Military AI Works

Special design applied to a Lockheed Martin C-130J "Hercules" of n° 86th Wing - 37 squadron "Foremost" (37sqn) of The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) based to RAAF Base Richmond, New South Wales with a special decoration for 75 years of the squadron (1943/2018).



All credit to original designer!

Much thanks

Mark

Very cool!

Thank you for this Mark. I've been trying to work on the new 37 Sqn scheme for myself to update the RAAF C-130J-30 textures, but it seems that my Photoshop skills are very lacking at the moment.

You wouldn't by chance have done the rest of the fleet, or have a very good tutorial on Photoshop CC? Struggling right now with text layers and the decal application process.

Many thanks for your work.

Cheers!

Darren

airplanedoktor wrote: 25 Jul 2018, 14:40 Thank you for this Mark. I've been trying to work on the new 37 Sqn scheme for myself to update the RAAF C-130J-30 textures, but it seems that my Photoshop skills are very lacking at the moment.

You wouldn't by chance have done the rest of the fleet, or have a very good tutorial on Photoshop CC? Struggling right now with text layers and the decal application process.

Many thanks for your work.

Cheers!

Darren

Hi Darren, ok personelly i would use something like Paint Shop Pro 7 when starting out painting anything after that and it starts looking and feeling more like photoshop, psp7 is far easier to get to grips with!

I beleive all the 37 Squadron C-130s have recently had the new coat of paint in the last couple of years, with the last one recently being finished! if this is the case i am happy to send you my c-130 template/Paint Kit for you to finsih off the rest of them, there is also a layer there which you can change the serials, unfortunetly i have not finsihed the special as i couldnt find an image of how the logo looks on the right hand tail, i have an idea but diddnt want to do it until it found one!

If interested in the Paintkit please msg me!

Much thanks

Mark

Just watched a RAAF -130J-30 a couple of months ago and the new scheme does seem pretty dark in-person, I do like the very AFSOC camo look.

Victory103 wrote: 25 Jul 2018, 19:34 Just watched a RAAF -130J-30 a couple of months ago and the new scheme does seem pretty dark in-person, I do like the very AFSOC camo look.

Yes that grey is quite hard to get right due to so many different shades it can show up as, ive seen images of it looking like a very light grey, but i colour matched about 10 images of it and came out with the colour i have it at now!

Much thanks

Mark

Adding to Darren's post, I also have been struggling to learn how to paint, but mainly it's a time issue. Martin's AIAE program is a big help with the ability to view textures with MCX after a few mouse clicks and then use your own paint editor, I'm running the freeware paint.net. I started with a simple change of helmet color on the NBAI Hornets, very minor little detail. I'd like to move on to entire squadrons, just can't figure out how to get the scale model decal sheets to transfer over.

Chris, yes i used to use FSReapant to view the models when repainting but then discovered MCX can do it also, it surely helps in a big way to see what you are doing as you go along.

When you say scale model decal sheets what exactly do you mean?

Much thanks

Mark

Mark,
In the past, it was recommended from other painters to use the decal sheets for scale plastic models to get the correct unit markings and insignia since these are not in the paint kits. I've got the paint kits, somewhat understand how layers work, it was moving the designs over giving me fits. Since you paint so many of the "specials", are you hand painting them or using photos?

In my example, I can find the color decal sheets for all the EA-18s Growlers CAG jets, it's getting those markings into paint.net.

Chris, 98% of my repaints are all hand painted from images, i generally get an image of what i want to use resize it considerably and make a layer over it and redo the all designs in Hi-Res by hand, i even make my own decals for all units! its a lot of work but i just dont like the copy and paste technique.

Getting the decals of Scale model sheets seems quite a bit of work in itself, you may not end up with neat decals but have jagged ones, it would be more ideal for you to have the decals with no background, ie a png image or psp/psd, if you can give me some indication of the markings/decals you need i can help you with that if you would like..

Much thanks

Mark

I repainted the entire C-130J fleet a little while back and passed the files on to Martin. I believe he will be including them in a future update.

As with Mark, I too had some difficulty getting the shading right but settled on the colour you see in these screenshots. I don't have the smart looking 75th anniversary tail though.





Cheers,
Graham