This is a complete 8K Paintkit for Blender and Photoshop
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Update v2.0. Check the Changelog for details.
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This update is fully compatible with the FlyByWire A32NX
GIMP files Included
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This Kit contains:
- Blender Model of the A320, including the cockpit.
- 8K PSD files for the Fuselage, Wings and Engines, all with layers and masks.
- 8K XCF files for GIMP users.
- All Textures, Composites and Normals in PNG, linked in Blender.
- A Complete and ready to fly Asobo A320 NEO livery template to replace your files.
- A Complete and ready to fly FlyByWire A32NX livery template to replace your files.
- PDF with a brief guide, instructions and notes.
This Paintkit is meant to be used in a combination of Blender and Photoshop, but feel free to experiment as you like!
This is by no means a complete guide and a how to paint a A320 NEO livery on blender and photoshop, but a collection with EVERYTHING needed to do so and a quick guide, if you know some basic Photoshop and Blender, or just like me, you want to experiment and learn through the process.
There are several great guides on YouTube on how to live paint the A320 NEO, this download is merely a convenience, with all the prework done so you don't have to go through sorting everything out from scratch.
If you know what you are doing, you can probably ignore mostly everything bellow here, apart from the folder structure I have that explains what is where and why, but probably you can figure this out by yourself.
If you don't know what you are doing and how to start, you will need to learn how to use layers and masks on Photoshop (or GIMP) and also how to work in the Texture Paint mode of Blender. Basically, how to live paint, how to save the texture you painted, and how to import the texture that you edited in Photoshop. There is a brief guide in the included PDF.
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Contents in the PDF file
- Intro
- Changes from v1.2
- Software I used
- Software you will need
- Folder Structure
- About the Blender file
- Setup
- Basic workflow
- Recommendations & Notes
- Exporting DDS
- Personalization
- Importing Your livery in game
- Help and Support
Read the PDF included in this download first, it will solve you a lot of problems on the way!!!
If you don’t have a very good understanding of the basic tools for this, namely Photoshop (or GIMP) and Blender, remember, Google is your friend.
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Software I used
- Adobe Photoshop 2024
- Blender 3.3.1.4 LTS
- msfs2blend v0.4 (Blender import tool made by bestdani - https://github.com/bestdani/msfs2blend)
- MSFSLayoutGenerator (made by HughesMDflyer4 - https://github.com/HughesMDflyer4/MSFSLayoutGenerator)
- IntelTextureWorks (for importing and exporting DDS files - https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/articles/intel-texture-works-plugin.html)
- Notepad++ (for editing cfg files)
Software you will need
- Adobe Photoshop (any recent version will do)
- Blender 3.x.x (preferably 3.3.1.4 and up – Not tested with Blender 4)
- IntelTextureWorks (https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/articles/intel-texture-works-plugin.html)
- MSFSLayoutGenerator (layout.json generator - https://github.com/HughesMDflyer4/MSFSLayoutGenerator)
- Notepad++ (or any plain text editor)
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About the blender file
In the previous version I had completely removed the ribbons that overlapped the fuselage in the UVs! In this version, the ribbons are now their own object in a separate collection in blender. However, they are not cleaned up and as a result, they are there only for preview.
Collections in Blender file:
- Fuselage - MAIN LIVERY
- Engines - MAIN LIVERY
- Wings - MAIN LIVERY
- Flaps - Spoilers - Ailerons - Rudder - MAIN LIVERY
- Landing Gear Retracted - MAIN LIVERY
- No Paint - Landing Extended - PREVIEW ONLY
- No Paint - DECALS - PREVIEW ONLY
- No Paint - Inner Parts - Windshields - Lights - PREVIEW ONLY
- No Paint - Cockpit - PREVIEW ONLY
- No Paint - RIBBONS - RIVETS - PREVIEW ONLY
- No Paint - Scene - PREVIEW ONLY
- No Paint - Lights - PREVIEW ONLY
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Some final words
This is not the “professional way” of finalizing and packaging a livery for MSFS (The final export after you have painted your livery). While it will work perfectly fine, there are dedicated (but a bit more complex) tools that can be used to create json, FLAGS and cfg files, thumbnails etc, like the MSFS Livery Tools, Microsoft’s own Simulator Developer's menu, MSFS SDK etc,. If you intend to distribute your livery as a payware of donationware I would suggest to use this Paintkit in combination with those tools.
If you need more help with the FlyByWire A32NX textures, you can visit https://docs.flybywiresim.com/dev-corner/texture-changes/ that has some help files and guides. (Some of those files are already into the PSDs as Guide Layers)
Be sure to read the Read Me!
Finally, this download does not contain the work of others, but the work of others made it possible for me to make this.
Thanks for downloading this, I spent a lot of time and effort for this and I hope it helps.
11 days ago
dfhjhsdfjkf
25 days ago
25 days ago
skoy21
Sammy_twoShoes
3 months ago
19 days ago
Rookee
letter27
the rudder remains white/no colors.
How to paint eh rudder?
4 months ago
19 days ago
skoy21
Avgustin1
5 months ago
19 days ago
skoy21
mickster04
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vhpUz3Zmm9yD2I1U6NIxYUrVid2OT2ya/view?usp=drive_link
For reference it looked like this prior to converting to mipmap:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UQvNKTDslLbV7u0lAJc1CCYfhXeYgJ_e/view?usp=drive_link
Any suggestions?
5 months ago
5 months ago
Speedydog32
Speedydog32
7 months ago
7 months ago
Volkymaniac260
Volkymaniac260
Absolutely marvelous package. Super thank you.
9 months ago
gohafi6165
Does it have to be Adobe? or can we use Corel instead?
12 months ago
Corel is for vector graphics, so I think it would be much more difficult to paint on it. You can use Gimp, but as I understand, PSDs don't port very well on gimp.
The PSDs are nothing more than the original textures, that I imported on photoshop and then I used some masks to make it easier to work with.
10 months ago
skoy21
PrairieAg
Thank you so much!
It's so easy to create liveries with this paint kit. Helped a lot.
1 years ago
FLY_320
Great package with everything to create a livery and very careful work on the tools made available.
Work fine for FlyByWire A32NX.
1 years ago
Ithendyr
Thanks so much. Proper model and easy to use. !
2 years ago
PilotalexYYZ
Thank you so much! I almost gave up trying to make a livery with the default model as it was just impossible to paint the fuselage and no tutorial on youtube addressed it afaik. With the cleaned up model from this paintkit I could finally start making it! Looks like a lot of work was put into it and also the readme file helped. Thanks a bunch!
2 years ago
Thanks man, I appreciate. Like you, I wanted my own livery and had the same trouble, but after all the countless hours of learning blender to clean the model and putting everything in place and getting ready to start on my livery, it became obvious that this had to be shared as a paint-kit so others can just jump directly on the creative part!
Have fun making your livery!
2 years ago
skoy21
stevemartis
I'm trying to paint with this kit, making a livery where the tail colour wraps around the fuselage. I use the X-orthographic view with X-mirroring first, then because it can't quite reach the bottom to join the halves up, I go to the Z- view to join them by hand. Problem is, even with no mirroring enabled, there's some sort of other built-in mirroring from the underside of the fuselage to the top, which spoils my line. How do I disable this?
2 years ago
Hey, glad that this helped!
For anyone else having the same issue, go to the brush options (while on Texture Paint window) and make sure the Occlude and Backface Culling are checked, like in the image bellow
https://ibb.co/df06FFj
2 years ago
skoy21
DHesquire
Great job, this makes it incredibily easier for making this livery. Lots of thanks.
Though, I wish there would be less parts 'duplicated', this is not your fault at all, it's on the FBW team that have made the model. But it seems both wings must look like a mirror, a piece on top of the baggage compartment it's the same for both of them, and some others. So, creativity is limited by those things.
2 years ago
Thank you! I only made this because I wanted my own livery, and decided to share. The blender file has 10 folders in it, 7 of which have the "NO PAINT' prefix and can be deleted without any consequense to the livery. I but decided to keep them in, in case someone wants more flexibility, easy switch for landing config for photo renders and previews etc. Glad to see it helps anyway!
2 years ago
skoy21
andres291