We all have, on our computers, tools which can make the painting & drawing of aircraft more simple. There is, however, no quick, foolproof method. Can I pass on some tricks I've discovered which make the job easier. Now that flat-bed scanners are available very cheaply, we can think of using them as an aid to help drawing aircraft & painting textures. Since the first draft of this article I've added some more tips on converting files from .pcx to .bmp & working on .bmp files.

For this paper I shall use my Sopwith Snipe as a model & show you how useful the scanned images can be. As well as the software that came with the scanner ( U-Lead iPlus ) the only extra software I use is Paint Shop Pro: although I have the current version 5 I find the older shareware version 4xx more useful - I'll tell you why later. The methods work for Flight Shop & Aircraft Factory 99 - if I refer to one I mean both.

Don't believe that you can easily draw in Aircraft Factory without decent reference - it's possible but less rewarding. It's niggling to see errors which could have been corrected. It's amazing how many times something turns up shortly after you needed it. I recently found Bob Banka's Scale Model Research, He's collected thousands of plans. I've recently ordered plans from him & was delighted by the service & quality - the only plan of the Miles Libellula I've seen. Pkaeronaut used to have a good selection of WW2 plans but they seem to have gone off the 'net.

I've also used plans from model aircraft magazines, reference books & from plastic model boxes. Thanks to the 'net some of my aircraft references have been sent from the other side of the world.

Try to collect photos of the original - you've obviously been excited by some particular prototype. If your interest is in contemporary aircraft it's easier. For your first few aircraft try something fairly simple, I was pleased as Punch when I re-drew Dave McQueen's BOAC Stratocruiser into earlier livery & saw it flying. Don't try WW1 German lozenge fabric as your first project!

Let's get down to business.

The scanner is used to get the reference plan onto paper the size we need it. Scan the plan in the normal way - at 200 dpi - if I've only a small plan I use 400 dpi. Of course if your source of plan is a computer file you won't need the scanner at all.

The sequence I use to draw aircraft on the computer is similar to drawing one on paper . The most intimidating thing is a blank page so let's start filling it.

Step 1
Scan your 3-view plan, then, using PSP 4, split it into side, top & front views. Keep the original - rename your clipped images. Now for the sneaky tricks - starting with your side view crop the aircraft to its full length. The Snipe was 19' 2" - 230". Resize your image to a multiple of 230 - I used 460 pixels. Draw a couple of guide lines on your image. Most plans will already have a longitudinal datum line - draw a vertical where you would anticipate the centre of gravity. You now have a 0,0 datum which corresponds to that in Flight Shop. This view I've named 'snipesid'.

I've cropped the rudder on this view as I'm drawing the WW1 version which I know was 8" shorter. We want a hard copy from which we'll take measurements. In PSP 4 the print size can be specified in millimeters which suits our purpose better. If you specify a width of 230 mm our hard copy will be to a scale of 1 mm - 1 inch.

Step 2
Imagine you're building a flying model; you'd start with the fuselage frame. Do exactly the same on the computer. Sketch the fuselage onto the screen using about 3 reference points aft & 2 forward of the C/G. Now, using your hard copy measure off & with the point editor edit your initial drawing. Thinking ahead to texturing try to place bulkheads so that you can have components with an aspect ratio close to 2:1. Save your file as something like fusform1.afp. Add the spine of the a/c, call that fusform2.afp.

Do the same thing with the rudder, wings, elevator & wheels. We now have enough formers needed to rough out our Snipe. Give it a footprint so that it can stand on the runway. Go to the Assembly Shop View List. Add the parts you've drawn so far (into their correct groups) & produce the aircraft. If you're in af99 you'll have to fight with the Project Wizard - make sure you've downloaded & installed the update.

tip - load an aircraft into fs98 similar to the one you're designing - when Project Wizard asks for a similar aircraft you're in with a head start.

Step 3
This is where we size another drawing. One very useful tool in Flight Shop is the Souvenir Shop. If you haven't used it yet Souvenir Shop puts a screen shot of your project onto the Windows Clipboard. You could also, at any time, press Alt+PrintScreen to take a screen shot. In PSP either press Ctrl+V or Paste - as New Image. The drawing will be there in your default colours. Decrease the colour depth to 2 colours & make sure the image is black on white background.

Crop the image the same as the plan & print a hard copy to the same size as before (230 mm). It should be possible to compare the image you've just drawn with the prototype. The easiest way is to put the model over the prototype, then put them up to a window so that the 2 images are visible. If you're skilled / inspired / lucky the two will be coincident. Mine never have been. Draw the differences onto the hard copy. You can now go back to your formers & alter them. It's far simpler to make sure your important measurements are correct at this stage than have to alter dozens of panels later - believe me! During the course of drawing your 'plane refer to this drawing & keep measuring. This is the advantage of resizing our virtual image - it can also be measured. The cursor coordinates will be shown & can be translated to a length on the model. You could also crop your master drawing at the datum line & mirror it - your measurements can be fed in as negatives - saves subtracting. Remember the old craftman's adage "measure twice, cut once" - we're not cutting but it's still a pain to have to correct a simple error of measurement.

In theory you can, in your drawing program, superimpose 2 images as transparent. If you know how to do this please let me know - I've never managed it.

Step 4
The Snipe, unlike the Pup or the Camel, has a rounded fuselage. I've recently been introduced to aftools - instead of having to draw each panel you only have to draw bulkheads then use afcmpbld to produce the panels. Use the same tool to produce the wheels & major wing panels - you'll soon get the hang of it, this program saves hours of drawing.

Take screen shots often to compare to your prototype drawing.

Back to the Snipe. It's easiest if we can trace from the screen shot to the texture file. We know that the texture files are 256 * 256 - that is each side is 128 * 256. The trick is to distort the screen shots to the same size & aspect ratio.

Using a 3-view drawing
Let's look at the fuselage first. In PSP take your prototype view - in my case 'snipesid'. Crop it in the same place as your main components - in my case into 'nose' & 'fuselage'. Resize these images to 128 * 256, decrease or increase the colour depth to 256 colours. They will be your masters for texture files. I used texture files 1 & 2, note the fuselage is compressed, the nose is stretched. I could have taken the nose texture further back & used the rest of the file for the pilot. There's another advantage of a scanner - you can fly all your aircraft! If you use one texture file to apply in two places split the file in half or quarter - it makes the maths simpler. An explanation of the maths comes later.

I normally make the prototype plan 256 * 128 then work on the textures. There are times, such as applying lettering, when it's easier to keep the prototype plan in its natural aspect ratio then resize it. Try both. Some painters go to enormous lengths to keep the aspect ratio normal then bleed the file in Flight Shop View List. You pay your money & take your choice.

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More sneaky tricks
One of the quirks of FS is the palette & the necessity of using af5_std.pcx. You must use exactly the same palette or you'll have textures that light up in the dark! I normally insert the texture file into an established texture file - if nothing else the colours I'm going to use are right there. For the Snipe I used texture files from the Dolphin. The Dolphin was drawn some time ago, as can be seen it's not 2 : 1.

I was recently given the secret of saving .pcx files in PSP - on the "Save As" panel change the version to "version 5" in order to save in 256 colours. Thanks to that simple tip PSP is now far more useful.

Make sure the clipboard is empty.

Open the fuselage.pcx from the Dolphin - or whatever you have.

Make the Snipe fuselage live by clicking on the top bar. Press Ctrl + C, or the Copy icon. The image will now be on the clipboard.

Make the Dolphin fuselage live again. On the Edit menu - go to Paste - as new selection (Ctrl + E). The Snipe image will appear & can be adjusted by dragging - left mouse button held down. Right click to lock it in position. Save it in the active Flight Shop folder as 'fuselage.pcx'.

In Flight Shop open 'photo lab' & treat the .pcx to its treatment. Make sure the useless dither box is unchecked. At least they dropped this feature in AF99. I wasted hours before I discovered that it was doing more harm than good. Apply the texture to the fuselage, if the fuselage is a component make sure that it's 'smooth' in the 'Application Type' box, produce the aircraft & see what it looks like.

The Snipe wearing some of the Dolphin's textures. Notice the roundel, compressed on 'fuselage.pcx' is truly round again. Once more it's easier to check the textures now before you've done any work on them.

The fus.pcx file with more work - notice I've kept the drawing of the stringers, infilling with the green.

Here the top starboard wing is shown. Part of the Dolphin wing has been superimposed. The spacing of the ribs & riblets can be measured directly. Notice that this view is as an .af file appears & has been converted to a .bmp using r8pak - a set of tools to convert .r8 files to & from .bmp format. Like aftools these are programs which work in DOS & take a little learning. There are other programs available; find the one which you find simplest.

Bmp to Pcx to Bmp to Af
There's been some chat in the forum lately about converting files - here's my twopenny worth.

I haven't a clue about the inner workings of fs98 but I know the texture files appear to be applied from the port side or from the top. The starboard or bottom surfaces appearing as though projected through the fuselage or wing. I don't know how or why but it does explain the different layout of the parts between the .pcx as drawn & the .af file. Using one of the .af to .bmp programs gives a .bmp in the same format as the .af file. It is possible to view an .af file direct in PSP but it's a bind & in my opinion not a good idea. I think it's better to work indirect allowing back-up copies to be kept.

Take a look at the two files of the BOAC Britannia fin - the pcx as drawn on the left. This image is for side/fore application.

To work on the .bmp you must twiddle with it a little.
1rotate the whole image 90 degrees left
2flip the top half ( 0 - 127 ) horizontal [ in PSP mirror ]
3reverse any lettering & in this case the Union Flag
4work away
5reverse the above sequence before reconverting to an .af file

I'd normally only work on one side & copy the other.

Here's the starboard wing, again the .pcx is on the left. This is an example of top application.

The only change is that one surface is reversed from the .pcx - in this case the lower surface. Any lettering will be reversed.

Less twiddling for a top application.
1Flip the bottom half ( 128 - 255 )
2work as on a .pcx
3Flip & reverse any lettering
4save & reconvert to an .af file

Normally I'd draw one wing, save it then flip the image & save that as the other wing - then apply the lettering. It's not always possible to do this - WW2 RAF aircraft always have asymmetrical camouflage.

Sadly it's easy to forget to flip the wing textures - I recently sent 2 aircraft to flightsim.com with the wing textures reversed - interestingly not many people noticed.

It's possible to alter a texture file while the aircraft is visible in flightsim. When you minimise flightsim the texture files are dumped & re-read when you maximise. If you run Norton Unerase you'll see this.

To prove the method works anywhere here's a Britannia 102 wearing an Aeromodeller plan. Look at the flash under the nose - very difficult by trial & error.

The same tricks without a 3-view
If you are working from photos you'll have a different starting point, unless you have a photo from exactly side-on & without distortion. Incidentally you can't normally import or adapt a coloured photo, most drawing programs will give you colour values which don't equate to the fs5 palette. You can use a program afpaint which converts colours to the fs5 palette values.

Let's look at the Britannia 312 tail. I have as my reference the 'Souvenir Shop' screen shot.

Crop the image around the fin, save the image. Always keep the original & copy parts from it - you don't know when you'll need it again.

You have a reference image which is exactly as you've drawn it; whether it's accurate or not it will exactly match your model. There are several ways of drawing your texture. Increase the colour depth to 256 colours & insert it into another .PCX as before.

Draw it same size & then resize it. As this might mean resizing in two axes I wouldn't recommend it. I'd suggest making the height 128 pixels & maintaining the aspect ratio. The image here is 203 * 128 pixels.

Resizing the image to 256 * 128 pixels before texturing, then fitting the texture in 'View List' to 'this object only' or 'all objects sharing PCX' . This is the most straight-forward method but risks distortion.

The image here is still 203 * 128 but I've added a border of 53 to the right side to make it 256 * 128. This should give you a distortion free fin but involves the use of the calculator in placing the .PCX.

The last two options together. This is the fin for the the El Al Britannia. The distortion of the top unstretched image is from the drawing program - I resized it from the .pcx after drawing.

The maths
Don't worry - you've got the calculator to help you. Actually it's not that tricky. If we used the fin .PCX with its 53 pixels of spare space across the whole fin the black space would show - the image would be compressed; what we need to do is move it backwards by an exact amount. We have an image 256 wide of which we want to use 203 from the left.

The fin .PCX fits the aircraft from -32.8 to -71.7; that is it's 32.8 wide. Our calculator sum has to be 32.8 * (256 / 203). The calculator gave me a figure of 49.05615763546798029556650244630532 - we don't need to be this exact 49.1 will be quite good enough. If we now add 49.1 to -32.8 we have -81.9. If the .PCX is now fitted from -32.8 to -81.9, the textured part will fit exactly.

This method should give the best results.

After the model is complete & flying to my satisfaction I prefer not to disturb it again - especially if it's been animated. Using r8pak or one of the other utilities paint it from the flightsim folder. It's always possible to take a screen shot in flightsim by using Alt + Print Screen - I take all my shots in this way.

A couple of shots of the York in some of its BOAC livery. Its easier to see any odd things happening - the bar over the windows is very irregular!

Thanks to those people who have given me tips over the last couple of years - all I've done is put those tips together with illustrations.

References
I can recommend the construction articles by Brian Quayle - the handbook should be this good.

I put a request for a Cl44 livery on the freeflight forum & was instantly given cl44.com , a site which gives the life history of every Cl44 built. Thanks to Frank Safranak for that one. Other aircraft have their sites - not many as good as this one.

I also found on the forum reference to airliners.net - a goldmine of photos including some classics.

Visit Heathrow Props for classic European airliners & other aircraft.

Richard Osborne

richard@rosbo77.freeserve.co.uk
rosbo77@aol.com