So, your joining me several hours already into this build.
I’ve tried just mapping existing artwork to the plane. I’ve gone through trying to 3d model the artwork. All to no avail. I’m now just drawing the artwork onto a modded body. In this case my retro Qantas 737-800.
This is for my next livery Fiji Airways. The tail end is crazy just like PNG Air was. This will have quite a few updates in quick succesion as I try and give some of you the stages I go through when creating artwork,
Any questions just ask. This is the livery I’m currently working on. I’m currently working in Illustrator to align things too.
The Fiji Airways signage was easy. Pulled original artwork directly from Fiji files. Woot. Love it when I can do that. Makes custom fonts and logos etc so much easier.
Here you can see where I’m currently up to. I’m trying to find the balance on the curve on the back of the plane. It’s between accuracy and what will look good in game.
If I think the current curves are looking acceptable I’ll hide the template stuff, and flip it and see how it looks as a whole. Doing that can change the whole look when you see it like that. Or at least it does for me. I can now see how the whole curvature of the back end looks in conjunction with the existing artwork assets.
It’s closers than the last mirror test, but still does not look aesthetically pleasing. Getting closer though. I do take the tail start of the hump into account as you can see by the overlay on the red part of the template retro Qantas livery.
A reduction of the template ellipse is in order, let’s see.
Here’s the current build in game. I make the JSON file first so the planes are available and updataby by simply making and revising the artwork. Being in-game I can how the whole plane looks. As you can tell the curves are still not quite there. Close but needs more work. Once I’ve got that backend curve worked out, I’ll start adding the details.
I also seem to like making liveries that are complicated. Do’h.
So reality the curve is correct but to the eye, should go further back to give the impression of the body curvature. Hmmmmm. Always that decision between accuracy and aesthetically.
I’m thinking an ‘S’ curve would the be solution???
Another revision and another in-game test. Alas in-game testing takes a little longer but things are looking promising now with that tail artwork. Those curves are starting to work for me. They look like they should look even though they are wrong in the real world.
So those are looking like decent curves at the back end that work with the non-mod assets, windows etc, and what we can. You can also see @dallas as I check out my in-game and his reply to me so this tells you it’s real time here.
I’m almost happy with that as starting place no. Just needs pulling in a little at the window end.
AND that’s where I have to leave it. I’ll continue this build so you can see what I go though as I do a build though. For now I have to work.
I’ve done some changes on the curve and they haven’t worked so still modding them and that’s where it’s at. A couple of hours goes so quick don’t you think?
Soooooo, here goes another round of trying to get Fiji Airways mod finished. I’ve done a little more work since I last left you. As you can now see there’s a whole series of grid lines on the back end to help me align things up with the plane. Not always easy as things are not always where you want them to be, so we have to work around that.
I’m happy with what will be the black base of the tail now. It’s got some transparency on while I work the design. You can also see I’ve started to add some other details to help work out where they go in relation to the real livery. Won’t be quite as frantic this session.
Using the in game version of the aircraft with all of the guidelines painted on it, I’ve started to add the artwork onto the back end. You can see that things need changing scale quite a bit as things don’t always align up where they need too. I’ve got to accommodate the curvature of the fuselage yet but this is just chucking things into place to see HOW they fit together.
Even though it’s just aligning things up I will take this version into the game to see spacing and what nots, etc. Looks a little messy I know but everything is where I need it to be.
Meanwhile over in Photoshop, you can see the artwork copied from illustrate and dropped in as a smart layer, this retains the vector artwork. Notice how the artwork overlaps the tail. I’ve disable the layer mask here so you can see that. When I turn the layer mask back on, it will be clean and crisp to the body artwork wonderfully supplied by the team.
