choose from! I especially liked a couple of those wood panels.

Glad you like them Bill. BTW I need to bend your ear about how you did the night light textures for the panels (the ones with the _L extension) as I noticed you did special ones for your wood texture you put out. I haven't figured out how to do that part yet and I don't have the layered PSD file for them either so will have to work from scratch. They look OK at night now but I am sure they would look better with the correct light map instead of the default one.

 

[Lionheart]

Glad you like them Bill. BTW I need to bend your ear about how you did the night light textures for the panels (the ones with the _L extension) as I noticed you did special ones for your wood texture you put out. I haven't figured out how to do that part yet and I don't have the layered PSD file for them either so will have to work from scratch. They look OK at night now but I am sure they would look better with the correct light map instead of the default one.

Ahhh.. Easy!

* Rename a 'copy' of your actual Panel texture, naming it the lightmap version so that its now a lightmap.

* Open it in Photoshop. Add a layer on top of pure black and set opacity to about 70 percent transparent.

* Add a new layer on top. This will be called 'Glow' layer. Add White with the airbrush on this layer to the zones that light will shine upon the surfaces. You can use solid shapes, then desolve them with Gausian Blurr at maximum settings to achieve nicely done fuzziness. Tune the transparency (opaque setting) until its realistic.

* Readjust the black layer to nearly non transparent so that it appears as it would at night with color barely being able to be seen. You 'can' use Eraser tool set to Airbrush mode, and lightly erase sections of the black layer to allow for more color to flow through in 'night' mode, such as with wood panels.

Sounds like a lot to do, but it isnt and goes by quickly. If you dont like how it looks and you saved your work in PSD also, you can just go back in and redo layers or adjust them, etc, until you like how they look.

Doing night textures is very delicate to do, and you usually have to redo them a few times, but I think they are pretty wild when done right and finished.


Bill

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Ahhh so that's how it's done! Thanks Bill.

I do have all the fascia panels as separate layers in a PSD file (grouped by theme in folders) so I can just add the two new layers to the top of the layer stack and use the same 'effect' for each fascia in turn by simply turning the respective lower layer on or off.

This will be the icing on the cake to get these panels finished and the 'hot rod' paint too.

Of course it doesn't just stop at the fascia if you want it to look it's best as the 'theme' has to be carried through to all the other 'hard' surfaces in the interior.

Maybe I should release them as 'Theme Packs' with a leather theme, wood theme,...etc...etc.....etc. It could keep me busy for WEEKS! :costumes:

Thanks for the tip! :ernae:

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Well I just had a play and I must say it's easier than I thought it was going to be!

I tried your suggestions Bill and then played with some ideas of my own. I finally decided to use a vertical motion blur instead of a gausian blur for the white light and cut out the black 'mask' wherever there was a MFD, gauge or annunciator of some sort so that the light from those would 'shine through' better.

I am actually quite pleased with my first attempt at making light maps and will certainly play with them again. Now I just have to re-save all those panel files again....lol.

 

[Marlin]

Wow Larry :ernae::ernae:

 

[Lionheart]

Hey!!

:ernae: :ernae:


Soon we'll have you making the airplane models themselves!

:d


Bill

 

[Tako_Kichi]

LOL....I have already made several low poly static aircraft models Bill for a scenery I was working on but they are sitting awaiting a buddy to do the paint jobs for them. He was going to paint them while I banged out more models but he had a HD crash and lost all the UVW maps and we never got the project back on the road again. I have already rebuilt the airfield they were going into so that all runways, taxiways, roads, etc, are in the correct places and even extended the 'realism' out to the golf course on the end of the runway and reshaped the estuary in the adjacent town so that it looks correct instead of the mess MS/Aces made of it.

If I remember correctly I made statics of a Buccaneer, Shackleton Mk.II EAW, Jaguar, a Land Rover ambulance, HAS and a WWII C-Type hangar.

I have my fingers in so many pies I swear 95% of my FSX time is spent modding instead of flying! :isadizzy::costumes:

 

[Lionheart]

LOL....I have already made several low poly static aircraft models Bill for a scenery I was working on but they are sitting awaiting a buddy to do the paint jobs for them. He was going to paint them while I banged out more models but he had a HD crash and lost all the UVW maps and we never got the project back on the road again. I have already rebuilt the airfield they were going into so that all runways, taxiways, roads, etc, are in the correct places and even extended the 'realism' out to the golf course on the end of the runway and reshaped the estuary in the adjacent town so that it looks correct instead of the mess MS/Aces made of it.

If I remember correctly I made statics of a Buccaneer, Shackleton Mk.II EAW, Jaguar, a Land Rover ambulance, HAS and a WWII C-Type hangar.

I have my fingers in so many pies I swear 95% of my FSX time is spent modding instead of flying! :isadizzy::costumes:

Dang, where was I? I didnt hear about this... arrghh.. :redf:

Do you have any screenshots?

<--- Land Rover freak! :d

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Dang, where was I? I didnt hear about this... arrghh.. :redf:

Do you have any screenshots?

<--- Land Rover freak! :d

LOL....I KNOW you are a Land Rover freak Bill (come to that so am I). :costumes:

I just had a quick look on my HD and I only have two JPGs of the Landy handy so you will just have to make do with these for now....lol.

I simply dropped it in front of the HAS I made using FS Instant Scenery just to check scale and how it looked. It's wearing it's 3-view PJ's at the moment as it still needs a proper coat of paint.

I will have to fire up 'Blender' again to grab screenies of the planes or place them in situ and do it that way.

Enjoy! :ernae:

P.S. I just fired up 'Blender' to check the Landy and it's roughly 1900 verts and roughly 2100 polys and most of those are in the wheels and I could probably reduce that count with some judicious face culling in the centre of the wheels.

 

[Lionheart]

LOL....I KNOW you are a Land Rover freak Bill (come to that so am I). :costumes:

I just had a quick look on my HD and I only have two JPGs of the Landy handy so you will just have to make do with these for now....lol.

I simply dropped it in front of the HAS I made using FS Instant Scenery just to check scale and how it looked. It's wearing it's 3-view PJ's at the moment as it still needs a proper coat of paint.

I will have to fire up 'Blender' again to grab screenies of the planes or place them in situ and do it that way.

Enjoy! :ernae:

P.S. I just fired up 'Blender' to check the Landy and it's roughly 1900 verts and roughly 2100 polys and most of those are in the wheels and I could probably reduce that count with some judicious face culling in the centre of the wheels.

Looks great Larry! That hanger as well.

Landy's have a very difficult front end to model. Those forward wings and bonnet and grille area can be difficult to manage. Looks like an easy shape to model until you have done one. (I have one I use in the Kodiak scenery, difficult little booooger).

I hope your project gets done someday soon. Will ge great to see it.


Bill

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Looks great Larry! That hanger as well.

Thanks Bill.

Landy's have a very difficult front end to model. Those forward wings and bonnet and grille area can be difficult to manage. Looks like an easy shape to model until you have done one. (I have one I use in the Kodiak scenery, difficult little booooger).

Oh Yes! The big problem is the point where three different radii come together in three different planes. You have to use a quarter sphere to connect them all and then tweak it to fit the different radii sizes. :isadizzy:

I hope your project gets done someday soon. Will ge great to see it.

I hope we can finish it at some point but it was always going to be a long term project and was started as a bit of fun as my buddy, Tony (Techy111), was stationed at this particular airfield in the 80's and wanted to recreate it in FSX. All the models were made in Blender which can now export directly to FSX but unfortunately it cannot handle FSX animations yet so it's only good for static models. I don't think it can handle multiple textures either so night lighting is out. I have been playing a little bit with Gmax (and it's big brother) but I am finding the transition difficult and things I could do in Blender with a couple of keystrokes take forever in the other apps as I have to keep stopping to hunt for tutorials on how to do different things. Even something as simple as adding extra vertices to a face stumped me the last time I was playing in Max. The nice thing is Blender can export files in a form that Max can read so if I ever get proficient in that I can simply move the models over instead of having to start again from scratch.

 

[Lionheart]

Thanks Bill.

I hope we can finish it at some point but it was always going to be a long term project and was started as a bit of fun as my buddy, Tony (Techy111), was stationed at this particular airfield in the 80's and wanted to recreate it in FSX. All the models were made in Blender which can now export directly to FSX but unfortunately it cannot handle FSX animations yet so it's only good for static models. I don't think it can handle multiple textures either so night lighting is out. I have been playing a little bit with Gmax (and it's big brother) but I am finding the transition difficult and things I could do in Blender with a couple of keystrokes take forever in the other apps as I have to keep stopping to hunt for tutorials on how to do different things. Even something as simple as adding extra vertices to a face stumped me the last time I was playing in Max. The nice thing is Blender can export files in a form that Max can read so if I ever get proficient in that I can simply move the models over instead of having to start again from scratch.

Yep,

I know what its like to make a transition from one 3D program to another. I started out in FSDS, which is massively simple. But, in going to Gmax, I found that FSDS was sort of its 'own world' program that had its own layout and directions of which to make models in. The other groups, like Max, Gmax, Lightwave, and several others have 'similar' layouts and directions/tool names/etc. So the downside was learning an entirely new layout and system. The good side was that Gmax is similar to the other big programs out there, so making a switch to the latest Max, or to Lightwave, Maya (20,000 USD????) or other such exotic programs would be far easier to do.

Oh Yes! The big problem is the point where three different radii come together in three different planes. You have to use a quarter sphere to connect them all and then tweak it to fit the different radii sizes. :isadizzy:

Larry

That is a trick I learned from Gerard, making nice, sculpted, rounded wingtip mesh on a flat ended wing. Works brilliant. I hadnt thought of a Sphere though for that corner area. Smart idea.


Bill


(Some pics of my beatup, lived in, properly aged, stylish 'weeeeee' Landy). :d

 

[Tako_Kichi]

OOOOOOH! Nice Series 1 Bill!

The Kodiak looks sweet too. :costumes:

I just dropped my models (literally) in FSX for you to look at. I appear to be having some texture issues with the 12-bay C-Type hangar so I cropped that out.

The Shack was a challenge to create as a low poly model but I eventually got away with 3k faces which is reasonable for a FSX static and there won't be too many of them on the apron after all so it shouldn't hit the FPS too hard. Hmmmm...looking at that piccie it looks like I have some normals to flip on the #3 engine spinner too.

That's actually the first time I have seen them all together in one place too...lol.