Graphics Tutorial Continued

Step 1 – Name on aircraft

Our first graphics task is to create the Bahamasair text on the side of the aircraft. (See Figure 6)

 
Figure 6

The master texture that we are working has two parts to the fuselage.  We will work on the front (the uppermost fuselage section of the bahamasair-737.bmp texture).

You will notice that this section of the fuselage seem to be duplicated – this is because the front part, up to the divider, is used for the left side of the aircraft and the rear part, after the divider, is used for the right side of the aircraft. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: the right side is mirrored when placed on the model so the TEXT must be mirrored on this right side area of the texture.  See Figure 7

Figure 7

Figure 8 demonstrates this issue – very important to be aware of many Flight Sim Models have requirements for some mirrored text or detail.


Figure 8

Tool to be used: Dropper

Open the Bahamasair-2.bmp  - select the Dropper Tool in the left column and then move the dropper over the Bahamasair text in the image – select the colour of the text using the left mouse button (to change the top colour choice to the greenish/blue colours of the name).

Close the Bahamasair-2.bmp image.

Tool/s to be used: Text  and possibly Mover

Now select the Text Tool and click on the front part of the fuselage area. Type in Bahamasair.  Because we do not have the pretty font we will have to make do with Arial Bold for this task – select size 28 and then press OK

Position the text at about the location shown in Figure 9.  Be careful not to go too high on the fuselage area as the higher areas are pulled around the model and stretching effects can occur which spoils the texture detail.  If you need to re-grab the text for a move use the Mover Tool.

 
Figure 9

Now do the text again for the second side of the aircraft: but this time we will have to mirror (CTRL M) it so that is shows correctly when placed on the model.   Make sure that you try to visually line up the text and balance them equally on each side of the aircraft. See Figure 10

Figure 10

Well that takes care of the naming task – if you by chance have a font more closely representing the Bahamasair font feel free to use that instead of Arial Bold 28

Time to save your work

Click on Menu Item FILE – SAVE – always a good idea to save regularly.

Sometimes I use File Save As and add a digit to the end of the name – just in case I want to roll back or change something but in this case we will be brave and simply save over the top of the current working texture “bahamasair-737.bmp"

Now go to Step 2 The Lines