Beech Baron58 Repaint Kit
By Chris 'Ace Chaplan' Klein
& Bob 'Lonewolf' Hayes


Important: This is not a tutorial on how to repaint aircraft! It is simply a basic guide for people who are familiar with repainting aircraft and who would like a foundation for repainting the Baron.

Introduction:
Thank you for downloading this tool. The Beech Baron58 has widely been regarded as a big favorite of the default aircraft in FS2K2, but sadly there are a distinct lack of repaints out there. The ones that are out there are all quite excellent, but the patience involved to get all the details included is quite beyond us mere mortals! With this template you won't need to redraw all the panel lines, rivets, and such as they are included as layers to be put on top of your artwork!
I did my best to get as detailed as possible for my level of patience and skill. I have drawn all the rivets and panel lines but not to the same level of detail as was the original paintjob. This took me quite a long time to finish! I had to do just a little bit at a time, day by day so I wouldn't go insane drawing rivets! Rivets! Rivets! AHAHA! RIVETS! I then got talented painter Bob Hayes to add some of his own work, namely, his famous weathered effect!
So here you go! All the dirty work is done already all you got to do is make it look pretty (or ugly)! Have fun! We can't wait to see what you come up with!


The Layers

Overall Shading/Highlights: This layer will add an overall light/shadow effect that can really enhance the main shape and depth of the fuselage. Adjust the Transparency to suite your paintjob, you may want it less pronounced for lighter colors or more so for darker colors.

Weather/Dirt/Oil: The icing on the cake! This will add that great weathered effect seen on some of Lonewolf's repaints! Adjust the transparency from 'factory fresh' (invisible) to 'nicely worn in' (medium) to 'sadly worn out' (opaque).

Structural Elements: These are the parts of the aircraft that would usually not be painted, like the propellers, gear, tires, glass, etc... of course nothing is stopping you from repainting these.

Detail Shadows, Lines & rivets, & Detail Highlights: These are included as overly dark (or light in the case of highlights) so you can adjust the transparency to suit the lightness or darkness of your paintjob. You may need to recolor these to suite different areas depending on where you paint. The Lines and rivets also have a secondary white layer that can be used instead of the black layer. It usually looks good to have lighter colors on darker background and vice versa. Also the white lines and rivets layer is handy for making an alpha channel where you don't want them to reflect. Also, you might find that using a retouch tool like soften on the rivets (not the lines) to have a nice effect, but it depends on how busy your paintjob is. Try to keep the Rivets and Lines subtle!

Main Color: This is simply a layer that you can re-color to produce the overall color you want for your plane. It also serves as the main outline. I recommend making a separate transparent layer over this for your decorations.



Special layers:

Alpha (Structure Overlay): This only covers the structural elements that are not intended (or only intended) to be reflective. You will want to create your own Alpha channel underneath this one to suite your paint job. Then you can apply negative images of the 'Overall shading/highlight' layer*, the 'weather/dirt/oil layer', the 'details shadow layer'** , the 'details highlight layer', and the 'panel lines/Rivets layer' (light or dark or combine them). Remember to adjust the prop spinner if you don't want it to be chrome.

*Be subtle when making an alpha image of the overall shading/highlight layer as you may find the highlight aspect a little overpowering if it is too opaque.
**When reversing the detail shadows you will also want to use a lighten tool on the shadow layer around the wing edges as it is a medium gray and cannot be reversed.)

Virtual Cockpit: After you have finished your repaint make a backup of it and save it as a merged bitmap. Now go back to your work in progress and activate the Virtual Cockpit Layer (paint it if you wish) and save it under a different name, also as a merged bitmap. This must be formatted as DX1 and saved as Beech_Baron_58_c.bmp. If you don't do this, your plane will retain the default paintjob when viewed from the Virtual Cockpit. Note: Since it is a DX1 layer it will not have any reflections, so try to make any chrome visible through the cockpit look metallic. How? Beats me!

Damage: After some experimentation I am not sure if this texture even gets used, even with damage effects turned on, it seems to access a different texture called damage.bmp in this case. But if I am wrong here it is for you to use! Activate this layer over your repaint, format it as DX1 and save it as: beech_Baron_58_d.bmp. If you don't include this, then your plane may switch to the default baron paint job when it crashes. Feel free to add as much damage as you see fit. Doesn't really have to look pretty! Note: No reflections on this texture either. (See above)

Reference Layer: This is the default paintjob and is intended for reference only. You may want to take a peek at it now and then as you do your repaint.

When you are finished make sure you copy the remaining textures from the default baron folder over to your new one! Don't forget to adjust the Aircraft.cfg!

Credits:

Overall Shading/Highlights Layer, Weather/Dirt/Oil Layer, Main Color Layer, and various enhancements by Bob Hayes

All other layers, presentation, and documentation by Chris Klein

Questions/Comments: kleinlove@shaw.ca
Please do not ask me how to do repaints! I don't mind helping here or there, it's just that I don't have a lot of time to do a comprehensive walkthrough and I don't want to feel like a jerk for saying 'No'. If you have never done a repaint before you owe it to yourself to learn how to use your paint program of choice and consult the various excellent repainting tutorials available for download.

Legal: You may NOT make any money of this Repaint Kit. You may NOT use this to make any repaints that you intend to sell. The Beech Baron model and original texture are created by and property of Microsoft. The Beech Baron 58 Repaint Kit is FREEWARE. Feel free to use it to make repaints, but if you use it for a repaint you intend to distribute please let people know you used the Beech Baron 58 Repaint Kit by Chris Klein and Bob Hayes, We worked hard on this and would like some recognition! Thankyou!