Blackbox Simulation HD Paint Kit Tutorial

Blackbox Airbus Wide body V0.85X Paint Kit tutorial

Welcome to the Blackbox Simulation Software Wide Body Paint kit tutorial.

Without explaining the various painting techniques, we will show you here how to use the paint Kits
and how easy it is to create your own great repaints for The Wide Body A330 & A340 Aircraft.

Firstly, let’s prepare your paint package. I would recommend Adobe Photoshop or Paintshop Pro,
but there are numerous other Paint Programs you may choose from and you may already be used to
using something else. It is important however, that whatever program you use can use Photoshop
style Groups and layers.

I will assume you have a Basic knowledge of Aircraft Painting as the subject is far too deep to extend
this tutorial to cover the whole subject area. So let’s begin ….

Initial Setup
Firstly, Unzip the contents of V0.850.Widebody.Paintkits.zip into a new folder. You will then have all
paint kits available in one place and easily accessible at any time in the paint process.

We will be creating an A330-200 Livery for this tutorial but the method is identical for ALL Versions.

Firstly, you need to load the file “V0.85.BBS-A332-MAIN-PAINTKIT.psd” from your new Paint kits
folder into Photoshop (or the Paint package of your choice) it should look like this: -

ALL INITIAL PAINTING IS DONE HERE AND THEN TRANSFERRED TO THE TEXTURE SHEET

You can see that the Aircraft is laid out in “wire frame” with various sections outlined, Only the left
side of the main fuselage is provided but in 99.9% Of cases that’s all you’re going to need and we will
show you how to flip the sections once transferred to the Texture sheet. The major details and lines
are provided as guides in the “layers” so let’s move on and explain how we use the different layers.

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Understanding the layers

Ok, you can see that we have provided several grouped “layers” in the main paint kit. You will find
Panel Lines, Rivets and the Hard details common to all aircraft. They are selectable Visible / Invisible
(using the EYE Icon) so you can hide or show them at any time, or you can simply change the
transparency to suit your needs or preferences. These layers are here to guide your paint process
and to help you locate various positions on the aircraft, they will not be used in the final texture
sheet. The Layer / Group colour codes will help you but we will go into this later in the process.

Outside of the groups you will see a further three Layers, Cutting Guides, Detailed Wire and
REGISTRATIONS, The Cutting guide and registrations will help you later when you come to transfer to
the main Texture sheet, The Detailed Wire is your general reference to the aircraft shape.

STARTING YOUR LIVERY

Firstly, make visible and expand the LIVERY Group where you will find a Sub Group called “BBS”

This contains the BlackBox livery as featured on the BBS A330-200 and has been left in to show the
basics of how and where to paint your livery details. You will also find a Sub Group called TEXT, this
will become more important later when you transfer to the main livery sheets.

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STARTING YOUR LIVERY

First thing you need to do is to create a new Sub Group inside the LIVERY group and name it “My
New Livery” (or whatever you chose to name it of course)

Next, create a New LAYER Within your new Sub-group and start painting your Livery on this new
Blank Layer. It’s probably best to start with the base layers of colour for the Paint your doing

NOTE - You can use as many layers as you need for this so long as they remain within your “new
livery” Sub Group. You will also need to De-select (make invisible) the BLACKBOX Group so that you
have a blank sheet to work with. Don’t forget to de-select any layers that might get in your way. Try
using Just the wireframe layer as a guide for example.

To Make life easier you only need to paint One side of the base livery (Unless of course the aircraft
has different paint each side!) So You can start creating your stripes, blocks, designs for the chosen
Livery. But leave any TEXT or LOGO Till last. (More on this next up)

NOTE – PAINT ONLY THE COLOURS ON TOP, ANYTHING REMAINING WHITE SHOULD STAY
TRANSPARENT and use your background Layer at the bottom (see example BBS Livery for examples)

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TEXT AND LOGOS

When painting Airline Logo or text such as the N-Numbers you will need to flip these horizontally for
the right side in most cases. It is easier to make a Sub Group inside your Livery folder for these items.

This will make it much easier later when you need to find the “flippable” Items for your right sides.
Add things like the N-Number, Airline Logo text, special decals and Aircraft Names, but NOT the
national flag! The flag remains the same on Both sides of the aircraft in almost every case as if it is
flying on a flag pole and being blown towards the tail in the wind. So in the Maltese Flag example ...
the Red half would be at the REAR of the aircraft on both sides (surprised me too!)

So continue painting all the little details until your livery is completely finished. You will have noticed
there are no engines on this template, this is because you have the choice of three engine types and
we will handle these on a different template later. So now it’s time to move the new livery to
Flightsim, fine tune the layers for dirt and panel lines and add a few necessary details …

Once you’re finished painting you can save your work and prepare to transfer the new livery across
to the Main Texture Sheet (The one that will be used in Flightsim or P3D) So go ahead and save your
work. Then open up the File “BBS-A330-200-HD.psd” From the Paint Kit folder. You will notice that
all dirt and panel lines are on their highest setting. These are of course tuneable so you can find the
levels you are comfortable with and that suits the livery your painting but we will cover this later. For
now, you can turn off the panel lines and dirt Layers.

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TRANSFERRING YOUR FINISHED LIVERY TO THE FLIGHTSIM TEXTURE SHEET

On your original Template (the one you just painted) you will need to turn OFF all layers apart from
your New Livery Group, the Registrations Layer, The background Layer and The Cutting Guides Layer.
Secondly create a new Sub Group in BBS-A330-200-HD.PSD under the Livery Group for you to
transfer the new livery into and name it suitably. You are now ready to transfer your livery into the
Texture sheet. Please read and understand the following process before continuing. It appears quite
complex but becomes very easy after the first attempts.

1- Using the selection tool, outline the ORANGE Cutting guide for the Aircraft forward section
2- Once selected accurately, turn OFF the cutting guide layer and COPY MERGED
3- Now PASTE to BBS-A330-200-HD as a new Layer inside your new Livery Sub Group
4- Carefully align the new section with the marks in the texture sheet.
5- Repeat 1 – 4 until you have copied All left sides of your work to the texture sheet.
6- Return to the template and “flip horizontal” any text you need to mirror for the right side

7- When ALL required text has been flipped, repeat steps 1, 2 and 3 from the list above
8- This time when pasting into the Texture Sheet you need to “Flip horizontal” again
9- Align the right side paint with the registration marks as before
10- Repeat copy – paste – flip again for all your new right side sections
11- Once all the parts have been transferred, you can Save and close the template

NOTES ON ALIGNMENT

Registration marks look like this and are a single pixel width to enable easy and accurate
alignment of your painting. If these marks are not PERFECTLY ALIGNED, then your texture
will not fit the model accurately!! So Carefully nudge the newly pasted layer so that the
registration marks line up EXACTLY, you should not see any part of the new mark once it is
aligned with the one on the texture sheet.

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ADDING THE DETAILS

You will see now that there a few wire frame areas not painted or transferred from the
template. We need to add these manually.

This first section contains the Nose wheel doors, Cockpit window frames and another box to
the right for the windscreen ID.
Firstly, you will need to fill the windscreen frames area with a colour to match your livery,
sometimes these are different to the main fuselage colour like Aer Lingus for example so just
fill with a suitable colour. The nose wheel doors are next and you can see some detail
already from the overlaid Details layer. Here we just need to Fill the area the same shade as
your livery undersides and add the Numbers or text that appears on the small doors.

These next two areas are where the Antennae are mapped and parts of the Fairing that need
shading. Simply leave the antennae section white and make a transparent gradient fill for
the area above, filling behind it with Underside Colour If it’s not plain white.

IF your livery has a number or any text ABOVE the windscreen You must add this to the
section just to the right of the nose wheel doors on the texture sheet. You will see our BBS
livery examples has “BBS” here above the windscreen facing forwards. Once the text is
applied, this new area must now be made PURE WHITE in the Alpha channel otherwise it will
remain Invisible on your aircraft instead of allowing just the text to show through the paint.

Main Texture sheet Alpha channel

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FINALISING YOUR TEXTURE READY FOR FLIGHTSIM

Almost done, now you can adjust the intensity of the panel lines and dirt layers.

These are set at around 20% in the example above, but you can set them anywhere suitable for your
livery or switch them off altogether if you prefer.

This completes the “Diffuse” part of the main livery, you must now make any required edits to the
Alpha channel of your texture, I won’t go to deeply into this as most painters know what to do here
but the darker you go, the more reflection you will have. We have this set at around 30% Grey
overall, to allow for good quality dynamic reflections in P3D and it seems to suit the reflections in
FSX also. In the vast majority of cases, the existing alpha channel will be good for most repaints. If
you need to adjust the alpha for particularly shiny or matt effects, then please feel free to do
whatever you like but make a backup of the original in case you want to go back to it or compare
results.

So, all adjustments made, You’re happy with the levels of dirt and weathering. Let’s save the texture
and make it ready for Flightsim.

1st Make ALL LAYERS VISIBLE apart from the GUIDES then Save the file using the SAME FILE NAME as
it was supplied originally, in this example it must be saved as BBS-A330-200-HD.PSD

Then convert to DDS. I personally save direct from Photoshop with the Nvidia DDS plug in but you
can also save as PSD then convert with “Aces Imagetool” (from the FSX SDK) but you may wish to
save another way or use some other tool you are already using. Here is the output from Photoshop
Nvidia Tools showing the correct settings required for DDS DXT5 Format

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CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE FINISHED YOUR NEW FUSELAGE!

This is what a final texture sheet should look like when viewed in Photoshop, Some DDS viewers will
flip and invert the texture but with the correct plugins you can work on the texture this way and
leave the DDS tools to automatically flip and invert for you when you save.

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CONVERTING V0.815 TEXTURES TO V0.85

We have Added additional mapping on the underside of the fuselage that extends past the fairing on
older textures. This must be edited to fit the newer V0.850 Models. Here’s a quick “how to”

Original Mapping on V0.810 and earlier

New Mapping on V0.850

As you can see A330 models are quite simply a case of continuing the painting into the new areas
outside the fairing. However, this does become quite complex on the 340’s as you can see below.

Here as you can see, you must paint into the extended areas (red) and then MOVE these sections to
the new (green) spaces provided. Again you will find registration marks to assist with the alignment
process. We apologise for this minor inconvenience but we had to allocate clean space on the
texture sheet without overlapping other parts. Also please note, for the A340-300 the Right Winglets
have had to be moved. But new registration marks will help you move these also.

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THE ENGINES
No we haven’t forgotten, The A330-200 and A330-300 Wide Body Aircraft come with Various
engines so we have mapped these to a separate texture sheet, these are listed below.

 BBS-A330-GE.psd - For the General Electric CF6 80E Engines

 BBS-A330-PW.psd – For the Pratt and Whitney PW 4000 Engines
 BBS-A330-RR.psd – For the Rolls Royce Trent 700 Engines

We will work with the GE CF6 Engine for this tutorial but the process is identical for any engine
however The A340 Aircraft carry the Engines on the main sheet as normal. So go ahead and open the
file BBS-A330-GE.psd from the paint Kit Folder. This time we will be painting directly onto the
Texture sheet as it appears in The Sim. Note if your engines are Plain White then there is no need to
create this texture as default white ones already exist in the Common Folder.

This is how the texture should appear, notice there are many areas already used on this sheet so
take care to ONLY paint your livery within the engines red Lined Area. You will find panel lines and
rivet detail layers here also that you can adjust for your own preferences. And the inside and
outside of each engine is clearly labelled. So paint and save to DXT5 as before and that’s it!

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Wing editing
Finally, if you require new details for the wings such as N-Numbers or coloured Fairings these can be
done with the supplied WING texture. Please note that this Single Texture is used for both WING-L
and WING-R as the Left wings are mirrored in their mapping. You must type your N Number into the
already mirrored layer and save as BBS-A330-WING-L.DDS into the Livery Folder. You can see by the
Layers supplied you have 3 different colours available plus various overlays like the no walk lines,
coloured fairings and corroguard paint

Please note-

BBS-A330-WING-R.DDS is only required if it contains differences to the “standard” wing as it will be

mapped from the Common Folder.

Finally save all your newly painted & converted DDS textures to a new texture folder for your livery
and make the necessary edits to the Aircraft.cfg Taking care to Keep to the BBS Naming and layout
conventions. This will allow your repaints to be delivered and installed Automatically Via our new
Pre Flight Manager..

This completes the V0.85 Paint Kit Tutorial!

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