Problem with painting

[Trucker17]

Sorry guys was'nt sure where to post this.....
I am in need of some help and advice....
I am useing photoshop7. and a dell computer.
Heres the problem.
I am painting A2A WOP3 P51D mustangs at the moment.
I have tried everything i can think of to get my paintwork to show thru the polished metal....But nothing ever shows....I can get a very nice high polished chrome look but nothing else shows of the paint, even trying to do a natural metal look comes out the same way.....
The paint shows with only a grey metal and no shine.....
I am sure i am missing smething in the paint process....
Here is what i do....
When i am finished with the paint, i save a copy of the work for later updates, then make the file a DDS.....
I then open the T_ spec fie and the T_spec Alpha file and merge them as i did with the P51D_t file and alpha...
Di i need to add the paint work to the T_spec file as well? to get the paint to show the shine of the metal as well...

[Serval]

Can you show the result so far? I think that that will help people to tell you what your problem is.
And did you take a look at the profile tutorials?

[Trucker17]

Here are some screens of the two paints.....
This one is POW/MIA.


This is Berlin Express.

[Serval]

Which sim is this?
The results in game depend a lot on the game engine.
Only few sims have a reflection mapping, so the paint allways looks dull. In this case you have to paint the reflections yourself.

I'd try to use lighter shades of gray and a bit blueish.
Though it is for another sim, you can download Jesters or my templates for the Mustang and other aircraft known to have bare metal (P-40 for example) to see how we worked around such issues for the IL-2 series.

Find as many photo's as you can find of the aircraft type you want to repaint. And in this case especially the baremetal ones. There study the reflections.

Have a look at the profiles posted here, since what you actually have to do is profiling on a 3D model.

[Trucker17]

Here are some screens of the two paints.....
This one is POW/MIA.


This is Berlin Express.

These are for the A2A Simulations P51D mustang for Flight sim X

[Serval]

I'll move this one to Flightsim forum then. That way people with experience with FS can give more usefull tips I hope.

[adlabs6]

Did the original repaints have alpha maps for the reflections? If so, you need to reapply those alpha maps to your repaint exactly as they were in the original.

A good reference to start with is looking closely at a copy of one of the original skins included with the model. Then package your work exactly back to that standard.