You need to have some working knowledge of Blender to be able to select parts, vertices, and individual items. You also need to be able to navigate Blender and Photoshop. This document does not teach you how to use either but will offer some shortcuts if possible. Also, this "document" is not a finished product! It is a works in progress and may contain some errors or hard to follow sections (I hope not). This really needs to be made into a video! Perhaps I'll get around to it?
NOTE: This procedure tends to work for the most part, but you might find that some model parts are not included in a texture or are in another texture. (i.e., Cessna 172 TAILLANDING also includes the wheel pants and the engine compartment.) Also, there is no “Strut” material, it is called “Landing” in the material list. (Names can be changed to help). But this will help with isolating most of the parts.
Also, hopefully the author of the model made the texture names (.dds files) the same or close to the names of the materials in the model itself.
You don’t need to keep everything! Delete parts of the model you know you will never paint! Frost, wheels blurred, prop blurred. Keep the model as simple as you can. Delete rivets also! (More on that below). You are NOT changing the model used, only making a model so you can texture it.
IF you’re planning on using any templates, stripes, logos etc., have them ready by:
In Photoshop, you can use a PSD file with a transparent background. Clean up logo by removing everything you DON’T want “painted”. This will be used as a stencil on the aircraft. You can have several “logos” or other items on same sheet.
- IMPORT MODEL INTO BLENDER
- YOU MUST HAVE THE MSFS TO gITF IMPORTER INSTALLED and activated IN BLENDER!!
It is called: msfs2blend-master.zip and you can get this here:
GitHub - bestdani/msfs2blend: Import Microsoft Flight Simulator (FS2020) Models in Blender
To install
- Menu Bar: Edit > Preferences...
- Preferences Popup: Select Add-ons on the left side.
- Addon Settings: Press Install Button.
- File Browser: Locate the downloaded io_msfs_gltf.py file and press Install Add-on.
- Addon Settings: Tick the Checkbox next to the Add-on entry.
- ISOLATE TEXTURED PARTS INTO COLORED SECTIONS
- open Blender and import a MSFS gITF file (model files of aircraft in MSFS located in “Onestore” folder).
- Select the lowest (lod00) model (NOT Cockpit or Interior)
- Hit the “5” key on the KEYPAD
- select ALL (“A” key) and ALT P clear parent and KEEP transformation
- SAVE AIRCRAFT MODEL
- Select and delete ALL unnecessary objects (Frost, extra propellers, Livery, etc.)
- SAVE AIRCRAFT MODEL
- Isolate textured areas by:
- Go to “Texture Paint” tab
- (If necessary), Top left of Texture Paint window, click “texture paint” and change it to “Object Mode”
- Select “ALL” by clicking on model and then hit the "A” key
- Right click and select “Join”
- Change back to Texture Paint by clicking on “Object Mode” and select “Texture Paint”. Now the entire model should be purple. NOTE: This entire purple section may be part of several texture files! We need to isolate each texture file to its components.
- On right hand tools, select the tools icon (at top of stack). Now at the top of that window you will have the names of the different texture sections. (i.e., Wings, Fuselage,)
- Click on the top texture "Wings"
- Below the texture names, you will see “No Textures” and a “+” button. Click on the “+” button and select “Base Color”. A new window will pop up
- In “Width” and “Height” change the values to your texture size, typically 2048
- Click on the area next to “color” (which will probably be black and hard to see)
- Now you will have a color wheel. On the right of the color wheel is a slider that goes from black to white. Move the ball almost all of the way to the top and hit “OK”
- A section that was purple on the model should now be the white color you just selected.
- Now click on the next texture down in the list, (i.e., Fuselage), “+” icon and add another base color. NOTE: I prefer to change the colors slightly so I can determine what section is what. To change the color, click on the area next to “color” and move the ball in the color wheel to your desired color. Then click “OK”. You will see the next section (Fuselage) change to that color. Hopefully, the author of the model will have named the textures “Fuselage”, “Wings” ... to match the names of the base materials you’re selecting.
- Repeat the process above for all textures in the list. NOTE, you really don’t need to do the windshield, lights, etc. if you’re not going to paint them. Typically, you would ONLY select the items you’re going to paint. Fuselage, tail, wings...
- When finished, you should have all textured sections in their own unique color.
- SAVE THE MODEL in its own unique name! Keep this separate from the base model in case you run into issues later!
- ISOLATE COLORED SECTIONS INTO INDIVIDUAL SECTIONS
- Under “texture paint” (at top of window) select “Object Mode” and select the entire model by hitting “A” key. Now entire model should have ONE orange boarder around it. Now hit “AA” to deselect entire model.
- Switch back to “Texture Paint” from “Object Mode”
- Now hit the “TAB” key on keyboard. This will put you in EDIT mode.
- Click on the world icon at bottom of tools on right side
- Click on top texture name (i.e., Wings).
- Below texture names you will see “Assign”, “Select” and “Deselect”
- Click on “Select”. ALL items in “Wings” will now be selected. You will also notice that in the left-hand window the texture UV map will appear and cover the entire background with model parts.
- Hit the “P” key on keyboard and select “Selection”. All parts associated with “Wings” texture file will now be isolated into one section.
- Click on “Fuselage” in texture list and click “select”. Now all “fuselage” parts will be isolated.
- Hit the “P” key and select “Selection”.
- Repeat the process for ALL of the texture names in the list
- Exit “edit mode” by hitting the TAB key
- Go back to “Object Mode”
- NOTE: There are multiple items on the aircraft that you will NOT want or need to paint. i.e., Rivets. These can safely be deleted. I prefer to delete them so they will not interfere with the painting of the model. ALSO, you will want to delete or hide ANY and ALL items you do not want painted! It will make the job a LOT easier!
- RENAME INDIVIDUAL SECTIONS
- Click anywhere on background so that nothing on the model is selected
- Click on the Wings so they are highlighted. (You should see that in the “textures” window on the right the section will highlight so you know where you are)
- Hit “F2” on keyboard, and rename this part “WINGS” (It’s easier if you name the parts the same as the texture names for that part)
- Hit the “H” key to hide this section
- Click on the “Fuselage”
- Hit “F2” on keyboard and rename this part “FUSELAGE”
- Hit the “H” key to hide this part.
- Repeat for ALL sections until ALL items you want to texture have disappeared. Use this to verify that the only items displayed are bogus items that can be hidden or deleted.
- You will wind up with a bunch of “loose items”.
- In the top right window, under “collection”. Next to the name under “collection” will be an eyeball. You can click on that eyeball and hide all of the extra parts. You can click on the other name eyeballs, (fuselage, wing...) and have them re-appear. This will leave you with a clean aircraft and each section will be colored and named
- OR if you want to delete everything that you won’t need to paint, simply right click on the name of the unused parts, (NOT Fuselage, wing...), select “Select”, and hit the “delete” key.
- Remember, in right window with section names, click on the eyeball to hide or unhide sections.
- SAVE MODEL SAVE OFTEN. SAVE AS and “+” will create new file and NOT overwrite existing file in case you screw up!
- If you want your model to be smooth, click on a part (i.e., fuselage) and right click then select “Shade Smooth”
- DELETE ALL UNUSED ITEMS
- This section is optional, but you may save some aggravation by removing or deleting anything you don’t want painted. Example would be a door handle. It WILL be a part of a texture sheet, and MAY get whacked if you paint over it while painting the door. It’s much better to remove (or make individual parts) out of anything you don’t want painted.
- In the Cessna 172 example, I don’t need “Rivets” to be painted. So, I would select “Rivets” on upper RH window and click “Delete”.
- Also, you might go ahead and delete the unused materials themselves. (i.e., “rivets”, Lights...)
- In any (?) mode (Modeling, Texture paint.) select the world icon on the right toolbar.
- In the area where the materials are named, (Wings, Fuselage...) select one that is NOT going to be painted (Windshield, Rivets...) and hit the “-“ next to the name and it will be deleted.
EXPORT UV LAYOUT for Photoshop
- At top of screen, select UV Editing tab
- Click on wing in RH window
- Hit TAB key
- Hit “A” key
- LH window will now have the UV Layout for the entire wing.
- At top, click “UV” then “Export UV Layout”
- Select where you want the file to go AND verify the size of it on the right side
- Now open Photoshop and open the file you just created.
- Open the associated DDS file in another window. DO NOT FLIP THE IMAGE UPSIDE DOWN
- Go back to the layout window, on layer section click “duplicate” and duplicate it into the DDS file window.
- Here is where you will start to do your texturing in Photoshop.
I certainly hope I conveyed myself appropriately here and didn't open a bag of worms.
Please let me know if there are any errors and I'll work on finishing this out. There is a LOT more with using stencils, painting directly on the model, making tiny changes in Photoshop to get things lined up...
TB2
