Download the Plane Maker Manual - X-Plane

8
Modifying the Appearance of an Aircraft
An aircraft in Plane Maker may have a paint job applied to it by telling Plane Maker how to drape
an image file over its model, or you can use 3-D objects (as might be created in Blender, Maya, 3ds
Max, etc.) attached to various points of the aircraft to achieve a much higher quality appearance.
8.1 Creating a Basic Paint Job
The effects achievable by draping 2-D image files over a 3-D, Plane Maker-created aircraft model
are perfectly acceptable, albeit not as impressive looking as what can be done with 3-D modeling
tools. Creating a basic paint job in this way requires only Plane Maker and the image editor of
your choice.
Before beginning, be sure that your ACF model is in its final or near-final form; changing the
shape of the fuselage, the wings, etc. later would require you to modify the image file used in your
paint texture, possibly in significant ways.
We will be working primarily in the Visual Texture Regions dialog box, which is launched from
the Expert menu. This dialog is used to specify which portions of your PNG texture images will be
draped over each body of your aircraft. You can use the tabs along the top of this window combined
with the radio buttons on the left to select which specific part you will edit. You can click and drag
the regions covered by a part using the large box in the center of the window. Additionally, if you
plan to use two image files in your aircraft’s textures, you can check the box next to a part labeled
“use second texture.” In that case, the area of the texture image available for draping over that
part will come from the second texture rather than the default one.
For instance, if you wanted the entire top half of the default image file for your aircraft to be
draped over the left side of your fuselage, you would:
1. Select the Fuselage tab at the top of the dialog box,
2. Click the radio button labeled “edit left side of body,” and
3. Click and drag the flashing red box until it was around the entire top half of the image.
Ideally, once your aircraft model is ready to use, you will set the regions of your texture to use
with each part of the aircraft, then let X-Plane create a “starting-point” texture map, which will be
divided according to the geometry of your aircraft’s parts and your settings in the Visual Texture
Regions dialog box. This starting-point can be opened in your image editor of choice and recolored
or blended with a photo of your aircraft.
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