The Start-to-Finish MSFS Livery tutorial - Blender texture painting using msfs2blend

[@Brl46574]

For future reference with GIMP, you can skip one of the final exports by just throwing all the layers into a layer group in their proper order, selecting it, and then doing the DDS export

[@jjohnson1667]

The other technique I use is to just Copy Visible and paste into paint.net and then do a quick save. This way I can change up the visibility quickly to get new results and then do the same copy visible to get a new dds.

[@reubenfrancisco5484]

i know Im quite randomly asking but does anybody know of a good site to watch newly released movies online?

[@ericklevi9735]

@Reuben Francisco flixportal =)

[@reubenfrancisco5484]

@Erick Levi Thanks, I went there and it seems like a nice service :) Appreciate it !

[@ericklevi9735]

@Reuben Francisco glad I could help =)

[@afpwebworks]

Thank you. For YEARS I've wanted to do my own livery for my own personal aircraft. (yes I'm a dreamer!) and never got around to it. There are a lot of steps in doing this but it looks a lot simpler than it used to be in previous sims. So I'm going to have a go at it. Thank you, AirBiscuit!

[@widemann1965]

Best tutorial ever, solved many questions I had in mind. Thanks a lot.

[@michaelkelly1251]

This is a fantastic complete tutorial, however at mid 60's I'm slow, so when you spelled Fuselage with the letters Fue it took me a Few minute. As you said, you were here to teach how to paint a plane, not how to spell, or use the tools to do it. "Watching carefully" I see it can be done ! That mystery of why textures are so chopped up "inside a square" explained is worth all 24.30 minutes to me.Thank you!

[@AirBiscuit]

What can I say, I was quite drunk when I started recording this. The amount of outtakes where I unintelligibly slurred what I was saying was significant. Other than that I'm glad it helped you a bit.

[@user-oq3su2bq3b]

@@AirBiscuit when i go to put it in my community folder it says my file path is to long and if i load up the flight sim my plane is all pink

[@emilioaraujocosta7934]

I've got one week to get it. From Brazil. Thanks so much for your patience.

[@FinnardoDeCaprio]

even though i don't have MSFS this tutorial was still very useful!

[@CarlosELugo]

Thank you very much for that tutorial, I made my first livery for Cessna 172 G1000. AMAZING!!!!!

[@MaxRank]

This is great stuff. I’ve been painting in XP for a long time, moving up to painting in 3D is so much easier. Thank you for the tutorial

[@wingsleveladventures]

Hey im just getting started, what do you do to get the .ACF into blender, and once you are done, how do you export it?

[@abbalarrs4976]

Thank you for a very good video that is short and to the point. I've been trying for months to add four letters on each side of my aircraft, watching to many LONG videos that never worked. I fly MSFS now more than I ever did, I'm proud of my aircraft. A reminder of a special band in the 70's and their tour to Austraila. My name may give you a hint as to the band.

[@BillSmith-rx9rm]

I've been a flight simmer since the early eighties but never got into doing my own repaints. I just now decided to look it up to see how it is done. Wow, I can't believe how complicated this is. And yet, everyone is saying that it is much better than it used to be. Unbelievable. Well I guess I won't be doing my own repaints. Don't have the time or energy to learn all this stuff.

[@the8ctagon]

This is an excellent tutorial, obviously very carefully considered, with exactly the right level of detail. Thank you so much.

[@edwardsp1916]

So much easier in XP. Thank you for the video.

[@bealine99]

Thank you very much for this. I shall try something very simple to start with and see how I get along. At last I seem to have found a tutorial I can understand.

[@yankunflies]

This was excellent. Just what I needed for my first livery! Thanks!

[@cutlass6332]

Thanks for this trying to get up to speed on liveries in MSFS having made a few for DCS

[@AntonioFardella]

Minute 18:10 ..... once you modified the layer MODE to "multiply" you can just fuse the two levels together and save directly the DDS file (of course if you want to modify further ahead you have to save a xcf version of the file). Tried, it works. Good tutorial though (it made me reinstall Blender after many years).... Good job!!

[@videagames]

Very good tutorial. Thanks so much brother! ❤💯

[@paulduggins9510]

Thank You very much for an excellent well explained easy to follow tutorial cant wait to create my first one been struggling to do it on my own thanks again Paul x

[@troymackaway8986]

One of the best tutorials I've come across, many thanks

[@BlueAerospace]

So umm, I followed the tutorial step by step, everything worked out perfectly except... when spawned in, if you zoom past a certain point, the windows go slightly purple, can anything be done to fix it? Thanks

[@wdrwilfred]

Nice easily taught..... At first A320 took a while to finish since Blender is new tool for me.... after that C172, King air 350, Baron g36, another livery for A320 all completed in 45 min. or so... Thank you.

[@khuzaima81]

How does ur a320 model import , mine apperas all wingless and wierd ?

[@wdrwilfred]

sorry for late response.... mine also wings were there in disoriented position, but i needed only the rudder and fuselage to do the custom painting. there was another you tube video that explains to move the 3d object to align properly.

[@lspdfrtrooper923]

TY for this! just enough to get me started and simple to understand!

[@gatechecked]

Is it possible to load the texture in blender and make the changes while in photoshop to preview it live in Blender? The problem I'm having is that I don't have a stencil of the image (very few reference photos) so I have to use the pen tool in photoshop to draw some of the lines.

[@airbus330tmt]

You can draw the figures/lines/etc in Photoshop in a transparent layer and save it as PNG and then import it as texture in Blender as stencil and "stamp" it on the aircraft and paint through it.

[@handoromper7987]

You are brilliant thank you. I can't see that you could explain anymore than you did Cheers

[@wilfred8391]

best tutorial out there cant finish though since the link to the template pack no longer exists

[@bunny-hu]

I am done some livery for other sims and that is painful to position anything. This way is so natural like painting a real airplane. I with I will found a same solution for DCS! That for the idea and for this nice tutorial!

[@rightrudder788]

Best msfs livery tutorial out there! Great work👏🏻

[@FlyingTheston]

Great tutorial!

[@admiralarms]

I do it the same as in the video but there is something I don't do well and I can't do anything, is it possible to send an email to ask you some questions outside of KZbin?

[@LuckyInLondon]

This is still my go-to video for refreshing the memory. Thanks AB! I want to graduate to creating liveries using the line and curve tools. AB briefly touches on this at 10:15. Can anyone suggest some tutorials showing how to create complex curved lines and filling them in with color? Cheers!

[@EricFlight]

Had to reinstall an older version of blender to do this as 4.1 was not the same layout and I couldn't figure out how to make a new texture before painting.

[@AirBiscuit]

They've really went crazy with Major releases of Blender in the past few years. I started on 2.49 in 2010, it's fascinating just how fast they move with the development these days. I haven't used blender much since I made this video 3 years ago.

[@ChuckD6809]

Really, really NICE! Thank you so much for this effort on your part.

[@jonafoelster]

Best tutorial of many i´ve seen before, thanks :D

[@sesgow]

love how this guy casually creates a plane with a load of turds on it while seriously explaining this process

[@aze2695]

i cant import the airplane model to blender, it says like "size wrong" or something

[@kartal2339]

Hi thanks for tutorial how can i make a line around body at one time?

[@thomashawke2822]

Awesome information, this worked perfectly for me, Thank you so much.

[@victorschiavinato8644]

Can you make a video teaching how to paint the whole plane including flapes, etc?

[@AirBiscuit]

I don't have MSFS any more so unfortunately no.

[@luizfunchal]

It was my first time using Blender and Paint.net . Managed to make my first livery Just following yours steps. My problems happened only later on figuring out those files aircraft.cfg and layout.json

[@kimdeckx7501]

Very nice explanation. I used it onto the A320NEO and everything went well, exept that i'm not capable to put the LOGO onto the RUDDER. The vertical fin is indeed showing a part of the LOGO, and even with the rest of the logo painted onto the rudder, it still does NOT show it into flight sim. Meaning that the rudder section is not saved with the new logo somehow. I don't know how to solve this. Any tips for blender us welcome..... Krgds Accompying Flight Engineer - Belgian Airliner.

[@azogbeats]

Have you saved the two files ? (rudder and vertical stabilizer)

[@ailianfoto]

Great Tutorial. Thanks for sharing your knowledge

[@Sousaboi865]

For some reason there are these tiny spots that don’t get painted over and refuse to with any other brush. I need some help..

[@KrystianL123Official]

For some reason it wont let me paint?

[@EddiZ-BZ]

Hi...by following your video I'm able to do a livery with paint and stencils and it works in MSFS. Only a little question: how to save the Blender Layout ? I saved the modified fusellage as .blen file but if I open it comes the magenta fusellage and my paint and stencils are disappeared. Thanks

[@AirBiscuit]

You shouldn't save it as a .blend, by default blend files don't save textures in them unless you "pack" the images in. Otherwise, a blend file will just use paths to a separate texture file located somewhere else on the drive, which won't exist if you don't save the texture that you have drawn to a file. There is very little use in saving to a blend file. If you need to stop midway through a design, save it as a .png then when you need to, load it in texture paint mode rather than create a new texture.

[@EddiZ-BZ]

@@AirBiscuit Hi. First of all thanks for very quick answer...i'm surprised. I just saved the png as dds and loaded as new livery and is correctly applied to the aircraft in MSFS. In my question I refer to the right side of Blender workspace (layout ?) where I paint the fusellage and apply the stencil. This in order to modify again the existing job in a second time. I have to export in a specific format ? Thanks

[@AirBiscuit]

@@EddiZ-BZ My mistake, I didn't read the first comment properly. docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/files/blend/open_save.html#file-load-ui

[@EddiZ-BZ]

@@AirBiscuit Hi and thanks for Your tutorial. I'm new Blender user but after few hours by following Your video I'm able to create a new livery for MSFS. will practice a little bit more with Blender basics. Thanks again

[@EddiZ-BZ]

@@AirBiscuit I have exported my Blender job in .fbx format and it seems that it's ok

[@stevenswadel]

Thank you sir.

[@Y0Y0]

Hi, is it any update of this plugin? I have many errors (mostly on 3th party addons) and finally cant see the model.

[@mjc8281]

Thanks so much for this I followed you step by step having not tried anything like this with any of the software.... Right up until the end for some reason I can't remove the decals, I have even tried changing their color to see if its the texture block in the file and I'm still getting them remain without a color change.... fell somewhat stumped, that being said really great work feel sure its something simple I have missed somewhere!

[@mjc8281]

Well I got there in the end, basically I went backwards, removing the decal first and then adding the livery, still don't understand what went wrong

[@YANKYVICTOR]

Excellent tutorial! Nice job!

[@Vlemeifa]

I have a recent problem. When I'm stencil painting i'm doing like always but doesnt paint the icon that i want to paint. its multiplies the icons... ( I'm on mask mapping Stencil , all normal :( )

[@DavidHoldenWoodturning]

Brilliant tutorial, mate! Thanks a lot.

[@RobertMcNamara3DMc]

Brilliant tutorial! Plenty of useful detail but no faffing about.

[@Eliovda001]

Thousands thanks ;)

[@jesus_77789]

Thank you, very well explained

[@ughotech2871]

Thanks !!!! Great video !

[@jsalm194]

Thank you. Great tutorial.

[@GeoZero]

Perfect tutorial.

[@capigeorgevirtual]

hello my friend how do you get template.thanks

[@MorrisseysMonkey]

I'm stumped. I have the blendermsfs addons and when I 'Import' a model I get an traceback error message.

[@gthou18]

same.

[@karmabasedj8184]

Is there a way to import photos directly as a paint?

[@socrates112]

Great tutorial.

[@KnedlikMCPE]

Ummm so I followed the video and the livery is just the default one but being inverted (black where there was white and opposite)? How do I solve that?

[@jimbo4377]

This is a fantastic tutorial thank you for putting it together. One question I do have though is. Do you know how to make the paint shiny on an aircraft which has been converted from fsx? Keep up the good work ❤

[@69ChevyGarage]

Great tutorial. What is I wanted to add a bare metal look like the classic American Airlines???

[@paolofanfani2932]

Hi guy's. I can't open the file by import because i've an error : Key Error: 'bpy_prop_collection[key]: key "Principled BSDF" not found' No one have this ?

[@ojt_windy_city]

I like this tutorial, thankyou for this.

[@capitancairlblandford5785]

Mesh error when importing model, how to fix?

[@The_roundabout_guy]

Amazing tutorial. I am having trouble when opening the model on blender with the glTF. It shows errors and won’t import. Can you help me?

[@rorypullman]

Is there another place to get the templates?

[@joshstoves387]

does anyone have access to those template files? the discord link doesnt work and i cant find anything on the internet

[@LtBran]

Great video, very helpful. Do you think you could make one on creating metallic textures in blender.

[@videolifeca]

If I wanted to create several static aircraft to put into an MSFS airport scenery, would I follow the same route or should I do something different?

[@DTfang]

Great Tutoria, I am having one issue, after loading my livery, icing is black on the front windshield. I did the TBM930. Using gimp. Cannot for the life of me figure out what is causing this. Any help would be appreceiated.

[@mikazukisakurach.2674]

Ive created a livery using the template, yet if i create another livery using the same aircraft template it wont load into the sim unless i remove the other one. Any way to be able to use the same template for the same aircraft yet have them both be selectable?

[@CaptainBobSim]

Hey! Thank you so much for making this video, it is of great quality! I subscribed :)

[@CarlosQuesadaR]

If you happen to make a line that you don't want, how can you rever it? delete it? Control Z does not remove it, thanks

[@AirBiscuit]

If your max undo memory isn't high enough in Blender, eventually you will lose the option to undo that far back. You're going to have to get rid of the line some other way

[@Emilijanandre08]

How do i change the name from "Template"

[@HussinKhan]

This is great thank you !!

[@end27]

tried with several planes but i cant get plane to show up in blender. its always empty. under collection theres only camera and light.

[@AirBiscuit]

Try with Asosob's official importer, they released this back in 2022. It probably has much better support for all the aircraft they made. github.com/AsoboStudio/glTF-Blender-IO-MSFS

[@normwright4894]

Great tutorial, but whenever I get to the point where I click on TexturePaint, In get a wireframe image in left panel. then if I try to click on right panel, the program crashes. Any Ideas?

[@19jeepee67]

Very motivated to learn, but been stopped quite early as although it seems to install properly, the import/export MSFS addon is not visible in the addon list even with the "enabled addons only" box unticked... Blender 2.9.2, coulmd it have to do with gltf 2.0 import-export addon installed by default ?

[@rigel2112]

I had this problem and redownloaded it using the "latest release" link instead. The file is a different size and that import worked. hopefully that will help you.

[@19jeepee67]

@@rigel2112 thx for your reply (tbh, I don't go to youtube regulalrly and missed your answer... tried many differetn importer addons, none would let me import gltf files, now using blender 3.0, but no joy

[@christophdiem3114]

hello mate, thank you for the video, is it possible to get in contact with you?

[@francis-bravoairspace2895]

GREAT VIDEO THANK YOU!!! 😁

[@miguelangellozano7016]

Hello, I have followed all the steps in your video, which is wonderful, but I have a problem. I can't remove the text from the license plate, and I see that in the texture you made for the caravan c208, it is still visible, albeit very faintly. Is there any way to remove this text? Thank you.

[@AirBiscuit]

Licence plates are hard, they're text variables which become rendered as textures. I don't remember how I made them faint. This was a few years ago.

[@ojt_windy_city]

my custom livery for tbm 930 doesnt show up, just white with faint default template, not sure what i am doing wrong so if anyone else has encountered this and can help that would be great.

[@Zockian]

Very nice Video

[@jiajianhou426]

Do you know how to change tail number Color?

[@AirBiscuit]

We couldn't figure it out on Discord.

[@salasnet8]

@@AirBiscuit I have not tested this, but does atc_id_color = in the Aircraft.cfg file not work?

[@retroJays1015]

This isn’t working for the TBM. Any idea why? The “template” livery shows up in the game but it just shows the default livery, not what I painted. I followed your steps exactly 4 different times to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. It worked when I did the caravan as you did in the video but not the TBM. Stumped.

[@floriancox5830]

I don't get what I'm doing wrong, but when I selected the plane in my hangar it crashes the game.....

[@davidjacobs8558]

when I import gltf model of airplane from MSFS into blender using this add on, some of the parts are not where they are supposed to be. sometimes the wings are flipped around, some parts are far away from the fuselage, etc. how do you fix this or avoid this ?

[@AirBiscuit]

Generally, you can't. The 3D models are in a mess in their files as they were never meant to be viewed this way but the game engine rearranges the all parts into their correct positions when the aircraft is loaded into the scene in game. The only way to test for any given is either look up someone who figured it out or by manual trial and error unfortunately :(

[@kimdeckx7501]

please make another video for the A320 NEO especially for the rudder and tail logo's.... would be very appreciated !!!!

[@AirBiscuit]

I can't, I stopped paying for game pass so I don't have the sim anymore.

[@kimdeckx7501]

@@AirBiscuit ok. Thats a pitty. Nevertheless you were for me the only one who explained the repaint clearly. Can you help me on how to repaint the engines as they exist in 2 sections fan cowls and reverser cowls and dont know how to find the file and how to repaint them. Many thanks in advance. Grtz from Belgium

[@danielmuller8665]

Is anyone else getting a “could not handle mesh” error for many parts of large aircraft like the airliners? Is this due to the computer, blender limitations, msfs2blender or what Really helpful video btw

[@AirBiscuit]

Based on the code in the python file, something is going wrong with the addon itself during the process rather than a blender error github.com/bestdani/msfs2blend/blob/master/io_msfs_gltf.py#L209, it's not an error I get when opening any of the airliners that come with the stardard edition. Might be worth opening an issue on the github repo.

[@danielmuller8665]

@@AirBiscuit thank you very much

[@alheeley]

Excellent tutorial, trying to stencil on the TBM930 but how can I select both fuselage, front & rear door, rudder, but no wings so I can map the stencil textures on properly? Every time I try it leaves the doors and rudder off :(

[@AirBiscuit]

I don't think you can paint on multiple materials at once. Best bet is checking the blender manual because I'm not familiar with it.

[@christopherbrisland7611]

That was a really useful tutorial - well done! A question or two if I may.... (basically it's all about authenticity) 1. Do you know of a way we can make our own livery decals? i.e. different stripe patterns (Cessna have had hundreds(??) of different factory stripes over the 50+ years they've been making planes). Also this would be useful for adding all those teenie decals such as "Tie Down", "Jack Here", "Push/No Push", "Fuel Drain" etc. 2. There are some decals such as the registrations that are annoying - I know of one way to hide them, but it means editing the panel config file. 3. There are some decals over decals (Extra 330 for instance) that are in .tif.dds format (the Extra company logos on the forward, sides of the fuselage and the vertical stabiliser) - do you have any suggestions how to hide these? 4. Another nuisance is the actual placement of decals - if you check the different national airworthiness authorities, you'll see that there are as many different rules about size and placement as aircraft types in the sky ;) - just as an example: the airbus factory registrations are usually in a completely different place to the final owner's registration. Anyway, thanks a lot for that tutorial - things have changed so much now with msfs over fsx; it's a whole new ball game.

[@antonioiozzi9171]

This is the best video I have seen so far. Just one question. How to draw complex shapes? Until now you have done lines if I well remember, but aircrafts livery are quite complex. There are not only lines splash and logos. However you merit a subscription. If I want to write reg. Nr on the underside of port wing without mirroring? Recently Asobo has changed the texture of the VL3 and Icon and I don't ubdersfand anymore how the texture structure is running.

[@AirBiscuit]

For drawing complex shapes, draw them in a 2D image editor then apply them as stencils like you would with logos. For mirroring I don't know, and I've lost all my notes and data when my hard drive failed.

[@JohnDLewis]

Brilliant tutorial but I can't get beyopnd the point where you show how to create a new texture. Because in Blender, I don't get a "Texture slots" area so no plus sign and no way to add it. What am I doing wrong?

[@AirBiscuit]

What version of blender are you using? They completely changed the UI in newer versions since this video

[@JohnDLewis]

Hi: I'm using blender 4. I could probably find the version you were using. if you'd let me know that. Or where I find the texture slots in v4.0 THANKS for replying. The tutorial is xcellent.@@AirBiscuit

[@JohnDLewis]

SOLVED BACK TO BLENDER 3.6 and I'm good to go. God knows where it is in V 4.0 Thanks

[@TheSeeli86]

Thank you for your help. :)

[@FarmLapse]

Literally nothing works in my blender. I did everything you've done to draw that straight line curve and I just can not set a starting point.

[@AirBiscuit]

If you're using a different version of blender than I was they might have changed the tools. There have been 12 releases of blender since this video, and 2 of them were major changes.

[@garrycheney6171]

Best tutorial on this subject on youtube! Brilliantly paced. Thank you My only issue is Getting rid of Decals 21:16 I am using PhotoshopCC and when I try to save the transparent image it tells me "too many channels (5)." any advie? cheers

[@jonb6226]

Maybe as a work around (until someone who knows Photoshop can help you) try Gimp for deleting the decals. It works without any issues and it's free:)

[@krzysztofk1936]

Hello I have such a problem! 1. I imported the building from the Xplane 11 flight simulator into a blender. 2. From the blender I exported the building with the texture to the MSFS2020 extended gITF 2.0 flight simulator 3. MSFS2020 flight simulator, the texture of the building is not the same as in the blender, the texture is dark colors are dark I took a screenshot here: avd.cba.pl/msfs2020/screenshot/screenshot.jpg 4. Such a curiosity when I put a new object next to an imported building in a blender and apply the same texture to it, then it's ok. I am struggling with this problem and cannot cope. It seems to me that in the building that was imported there are some incorrect settings parameters in the blender that I do not know where to look and what should I change to make the textures the same bright. I saved the project so that I could see what the settings are and uploaded it to the server in the .blend format Project: avd.cba.pl/msfs2020/budy.blend Texture: avd.cba.pl/msfs2020/budy.png I am not very proficient in handling a blender, I would ask for help in solving this problem, thank you in advance.

[@linuxuser1234]

How do I model the touch screen tablet in a plane

[@AirBiscuit]

No idea.