Never to old to learn

[Leen de Jager]

Yes , I managed to learn something last years

I am painting aircraft-models for flightsim for many years now.

To be frank ,I did not expect to find much I did not already know.

 

Until some wheeks ago , when I started to make a repaint (Thai Royal Air Force) for the ATR 72-500 ( Aerosoft/McPhatstudios )

Not really a big deal , a white airplane with an emblem and a blue and gold cheatline.

The "white" happened to be the problem.

I tried,tried once again I really was going mad.

Even a complete pure white texture turned out to produce a greyish kinda thing.

I realised that had to come from the OBJ files.
An OBJ file can be opened with a text-editor so I did.

 

Ok I knew, a command line reading  ATTR_shiny_rat 1.00 gives us a plane with a bit of gloss, ATTR_shiny_rat 10.00 gives us even more.
We can fill in the value we like.

There are many different ATTR commands.

Among them is a special one  , ATTR_diffuse_RGB 0.00 (or other values)

This is the command which drove me mad.

In the OBJ  file for the front section of the fuselage I found this line , ATTR_diffuse_rgb 0.820  0.820  0.820

That was the explanation of the problem

 

ATTR_diffuse_rgb  1.00  1.00  1.00        means 100% of the color/bightness ( pure white is 255.255.255)

ATTR_diffuse_rgb  0.820  0.820  0.820  means less than 100%

 

0.820  is 18% less than 1.00  

As 255.255.255  is white  at 100% brightness  and 18% of 255 is 46 , the command ATTR_diffuse_rgb  0.820  0.820  0.820 reduces the brightness of the texture (all colors) with approx  46%

 

Thats all , I opened all OBJ files related to the fuselageparts and changed all  ATTR_diffuse_rgb  0.820  0.820  0.820 values into ATTR_diffuse_rgb  1.00  1.00  1.00  

I could also simply have inactivated all ATTR_diffuse_rgb commands by placing a   #   in front of them  ,  # ATTR_diffuse_rgb  0.820  0.820  0.820

An ATTR_diffuse_rgb 1.00 1.00  1.00 does not change a thing so we can forget about it.

 

Now I was able to have my bird in sparkling colors.
Ohh and yesssss, the default liveries , brand new and good looking too.
No need to say back-up all files first , however, its very unlikely you`ll ever want them back.

 

See the result , the front of the fuse displays the colors exactly the way they are on the texture, the rest of the fuse the suffer the ATTR command.

( 3d modelers should not fiddle with color-values and leave that to the texture-artists )

Second screen shows the files involved, they are in the main objects folder.

Its only some minutes of work.( the # will do nicely) just search for ATTR_diffuse_rgb  0.820.

 

Look at this all I wrote above as a  general explanation of what this command is about, I you are content with the ATR the way it is , do not do a thing.
My bird however will aways be a grey one for you then.

 

Enjoy, 

 

Leen de Jager

 

 

 

Edited December 19, 2013 by Leen de Jager

[Nicola_M]

Thanks for the tip.  What text editor did you use? 

I'm not having any luck with Notepad or Wordpad.

[Leen de Jager]

I use WordPad (windows) or Notepad++ 

Open office will do the trick also

Edited December 19, 2013 by Leen de Jager

[Nicola_M]

Thanks Leen, I was wrongly trying it on the acf file.  I just used Notepad on the obj file of xplane trouble-child, otherwise known as the S-92, and it's worked a treat - the previously grey fuselage now comes out brilliant white.

Thanks again.

[Leen de Jager]

OK Nicola , thats good to hear.

As I said before this is not special for the ATR only,
We find this stupid ATTR_diffuse command in many OBJ files.
There is not much logic in investing time in nice paintwork and destroy it with ATTR_diffuse_rgb afterwards.

[Nicola_M]

Thankfully I haven't noticed this issue in any of the aircraft I've got - it was only apparent on DMO's S-92.

But thank you also for the shiny_rat tip. I've gone through my files and changed the shiny factor from 1.0 to 2.0 so most of my planes and helis now look realistically shiny.  Most of them had too little.

 

It's little tips like that which help to improve the experience, so thanks again.