question for Wrench and Spinners

[+daddyairplanes]

sorry to call you two out specifically but you two are the most knowledgeable i know on decalling. i am working a Navy Phantom project and want to do two things with the stock F-4 skins. first, not all squadrons used the 4 digit large BuNo and i want to make a decal with a piece of the skin to cover it for those squadrons only(patch093, patch102 etc). since the 4 digit BuNo are 2 level decals can i make the patch a 3 level and cover it?

 

question 2 and i apologize but screenies will not be avail til monday, i tried makin a radome decal(more for marine Phantoms on in the Future) with the VF-111 sharksmouth. di it on fuselage_front of the F-4J and was successful in placing it there butit blanked out the part of the skin by the canopy above the intakes. now i have seen bmp blanked before but the rescue markings are still there, only up by the canopy was blanked. 256 decal with say a 40 pixel alpha channel strip on the right of the tga. hafta check decal level again but believe it was 0. any ideas?

[+russouk2004]

Create a squadron specific folder with the decals for it only there?...make some decals partly blank for the a\c you dont want to have it appear on.?

Edited January 13, 2012 by russouk2004

[Wrench]

well, for that specific skin, just don't call out the 4-digit BuNum in the decal ini

 

Level3 is for killmarks only

 

and Russ suggetion also works; take my SqTail decal from the A-12 'flying dorito', rename it and use that. It's 1 pixel

 

using less decals would be the best answer, however

 

the sharkmouth decal would be a nightmare ... i'd just use a skin (use Ant's templates!!!!) for that specific squadron

 

of course, without screenies....

[+daddyairplanes]

ha ha ha. i said i couldnt post screenies til today

 

my whole concept here is like i did with the USAF, represent the units thru decals, and not have as many skins. a radome decal is not really critical for Navy Phantoms but would have been very useful when i turn around and tackle the Marines birds as alot of them had starry radomes. also as you can see in the screenie only part of F-4B_5bmp is blanked, not the whole like i got when doing USAF birds. makes me curious

 

as for the blanking the 4digit, you have given me and idea tho i havent had time to work on it yet. gotta love the decal.inii for the navy birds though lotsa room on fuselage_p, esp if you consolodate the NAVY, insignia and squadron name/markings into one tga

 

also unrelated question, do you know the mesh name for the RWR box on the F-4M_75?

Edited January 16, 2012 by daddyairplanes

[Blade]

also unrelated question, do you know the mesh name for the RWR box on the F-4M_75?

Box02

[+daddyairplanes]

for an update downloaded mytai01's skin pack last night, and found my answer. would seem it wants to wrap around canopy_front and _rear as well. however using his bln.tga has it working great(screenies by next monday latest) and i can now leave the skin all white nose and do a full black radome or along the top as needed for squadron/era. really liking the results even if i have to sift through 14GB of files to get to it!

@ Blade- thank you! another project in the works is Barley grey FGR.2's though it is on a back burner to Atlantic Fleet Phantoms right now. have the SN placement and squadron badges done, just couldnt get the bars up on the RWR box.