CrimsonRoamer

Spitfire inverted

So you've seen my recent F-16XF and F/A-18V ADV mods, or Wrench's F-110 wraith, or even Kei Nagase cool, but slightly questionable iDOLM@STER skins, and you're wondering how its done, well, I'm going to tell you. Tonight the Modders secrets will be revealed by me, The Masked Modder (or not) Anyway, the canopy is tinted through the application of a decal to the canopy mesh. which seems simple enough (and there are aleady tutorials on decal placement, so I won't go into detail there) However here's the rub, in order to put the decal on the mesh, you need to know the mesh name, sure, you can guess (as I did in the case of the F-16XF) but that time consuming and frustrating. an easier way is to use the .OUT file. The .OUT file is generated by the thirdwire object exporter when the model is exported from 3DS max. It contains a list of the meshes (parts) in the model and there names. heres a grapical example, using the Mirage factory's F-14A the .OUT file is highlighted and you can open it with notepad or wordpad, either will do (incidently this my United Nations F-14 install, used for testing my macross mods, and no, you can't have it, its mine ) Here's what the inside of the .OUT file, and I've highlighted the pertinent entry. As for why they couldn't have called it something sensible like 'glasscanopy', well, They're French An important note to make is that some aircraft may have two or more canopy meshes, representing the front glass, main canopy, etc, and you need to put a decal on each of these, for future referece, vitre means glass in french. so it'll probably be called that, unless of course the person who made the model speaks English. Also while most modders kindly include the .OUT file, some omit it, and none of the default thirdwire planes have one included Here you can see the decal file, and where you need to enter the name of the mesh. remember that you need to put a decal on every relavant mesh (or mix and match) and that the canopy darkening effect will only work for that skin. As for decal placement, You COULD actually look at the data.ini and find the correct location based on pilot postion, etc. Or you could just set the scale variable to something like 20 or 50 so you can't miss. As for the decal itself. Make a single colour square (say 128x128 pixels) image and save it as a .tga file using. irfanview http://www.irfanview.com/ What I normally do is use the gimp ( http://www.gimp.org/ ) and it's colour selection tool to get the colour correct, and then export it to .tga with irfanview. (gimp does support .tga but for some reason whe I use it it never shows in-game. Additionaly you can use the .OUT file to help you place regular decals, but that is someone else's tutorial. And thats all there is to it. now you too can have a pimpin' fighter jet Tally ho -CrimsonRoamer

VTOL only works in Normal and Hard flight models, in easy mode it behaves like a normal aircraft. hold down the shift key and use the - and = keys (next to the backspace) to point the nozzles (or change these to more accessable keys) And give the game a chance, it'll grow on you.

File Name: F/A-18V ADV skin from Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere File Submitter: CrimsonRoamer File Submitted: 5 Apr 2008 File Category: Fictional and What If? This skin simulates the F/A-18V Hornet ADV from Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, Disclaimer and other details are in the readme -CrimsonRoamer Click here to download this file

Ah, well on all other fronts its an amazing aircraft, best cockpit I've ever seen

Curious, I flew it in strike fighters gold, radar worked fine but as soon as I got into transonic I got some insane amounts of flutter, which persisted through the higher mach numbers

Brilliant, a great British plane to take on the raptor in.

You might be able to attach them as a weapon station, and rotate them using the attachment angle variables, however you'll need to set the loadout so that they are always equipped

No need to modify the loadout, just set-up the campaign so that there isn't any resupply of weapons.

Definitely release it, that'll be perfect for adding canards, weapons stations and other features (I'm thinking of playing with rocket boosters, Macross style fast packs etc)

The power stations keep burning on anyway, the idea behind saving power is to reduce the demand long terms so fewer power stations are required. So no, this is just a stunt.

File Name: Canard pack for modding UPDATED File Submitter: CrimsonRoamer File Submitted: 26 Mar 2008 File Updated: 5 Apr 2008 File Category: Fictional Aircraft, Experimental and UAV's This is a pack containing a set of canards for aircraft modding. These canards may be freely used in other mods provided that I am credited and that they are not resold as payware NOTE: as of 05-04-08 I have re-exported and uploaded th canards in this package and the canards names should be correct CrimsonRoamer Click here to download this file

I did rush it a little, you ought to be able to change the model names without penalty but the skin names are fixed. I'm a little busy with other things at the moment but all the models should be included, you'll have to try mixing and matching for now

Thanks USAFMTL, I have models and skins made up (finally got them working) and just to to test them. There will be six indvidual models in the pack, left and right canards canted at-15, 0 and +15 degrees respectively, so you can mix and match. EDIT. okay, the pack is now uploaded http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=6290 the skins should be right but if the up and down model skins are reversed, just note it with some text in the black area of the skin.

I'm amazed at how popular my little mod is becoming. I'm afraid that due to the hurried way in whcih I make them, skinning them is really not practical. Have no fear, I will release a pack of individual canards, which may be fully skinned and indvidually positioned

File Name: F-16XF Gyrfalcon File Submitter: CrimsonRoamer File Submitted: 25 Mar 2008 File Category: Fictional Aircraft, Experimental and UAV's File Version: No Information Website: No Information This is a fictional variant of the F-16 from Ace Combat 3:Electrosphere, using the Mitsubishi F-2A as a base. CAUTION: please read the 'read me' as there are files left out which must be copyed from the F-2A which may be found at http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=5087 Thanks to the makers of the F-2A and FastCargo for his method of adding canards Enjoy -CrimsonRoamer Click here to download this file

Beautiful, now we can have proper intercept missions, great work

Really? keep up the good work I enjoyed both of those. Which reminds me, I need to get back to work on that Area 88 skin I'm making

these are the lines from the cvn75 [Deck] SystemType=FLIGHT_DECK FlightDeckHeight=16.8 FlightDeckLength=332.587 FlightDeckWidth=71.542 LandDeckAngle=-7.15 LandingAimPoint=-4.654,-87.234,16.8 CollisionMesh=CVN_Flight_Deck.lod Code for catapults and arrestor wires omitted so maybe we could add a deck model like the canards for the F-15 ACTIVE, or draw up a sky fortress 3D model and import it to the game, or even design the model so that there's a flight deck several hundred feet above the bottom of the model and import it as a carrier

I leave for a week and not only does the Gripen arrive, WOI is released. Now I really have to get it, the new Kfir looks great.

Did you upload a 3dsMax or a LOD, the game only accepts LODs You can get a plug-in to convert 3ds max into LOD from the thirdwire site http://www.thirdwire.com/downloads_tools.htm

Then I am happy to stand corrected by someone with experience of the real thing

When metal gets hot, it loses strenths, and the aerodynamic forces will have a much easier time tearing it up, I assumed the fuel tank would be flimsy to save on massand I apologise, but the structure of the satellite will almost certainly be made of of an Aluminium alloy, like duraluminum, and one of the first hings you learn about duraluminum is that its strength is derived from a heat treatment process and falls sharply at higher temperatures. Just about every aircraft in the world uses aluminium alloys for the structure, and the shuttle is no different. And FYI, I am a second year engineering student, and while I don't know everything, I'm certainly not making it up