MSFS20 MSFS Vector Painted Aircraft??? Is this a secret Asobo hasn't shared?

[=Hollywood=]

I'm wondering if Asobo has kept something a secret about their in house aircraft. For the C152 Aerobat I was taking a look at it in close up, pixel peeping, at the fuselage lines and noticed, there's no pixels! There seems to be some sort of vector texturing going on, no matter how close you get there is zero pixelation.

I'm guessing this is why certain models don't have a texture folder, I had thought they were in the .fsarchive files (which they probably are), but I looked at the few C152 Aerobats that had a texture folder and there was pixelation. The only way to get that level of clean sharp lines, is to use vector textures. I'm curious now are they .svg ?

This warrants further investigation (not sure if anyone else has discussed this before.) However I just had a thought, can I apply a raster texture for registration for the default Aerobat. My theory is that if I create a custom texture that is 100 percent transparent for the whole fuselage but 100% opaque for the registration number, perhaps we can overlay a raster over the base model.

 

[Mathias]

I don't think so.
Asobo makes extensive use of what they call decals.
Basically they create livery details in 3d and add just a base color to it using the decal material type, dissabling normal map and comp file for the overlay material so that these portions are called from the underlaying base material.
If you check the sample DA60, you'll get the idea.

 

[=Hollywood=]

I don't think so.
Asobo makes extensive use of what they call decals.
Basically they create livery details in 3d and add just a base color to it using the decal material type, dissabling normal map and comp file for the overlay material so that these portions are called from the underlaying base material.
If you check the sample DA60, you'll get the idea.

I actually went to update my post earlier and yeah, it’s a combination of both of what we’re saying all of the Cessna 152 airbag is decal textured which is vector based. Then they used a 32x32 1/2 blue 1/2 red to apply to the decal so it is really vector based paint.

Interesting approach. But of note. I tried to flip the red with the blue on the texture and save the dds as the same format and it makes the airframe invisible.

 

[Mathias]

Hmm, I don't see anything vector-based there.
Regarding the transparent airframe, maybe a formatting or json issue?

 

[=Hollywood=]

Hmm, I don't see anything vector-based there.
Regarding the transparent airframe, maybe a formatting or json issue?

Trust me I’ve been working professionally in film for over 30 years. The cheat lines, all of the texturing on the fuselage and wings is a vector based decal, filled with either the red or blue from that one 32x32 DDS texture.. I work with both raster and vector datasets every day as a professional imaging technician.

I’ll pull up the 3D model, which is all vector data in a 3D format. The decals are a polygon. Normally we apply a raster to the polygon such as the fuselage and wings and then paint on the raster image.

With the C152’s the main schemes are all decal design. In filled with 2 halves (red and blue) of a 32x32 raster dds that has been converted to DDS.

It’s a very ingenious approach. No more jaggies.

 

[Mathias]

The "no more jaggies" thing is soleyly due to the fact that the entire decal mesh is uv-projected to a single color on the decal sheet effectively avoiding any padding artefacts.
In other words, the outline of the red and blue color in your screenshots is the outline of the geometry.
You can easily re-engineer this by loading the gltf file into modelconverterx and checking the decal geometry and it's materials and uv coordinates in Max.
At least that's what I see in some other Asobo aircraft. Havn't looked at the C152 yet.

 

[=Hollywood=]

The "no more jaggies" thing is soleyly due to the fact that the entire decal mesh is uv-projected to a single color on the decal sheet effectively avoiding any padding artefacts.
In other words, the outline of the red color is the outline of the geometry.
You can easily re-engineer this by loading the gltf file into modelconverterx and checking materials and uv coordinates in Max.

You do understand that a decal is a VECTOR

 

[Mathias]

No, it's not in our MSFS nomenclatura. A vector calculates curves dynamically, thus always drawing them perfectly.
what we see here is single-colored static geometry. If it' be curved you'd still be able to make out the corners, vertices respectively if you zoom in close enough.

 

[=Hollywood=]

No, it's not our MSFS nomenclatura. A vector calculates curves dynamically, thus always drawing them perfectly.
what we see here is geometry. If it's curved you'd still be able to make out the corners, vertices respectively if you zoom in close enough.

This has nothing to do with MSFS nomenclature, what I'm talking about is gaming and film industry normal definitions.

Geometry is a VECTOR. It’s x,y,z and a line drawn between two points, a vector graphic of the same just without the Z axis data. The tools used such as Illustrator allow you to create curves but the final output has multiple vector coordinates in that curve.

I’ve been working with graphics on Hollywood movies for 34 years. and I teach this stuff as well… Now back to the topic at hand...

I've been able to repaint the entire aircraft simply by changing the colors on the 32x32 base color CESSA152_AIRFRAME_DECALS_ALBD.PNG.DDS

<- this is all that was changed to "repaint" the base 152 Aerobat aircraft

Just so you know... I wrote a ton of the game design documents for Dovetail Games Flight Simulator World and Flight Simulator Flight School and was a part of the transition from FSX to FS11 before MSFT killed it, saw behind the scenes with the move to 64 bit, PBR texturing and the whole thing, that IP then went over to Asobo and almost all of what I wrote in the game design documents have been implemented in MSFS 2020 (although more stuff is coming in MSFS 2024 that harks back to FS11 "Something to Do").

The Asobo 152's base aerobat uses aircraft wide geometry based decals for it's design, i.e. the base aircraft model, the base model's LOD_00 is not in the model file but rather hidden in the .fsarchive so we're not able to take a close look at it.

The other variant textures overlay albedo textures over a different LOD_00 model in their own custom model folders but we cam still see the red window hinges showing through on the aerobat. I'll dig deeper into this with one of the other C152 Aerobats shortly and run more experiments.

To put it into simple terms a decal is a polygon, a polygon is 3 or more vector points with it filled in. In the design process they can be wrapped around the 3D model which is also a series of polygons with vector points in the x,y,z planes. These x,y,z points get translated into the decal vector points much like you wrap a car with a custom wrap. Yet they are still vectors.

Now the term decal is really just a polgon with a texture applied to it, which is what 3D models have always been since we moved from vector based non-textured polygons to textured polygons in the 80's and 90's. I've been simming since Bruce Artwick's Sublogic Flight Simulator in the late 70's and early 80's. So 2.0, MS FS 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 5.0a, 5.1, FSFW95, FS98, FS2000, FS2002, FS2004, FSX, part of the design advisory board for FS11 (pre shut down), involved with (FSNextGen), (VWorld/ViewTerra), and contracted for DTG FSFS and FSW as mentioned. And have an intimate knowledge of pretty much every SDK since before there were SDK's.

Finally getting back to my original post, as I said that I discovered it was a vector based livery that has been infilled with micro rasters for the paint color... bringing even the LOD_01 into MSFS2Blend proves my original point....

Here is proof of the vertex based livery, it is even labeled as such...

And here are the vertices (vector points) and vertex lines (otherwise known as edges in Blender)

 

[Mathias]

Okay okay, I should have used more smileys and humour in my posts to not twist your arms that much, LOL. Rereading my posts, I was maybe a bit dry and straight to the point in my replies.
Anyway, I think we can agree that we're both right, we're just using different terminology.
In 30 years of makinbg 3d stuff I mostly heard the term "vector in relation to 2d vector graphics.

 

[=Hollywood=]

Ah we're on the same page, but basically that paint scheme is hard coded into the model. I have an idea though on how to re-do it as a raster for the other models where the LOD_00 exists.

The whole thing made me curious because I'm bugged by the default aerobat. It's the exact match for Art Scholl's 150M visually, but the dynamic registration is the limitation. Plus there's an under wing registration slaved to [VPainting02] the same as the fuselage.

So to get the slant right it'd need a 15 degree forward slant on the font on one side and 15 degree degree back slant on the other side, but dynamic registration would mean the right side font is slanted the wrong way forwards.

I had assumed it had a standard whole fuse texture as has been standard since FS98 but I assumed was hidden in the .fsarchive files. But alas it's hard coded into the model...

So technically I should be able to take the livery layer from LOD_1 and drop it into an LOD_0 of the models with textures, then it'd be a matter of finding a way to use that "livery object" and somehow use it as a mask to hand paint the markings on the main texture sheets. Would probably have to export to an obj and work in a more advanced 3D texturing program.

The only other option would be to somehow hack the gltf and generate individual $RegistrationNumber tags somehow, but I'm not sure that would work either as Object002 in the gltf includes all 3 marking decals, port, starboard and wing....

Now unless there was a way to apply a texture to those registration decals and remove the dynamic text tags and somehow re-inject that into the LOD_00 it might be a possibility... Regardless it's a bear just to get the registration numbers for N9828J to be 100% accurate...

Unless... I can overlay the white fuselage texture with sections completely opaque onto the fuselage...

 

[Mathias]

Ah we're on the same page, but basically that paint scheme is hard coded into the model.

Yes, it is. That's why we have the multi exporter option in the Babylon utilities, so that we can easly export different - let's call it - mesh-based liveries without duplicating the entire model over and over.
Not sure if that can be done to existing aircraft though, unless you hack the original gltf.
...and of course this approach makes it difficult for third party repainters. That's probably why not many use this technic and rather go for 8k textures so they can paint all the nitty gritty detail straight into the texture.
Don't know how all that relates to reg codes, havn't done that yet with my current projects.

 

[=Hollywood=]

That sounds really cool, I think I need to give up on the dream for now... At least the Just Flight Tomahawks are much easier to work with...

 

[rhumbaflappy]

I think what you are seeing is vertex color. A mesh face or vertex can be assigned a color, and that can be blended, mixed or overlayed on the Material's texture. The .gltf doesn't show the coloring, as it is 'hidden' in the .bin. The vertex color becomes part of the mesh. Attached is a Blender version of a landscape object using vertex color on a face.

 

[=Hollywood=]

I think what you are seeing is vertex color. A mesh face or vertex can be assigned a color, and that can be blended, mixed or overlayed on the Material's texture. The .gltf doesn't show the coloring, as it is 'hidden' in the .bin. The vertex color becomes part of the mesh. Attached is a Blender version of a landscape object using vertex color on a face.

Yeah that's old stuff, what Asobo has done is tile the 32x32 texture halves to color those polygons. I've just never seen an approach like that before to liveries.

 

[=rk=]

This is what Asobo calls "decal mesh."

Surface Detail

docs.flightsimulator.com

 

[Mathias]

It should be mentioned that this relates to this discussion here and also applies to rivets and panel lines using the appropriate switches in the material's "Decal per component blend factor" tab.