Paintkit/Model Question

Really enjoying the 222. I was just curious as to how how one goes about implementing the grilled areas on/over the mid rear fuselage/engine cowl when repainting. I have isolated the holes that make up the grill, and mapped and cut them out of the template, but still the area remains solid when the texture is exported to XP. Can anyone help or enlighten me as to what I might be doing wrong. I was also wondering if might be possible if it might be possible (though some messy I’m sure) to integrate the grilling/mesh into the model itself? Many thanks for a great helo. B)

I remember having this same problem when I first started repainting the 222. If I remember right, I had to map out where the grills were on the fuse file, then completely erase each individual hole in the grid. It’s tedious, but it seemed to work.
I’ll play with GIMP for a bit to see if that was what I did, or if there’s some easier way to make the grills see through.
Okay, I’ve checked GIMP and here’s what I did. Open a copy of the repaint kit, select the screen sections, (that’s the tedious part, select “Copy visible,”) paste in place on your repaint, mask it off with the selection tools, erase completely that section. Paste in place again and you should have only the section of the screen that need paint. Bucket fill just those lines and you should have a see through screen with the fuselage color on them. I hope this helps. As I said, it can be a bit tedious as you have to mask and copy each individual screen and repeat the process for each one. Good luck. Hope we’ll see your repaint on the org soon.

1 Like

Thank you very much for your assistance, Dennis B). After reading through your process, I figured out where it was I had been going wrong. I had in fact been flattening the whole image before saving, where as I should have been just compressing the edited layers, before removing the ‘grill’ pattern. Many thanks for the assistance. :wink: B)

There’s a layer named “Base Fuselage Color” in the paint kit. I just use the color replacer tool and change it to the color I want it to be. Then, I just don’t paint over this area on the helicopter since it’s already the color I want it to be. Voila…done in less than two minutes. And the holes are all there.
Hope this helps!

2 Likes

@JAFO @DarkAngel stole the words out of my mouth. Hahahha. This is the easiest of many ways. 100%

1 Like

I never thought of doing it the way Darkangel shows. Guess I just like doing things the hard way sometimes. My repaints usually start out as a separate png file, or saved as a bitmap so I can put curved lines on it with the Paintbrush program in Windows. From there I copy bits and pieces off the paint kit psd file and paste in place on the repaint. It’s probably not the easiest way in the world to do repaints, but I keep thinking, if I mess with the psd file too much, I’m going to mess it up.

2 Likes