Modifying the Appearance of an Aircraft

An aircraft in Plane Maker may have a paint job applied to it by telling Plane Maker how to drape an image file over its model, or you can use 3-D objects (as might be created in Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, etc.) attached to various points of the aircraft to achieve a much higher quality appearance.

Creating a Basic Paint Job
The effects achievable by draping 2-D image files over a 3-D, Plane Maker-created aircraft model are perfectly acceptable, albeit not as impressive looking as what can be done with 3-D modeling tools. Creating a basic paint job in this way requires only Plane Maker and the image editor of your choice.

Before beginning, be sure that your ACF model is in its final or near-final form; changing the shape of the fuselage, the wings, etc. later would require you to modify the image file used in your paint texture, possibly in significant ways.

We will be working primarily in the Visual Texture Regions window, which is launched from the Expert menu. This window is used to specify which portions of your PNG texture images will be draped over each body of your aircraft. You can use the tabs along the top of this window combined with the radio buttons on the left to select which specific part you will edit. You can click and drag the regions covered by a part using the large box in the center of the window. Additionally, if you plan to use two image files in your aircraft’s textures, you can check the box next to a part labeled “use second texture.” In that case, the area of the texture image available for draping over that part will come from the second texture rather than the default one.

For instance, if you wanted the entire top half of the default image file for your aircraft to be draped over the left side of your fuselage, you would:
 * 1) Select the Fuselage tab at the top of the window,
 * 2) Click the radio button labeled “edit left side of body,” and
 * 3) Click and drag the flashing red box until it was around the entire top half of the image.


 * [[Image:Editing_visual_texture_regions_numbered.gif|thumb|500px|Figure 8.1: Editing the portion of the image used to texture the left side of the fuselage]]

Ideally, once your aircraft model is ready to use, you will set the regions of your texture to use with each part of the aircraft, then let X-Plane create a “starting-point” texture map, which will be divided according to the geometry of your aircraft’s parts and your settings in the Visual Texture Regions window. This starting-point can be opened in your image editor of choice and recolored or blended with a photo of your aircraft.

To create this starting-point texture, open the Special menu and click Output Texture Map Starting Points. This will create one or two PNG files, depending on your use of the “use second texture” checkboxes. For instance, Figure 8.2 shows the starting-point image file created for a Van’s RV-7. If you have not changed the locations of your aircraft’s bodies using the Visual Texture Regions, X-Plane will use the default locations, sizes, and shapes for each of your aircraft’s pieces.

These image file(s) will be saved in your aircraft's folder with the proper names. The first image (or the only one, as the case may be) will be called [ACF file name]_paint.png. The second image, where applicable, will be called [ACF file name]_paint2.png. Note that in order for Plane Maker and X-Plane to find the image textures, they must keep these names.

Note that images used with an aircraft file must have dimensions (in pixels) that are a power of two. For instance, the image could have a resolution of 512 x 2048, 1024 x 1024, 2048 x 1024, and so on, with a maximum resolution of 2048 x 2048. The files that Plane Maker outputs will abide by these rules.

Using the starting-point images from Plane Maker, you can create painted or photo-realistic textures. After modifying the image files, open the Special menu and click Reload Textures (or press the T key) to refresh the textures from your files.

For a step-by-step guide to creating a simple photo-realistic texture, see this tutorial on the X-Plane Wiki.


 * [[Image:Example_starting_point.png|thumb|500px|Figure 8.2: An example of the starting-point image file used in texturing an aircraft]]

Fine-Tuning a Paint Job
As discussed in the section above, the Visual Texture Regions window can be used to modify the portion of your texture image used for each part of the aircraft. Modifying these regions using the mouse, however, will always be limited in precision.

To gain fine control over the texture regions used for a part of the aircraft, use the Body Texture controls found throughout Plane Maker (for instance, in the windows for creating the fuselage, miscellaneous bodies, wings, wheels and tires, engine nacelles, and weapons).


 * [[Image:Fine-tune_body_textures.png|thumb|389px|Figure 8.3: The Body Texture controls, used for fine-tuning the portion of the texture draped over a given part]]

In the Body Texture box are two groups of four input boxes. The four boxes on the left specify the portion of the texture file to use with the left side of this part of the aircraft, while the four boxes on the right control the right side of the part. Each side has a top, left, right, and bottom coordinate, which is specified as a decimal portion of the width or height of the texture. Note that the “origin” here is the bottom left corner of your image file. Thus, if a body on the aircraft had its texture region set as follows, it would use the bottom left quarter of the texture:
 * Top = 0.5
 * Left = 0.0
 * Right = 0.5
 * Bottom = 0.0

Use these controls to fine-tune the placement of a texture, or to ensure that parts are not overlapping.

Adding a Livery
A livery is a second set of paint textures which can be selected in X-Plane by opening the Aircraft menu and clicking Open Livery. To use an image (such as an alternate version of your normal texture image) as a livery, save it with the same name as the original paint texture (that is, as [ACF file name]_paint.png and [ACF file name]_paint2.png), but place it in a directory with a path like this:


 * [Aircraft folder]\liveries\[Name of livery]\

For instance, the complete path for an aircraft's second livery might be:


 * X-Plane 9\Aircraft\Bonanza A36\livery\Red with accents\A36_paint.png

Compare this to the location of the default paint scheme, which would be:
 * X-Plane 9\Aircraft\Bonanza A36\A36_paint.png

Note that you must use the same placement of the aircraft’s parts in each of your liveries; that is, the fuselage, wings, wheels, etc. must all be in the same place, respectively, in each image.

To view and edit a different livery in Plane Maker, go to the File menu and select Open Livery.

Creating 3-D Objects for an Aircraft
In X-Plane, high-quality 3-D objects may be used as overlays for parts of the aircraft, for 3-D cockpits, or for elements of the scenery.

In the case of aircraft objects, only the Plane Maker-created .acf file can be used in the flight model. X-Plane uses this file only to determine the aircraft’s flight characteristics. Because of this, the ACF format is highly specialized and could never be used as a sort of all-purpose modeling format.

While Plane Maker is perfectly adequate for entering the design of the plane—it is reliable and easy to use—Plane Maker is not a 3-D modeling program. Instead, it is used to simply lay out the basic aerodynamic shapes and properties of an aircraft. This results in a model that looks okay, but not great. Plane Maker cannot make the complex model required for a 3-D cockpit, and it cannot create a highly detailed model of the craft as a whole to overlay the basic Plane-Maker model from which flight physics are calculated.

Instead, you can use a 3-D modeling program (such as 3ds Max, Blender, Google SketchUp, or AC3D) to create these objects. You can use any modeler able to export to the X-Plane OBJ file format. Many of the more popular modelers have plug-ins available to enable this; even if your modeler does not support it, you may be able to export to AC3D and save to an OBJ from there. Note, however, that the X-Plane OBJ format is not the same as the Alias OBJ format.

Regardless of which modeler you use, note that in order to use the OBJ with X-Plane, the file must use one texture per object.

You can find plug-ins for exporting from AC3D here on the X-Plane Wiki. For exporting from Blender or SketchUp, see Jonathan Harris’ plug-ins on his site. For danklaue’s updated Xplane2Blender script, see its X-Plane.org Download page.

The easiest way to get started modeling an aircraft is to let Plane Maker create a starting point OBJ for you. To do this, first create the ACF version of the craft in Plane Maker. Then, open the Special menu and click “Generate OBJ from Aircraft.” Plane Maker will create a file called “aircraft.obj” in your top-level X-Plane directory. This OBJ can then be imported into your modeling program for further editing.

Note that, in the export, Plane Maker will ignore any parts of the aircraft set to invisible. If you want all parts of the aircraft in your exported OBJ, open the Invisible Parts window from the Special menu and click the “Show all parts” button.

Attaching 3-D Objects
Having created .obj files for X-Plane per the proceeding section, you can add objects to your aircraft file in one of two ways. The 3-D cockpit object will automatically be added to the aircraft when it is saved as [ACF file name]_cockpit.obj in the top level of the aircraft’s directory. Other objects must be manually added to the aircraft using the Miscellaneous Objects window.

While miscellaneous objects can use a texture file with any name they specify (so long as the OBJ file references it), the 3-D cockpit must use a texture named [ACF file name]_cockpit_texture.png, and it must be stored in the aircraft’s top-level directory.

Miscellaneous objects (all OBJ files which are not [ACF file name]_cockpit.obj) must be stored in your aircraft directory, in a subdirectory called “objects.”


 * [[Image:Add_misc_object.png|thumb|800px|Figure 8.4: Controls for adding a miscellaneous object]]

With the miscellaneous objects saved in the correct location, open the Miscellaneous Objects window from the Standard menu. Using the two tabs in this window, you can attach up to 24 objects to the aircraft. To place an object in a given “slot” here, first click the small square in the left-center of the window. This will open a standard “Open File” dialog box, where you can navigate to your aircraft’s “objects” folder and select a .obj file.

With the object loaded, you can use the standard position controls (as described in the section “Fundamental Concepts” of Chapter 3) found here to change the object’s location and heading. Some aircraft designers, however, prefer to have the relative positioning of each piece of the aircraft set in their 3-D modeler, thus bypassing the positioning in Plane Maker.

Attaching a miscellaneous object to a part of the aircraft (using the drop-down menus on the far right) will cause the object to track the movement of that part. This is useful, for instance, when an object needs to move up and down with an aileron.

Finally, note that the lighting used on a given 3-D object depends on the lighting settings here. The cockpit object will have interior 3-D lighting (as described in the section “Configuring Internal Lights” of Chapter 6) applied when the “Cockpit object gets interior lighting” box, near the bottom the screen, is checked. Other objects will have lighting applied to them based on the drop-down lighting menu on the right side of the screen.

In X-Plane, interior light from the aircraft is applied only to the objects set to be “inside.” Objects whose lighting is set to “glass” will be drawn last and will be excluded from shadow calculations. Note that only objects tagged as glass will be drawn as properly translucent. This means that cockpit objects which might otherwise include windows should be split apart in a 3-D modeler so that the glass windows are a separate object from the rest of the cockpit.

3-D Object "Bouncers"
Plane Maker supports up to 14 “bouncers,” objects which can move around in the cockpit based on the aircraft’s turning and acceleration. These might be maps, pets, people, or snacks. To use a bouncer, you add an OBJ to the cockpit as usual, as a miscellaneous object. Then, after telling Plane Maker that you are using this bouncer, you can use a plug-in to animate this object based on the bouncer’s datarefs.

To input this bouncer’s features in Plane Maker, open the Systems window from the Standard menu. There, open the Bouncers tab. For each bouncer you intend to use, check the box labeled “has this bouncer.” Check the “bouncer can float freely” box if this object is not tied down; in this case, X-Plane will not constrain its motion in the vertical axis.

Then, indicate how much acceleration (in g-force units) the bouncer experiences when the aircraft’s engine is redlined. Input the spring and damping constants for the longitudinal, lateral, and vertical axes, which will determine how forcefully the object is held in place. Finally, set the maximum travel, in meters, as the farthest the bouncer is allowed to move before X-Plane simply stops it.

With the bouncer thus configured in the Systems window, you can create a plug-in to move the object by reading from the following datarefs:
 * sim/flightmodel2/misc/bouncer_x, the lateral offset in meters from default for this bouncer
 * sim/flightmodel2/misc/bouncer_y, the vertical offset in meters from default for this bouncer
 * sim/flightmodel2/misc/bouncer_z, the longitudinal offset in meters from default for this bouncer

Changing the Visibility an Aircraft’s Parts
When using 3-D objects created in a modeling program such as AC3D or Blender, you may want only the OBJ versions of a given part on the aircraft to be visible. This might be the case if, for instance, the Plane Maker-created ACF version of your fuselage was poking through the much prettier OBJ version in places. Or, you may have exported a starting-place OBJ of the entire aircraft and modified it in your 3-D modeler from there. In this case, there is no reason for the Plane Maker version of the aircraft to compete with the modeler-created one.

To handle these situations, Plane Maker allows you to make parts of the aircraft invisible. Using the Invisible Parts window, found in the Expert menu, you can simply check the boxes next to any parts you don’t want drawn, or use the “Show all parts” and “Hide all parts” buttons to quickly change all the parts. Regardless of their visibility, X-Plane will still calculate physics on all the aircraft’s parts.