Take my current work in progress. I foolishly approached the owner, Jason Newburg, and asked if I could adapt his Pitts "Viper" livery to the Iris Christen Eagle for FSX. The gent said yes.
...and now the problems start. That gorgeous snakeskin livery has to wrap between fuselage side and top. Hold on, let's rewind and show you a picture of the real Viper (by the way, if you want to see more, then visit Jason's website here).
Incidentally, many of the photos on the Viper site were taken by Jon Nash - if you have followed my paints, you'll see his Eagle's livery on my site somewhere too.
Anyway, the problem with wrapping the snakeskin around the 2D textures for a 3D model can only be described in pictures. So here's one showing a first flight trial:
Do you get the picture? Some of the lozenge shaped scales stretch where the 2D texture is curved around a 3D model. I am afraid there is only one way around that and that is to draw each single hexagon as a separate object and stretch/distort each one to allow for the curvature of the plane's 3D shape. Here's a shot from Corel Draw, where I am currently struggling along:
Why the yellow? to act as contrast when I take the paint to ther model. I don't worry about colours yet, that's going to be the next bit of fun - Chromalusion flip-flop...
See now what I mean? Probably not, but by repositioning the first row of yellow hexagons to wrap the side ones to the top, there is now an offset when I adjust the next row. I'll be adjusting each single node of every single hexagon around that curve for a few days more yet... and that with a bad wrist (the right one of course).
Oh well, it'll take time, but I'll get there in the end. I certainly couldn't do it for the money if I were being paid; no boss would live with my speed.
More news as and when folks...
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