CF-104 Starfighter skins by jocko417

[jocko417]

Here I will be posting skins for the VSN F-104G model, representing the Canadair-built CF-104 in various liveries, both natural metal and camo, as seen during the aircraft's service life with the RCAF/CAF.

 

To use the skins you will need the add on VSN F-104G model, which can be found in this thread:

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/147247-vsn-flyable-aircraft-mods/

 

Skins should be placed in your Saved Games folder, not your DCS/Mods tree, or the game may not allow the model to be used.

 

For example:

 

C:\Users\<your user name here>\Saved Games\DCS\Mods\aircraft\VSN_F-104G\Liveries
 

Home based CF-104 12701 of the CEPE (Central Experimental and Proving Establishment), RCAF Station Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada:

 

 

Download HERE

 

 

European based CF-104 12833, 3 (Fighter) Wing, RCAF Station Zweibrücken, West Germany:

 

 

Download HERE

 

 

F-104G 12613 of the 141st "Wolf" Squadron, Turkish Air Force, Ankara AB:

 

 

Download HERE

Common Textures folder for F-104 skins HERE

 

F-104G, Luke AFB:

 

 

Download HERE

 

CF-104, Canadian Armed Forces, CFB Cold Lake, 1972:

 

 

Download HERE

 

CF-104 12703, RCAF Station Marville, France, 1966:

 

Download HERE

 

F-104 57-0914, 435th TFS, George AFB, 1966:

 

 

Download HERE

 

CF-104 104783 of No. 417 (OTS), circa 1982

 

 

Download HERE

Southeast Asia camouflage skins available...

 

F-104 56-891, 435th TFS (Snoopy Sniper/Nancy J)

 

Download HERE

 

F-104 57-925, "Smoke II", 435th TFS, Udorn Royal Thai AFB, Thailand, circa 1966.

 

Download HERE

Edited January 12 by jocko417
restructure

[71st_AH Rob]

Excellent! Looking forward to seeing these.

 

I'm certain that you will do a 439 Sqn skin and ask for a 441 Sqn skin to go with it!

 

 

Edited April 18, 2019 by 71st_AH Rob

[gianlu320]

Beautiful

Can't wait to see it finished

[jocko417]

I think I've got the RoughMets for the metal finish figured out, seeing how different alloys and shine/reflectivity/colour of them will appear in game.

 

Also adding my own extra details like more rivet lines (starting at aft section and working forward), and creating new normal maps to match.

 

Nationality markings are place holders to test RoughMets and how painted portions will look on the metal. This is a nice model! :)

 

 

 

[gianlu320]

Very nice indeed!

Just a heads up

Yesterday they updated the f104 version once again

I don’t really understand what changed but may be it’s worth checking before you do all this work to find out everything needs to be redone for the next version

[jocko417]

Coming along, doing some of the stencils and some other nationality markings. Still working through the tedious stuff too (rivets)...

 

European-based CF-104s were initially tasked for Recon or Strike, the latter being a polite term for high speed nuke delivery. ;)

 

Aircraft wore minimal paint, speed being the order of the day. Upper surfaces in white. RCAF markings style as seen between 1961 and 1965.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[m0j0NL]

Wow! that 104 looks amazing!, love the variations in metal shading, exactly something i have been trying to as well.. but not as good as above :)

 

Would you mind sharing how you got the baremetal finish?..thats still a mystery to me and some of the skins i`m working on really need at least parts to be that way.

Edited April 21, 2019 by m0j0NL

[m0j0NL]

This one for example, the 3 colors of the engine compartment really should have a metallic shine to them, the colors game of a really well done weathered plastic model, but IG they just does not..have the correct feel being a gloss paint.

 

 

p.s. I know where to look, the VSN_F104G-01_RoughMet.dds, but i have no clue how to work with this.

Edited April 21, 2019 by m0j0NL

[jocko417]

I'm certainly no expert but I've had good results so far with remembering rule #1 for natural metal finish... "Pink is your friend!" :D

 

 

Here's a screen of the number 1 template. Painted surfaces are all about "Orange", as you probably know from using the default RoughMets. I've turned these layers off so we can focus on the metal finish. I use white, black and brown layers, with opacities from 5 to 20%, to give the tail section (and other panels) those different colours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, the RoughMet files seem to work like this for metal finish: Pink is a good start, you can lighten or darken certain areas to add or take away shine and reflectivity. Green and yellow are good colours for matte surfaces, like the fiberglass antenna areas on the forward fuselage. I'm still experimenting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Put them together and you get this (working on tip tanks now, compare with earlier shot above):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally got around to doing the pitot tube stripes. In reality they were painted in a spiral, I'll see if I can do that later. This is how the airplane would have looked like during the early 1960s in Europe, only thing missing is a Mk.28 nuke on the center line pylon...

 

BTW, I really like the model, but someone with a nasty sense of humour decided the Diffuse and RoughMet files should be different resolutions :huh: so have fun resizing various layers if you want to move them from one file to another to... "save time". :P I resized the RoughMet pictured above from the native 4096 down to 2048 to save space and make it easier to compare the two texture files.

 

I vote to have the diffuse files upped to 4096 resolution to match the Roughmets. Would be really nice when working with small text like the maintenance stencils.

 

Hope this helps.

Edited April 22, 2019 by jocko417

[m0j0NL]

Thank you very much for the easy to understand tips! :)

 

After playing around with pink for 30 minutes or so:

 

 

 

Thank you! :worthy::worthy::worthy::worthy:

 

 

Now to apply this.. second paintjob to the entire plane :) double the work, but double the result!

[jocko417]

Beautiful! Sometimes the work can be tedious but it’s always worth it! :)

[m0j0NL]

Any idea how to pack the whole thing, write the .lua so its just a question of unpacking the skin for someone that wants to use it?.

 

Or will they have to manually move Roughmet files to the texture folder/zip?.

[cdpkobra]

description.lua

livery = {
   {"VSN_F104G-01", 0, "VSN_F104G-01AL",false},
   {"VSN_F104G-02", 0, "VSN_F104G-02AL",false},
   {"VSN_F104G-03", 0, "VSN_F104G-03AL",false},
   {"VSN_F104G-04", 0, "VSN_F104G-04AL",false},
   {"VSN_F104G-05", 0, "VSN_F104G-05AL",false},
   {"VSN_F104G-06", 0, "VSN_F104G-06",true},
   {"VSN_F104G-07", 0, "VSN_F104G-05AL",false},
   {"VSN_F104G_Pilot", 0, "VSN_F104G_Pilot",true},
   
   {"VSN_F104G-01", ROUGHNESS_METALLIC, "VSN_F104G-01AL_RoughMet",false},
   {"VSN_F104G-02", ROUGHNESS_METALLIC, "VSN_F104G-02AL_RoughMet",false},
   {"VSN_F104G-03", ROUGHNESS_METALLIC, "VSN_F104G-03AL_RoughMet",false},
   {"VSN_F104G-04", ROUGHNESS_METALLIC, "VSN_F104G-04AL_RoughMet",false},
   {"VSN_F104G-05", ROUGHNESS_METALLIC, "VSN_F104G-05AL_RoughMet",false},
   {"VSN_F104G-06", ROUGHNESS_METALLIC, "VSN_F104G-06_RoughMet",true},
   {"VSN_F104G-07", ROUGHNESS_METALLIC, "VSN_F104G-05AL_RoughMet",false},
   {"VSN_F104G_Pilot", ROUGHNESS_METALLIC, "VSN_F104G_Pilot_RoughMet",true},
}
name = "example"

copy all textures into the Liveris folder

VSN_F104G\Liveries\VSN_F104G\example\

and customize the description.lua in this folder

Edited April 22, 2019 by cdpkobra

[jocko417]

See, advice from the expert! :)

 

Kobra, can you confirm for everyone that we should be able to use 4096 resolution in future for the diffuse 1, 2, 3 textures and 2048 for the pylons and tanks diffuse textures, to match the existing RoughMet files?

[m0j0NL]

description.lua

 

copy all textures into the Liveris folder

VSN_F104G\Liveries\VSN_F104G\example\

and customize the description.lua in this folder

 

Hmm but won`t DCS look for the roughmets in the rar file located in Textures?, because looking at your lua I don`t see it refer to roughmets located in the livery folder... but I could be looking at it the wrong way.

 

Btw, the Japanese skin is done and uploaded (with instructions to manually add the roughmets to the rar file), after which my plan is to start work on one of those Chrome Lawn Darts like yours, but one for the JASDF.

 

Again thanks for your help.

[jocko417]

When the lines in the lua end with “false” it tells the game to look for textures outside of the rar file. If the line ends with “true”, it uses the default textures in the rar file.

 

So in Kobra’s example above, the game will use the default texture 6, the ejection seat, and the pilot texture from the rar file but everything else used would be your modified textures for the aircraft, located within your specific livery folder.

Edited April 23, 2019 by jocko417

[m0j0NL]

When the lines in the lua end with “false” it tells the game to look for textures outside of the rar file. If the line ends with “true”, it uses the default textures in the rar file.

 

So in Kobra’s example above, the game will use the default texture 6, the ejection seat, and the pilot texture from the rar file but everything else used would be your modified textures for the aircraft, located within your specific livery folder.

 

Damn.. such a small line of text, will make, making the skin easier again, since I was constantly updating the texture rar :) so again Thanks!

 

Have you found any good source websites for future F-104 skins?.

 

I have been using:

 

http://www.916-starfighter.de/main.htm

 

http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww3/f/60/94/0#11 (link to the Canadian F-104`s)

 

And google, and for me the most help has been searching for model kit end result photo`s at 2k resolution, because smaller its just to hard to get the detail`s i`m looking for.

[m0j0NL]

p.s. here is the finished Japanese skin you helped me with:

 

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3304518/

[jocko417]

Damn.. such a small line of text, will make, making the skin easier again, since I was constantly updating the texture rar :) so again Thanks!

 

Have you found any good source websites for future F-104 skins?.

 

I have been using:

 

http://www.916-starfighter.de/main.htm

 

http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww3/f/60/94/0#11 (link to the Canadian F-104`s)

 

And google, and for me the most help has been searching for model kit end result photo`s at 2k resolution, because smaller its just to hard to get the detail`s i`m looking for.

 

That 916-starfighter site is a great resource, I prefer period photos over profiles like in the second link, artist renditions can sometimes be inaccurate. My CF-104 references, while not as extensive as my F-86 ones, include these books:

 

Starfighter by David Bashow

 

https://www.biblio.com/starfighter-by-bashow-david-l/work/2509204

 

RCAF Aircraft Finish and Markings books by Patrick Martin:

 

http://www3.telus.net/m1729/books.htm

 

Canadian Starfighters, also by Patrick Martin:

 

https://www.amazon.com/ARDB003-AirDoc-Publications-Starfighters-1961-1968/dp/3935687982

 

Great book, has lots of high rez colour photos and some colour aircraft profiles by Richard J. Caruana that ARE accurate :)

 

Also, 417 Squadron History book, out of print but you can find it on eBay. 417 was the CF-104 training squadron in Canada for a while.

 

Your skin looks very nice and I almost had a heart attack when I saw the screenshot with those T-33s parked in the background (T-33s?! We have a T-33 model?!!?). Then I realized it was an actual photo! :)

[m0j0NL]

Thanks for your links, and hehe no, we don`t have the T-33 :D

[000rick000]

As a big time metal enthusiast, these are great Jocko!

[m0j0NL]

Goodmorning Jocko,

 

Found a nice challenging CF-104 for your next project :D

 

 

http://www.916-starfighter.de/Large/Stars/wC785.htm

 

 

Trying to match all those squares over the three skin files... :cry:

[jocko417]

Hi rick, yeah the PBR stuff sure gives easier results than the old spec files! :) Will be nice when the Sabre gets the upgrade too.

 

Mojo, I just KNEW somebody was going to bring up that “checkerbird”...

[m0j0NL]

:D

[71st_AH Rob]

Mojo, I just KNEW somebody was going to bring up that “checkerbird”...

 

Yay! And it wasn't me!

 

Go 441!