2012 has seen a rocky start for us here at McPhat Studios.

And by 'rocky' I mean 'Earthquake-buildings-collapsing-all-around-you-rocky'.

The past couple of weeks we've been busy -mostly- with troubleshooting one after the other unstable DC-9 Virtual Cockpit compile. Where one problem got resolved, another one surfaced. I spend most of yesterday -my usually relaxing Sunday- on troubleshooting faulty gauges, trying, testing, tinkering, discussing an issue that was not there a day before. Frustrating.

And here I thought we'd be doing some artsy stuff, creating 3D cubes and tubes, smooth them out, slap some textures on them and be done with it.

While we're making great progress and are already able to show some of the awesome results we're getting, developing the graphical side of the Coolsky DC-9 has proven to be much more than a challenge. Maybe it was wishful (or should I say ignorant) thinking that it would be a smooth ride, who knows? All I can say is that I spend most of my time deep frying my brains, trying to figure out solutions and taking mandatory time outs once in a while to keep myself from throwing in the towel.

And by 'throwing in the towel', I really mean "Getting shot between the eyes for the 11th time in a row by a 12 year old kid named Noobkiller playing BF3-Rage-Quitting"..

One of the things I've been mostly proud of in our short puny existence is not just the graphics we've been able to pull out a 5 -going on 6- year old platform, but also the fact that we never missed a deadline. Ever.

If it meant working in the weekend and nights, we did it. If it meant running on a 4 hour sleep cycle for weeks, we did it. If it meant going round the clock, not sleeping at all. We did it, or at least I did.

And for some reason I always thought having your own business equalled working less hours...

We're running late. Late late, passed deadline late and although the end is near and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, I bet we'll see one or two bumps in the road in the coming days/weeks...

For those of you that may remember, back in the days, our slogan used to be 'We tear 'em up, we wear 'em down, for you to fly..'. Dirt, grime, weather, wear and tear was what we 'did'. In a clean aircraft dominated repaint world, we had to differentiate ourselves, right of the bat. So we did exactly that.

When we made the transition to and started focusing on (Ultra) High Definition Textures, not too long after, we found a new way to do things 'a little different' than the rest. For some reason we ditched the wear and tear and focused on clean(er), but High Definition Textures instead.

Gone were the days that I -tediously- spend hours scratching off paint, dual brushing myself through panel lines, grooves and rivets. No more nitpicking ordeals, just straight up, back to the basic 'painting'. When you think of it, in some ways it was a necessity; By going HD, we added hundreds of hours of development time. We went from 50MB Normal Definition paintkits, to 2GB UHDT kits and all those extra bytes really meant extra time, lots of it and we had  compensate, somehow..

Lately -while working on the NGX-  we stumbled upon a 'problem': We couldn't regulate the level of gloss any longer, which meant that we lost a lot of detail from the glossy effect. Even on UHDT it meant our textures were coming out somewhat bland. Flavourless one could even say..

So what now?

The answer was easy. Where my Intuos tablet was getting used to being a place holder for my Wacom mouse, it was time to take out the trusty 1024 pressure point airbush grip pen again. It was time to go back to our roots: Roughing up paint, piercing through rivets, adding dirt, dust, oil, dents, scratches and grease. One pixel at a time.

Within minutes I found myself setting (or is it messing?) up pressure points, finding the sweet spot on the angle slider, combining tip shapes, dual colour and brushes, textures, spacings and all that other good stuff that puts the Artist in Texture Artist. Like nothing ever changed, the minutes became hours, the hours became days and the past couple of weeks I was back to doing what I like doing best: Textures in the purest form of the word.

In some ways, the NGX came right in time to get (re-)acquainted with our old 'motto'. As our 3D modelers are setting up Coolsky to go 'Beta' on the DC9, I am ready to rough this old 'gal' up like it's going out of style (which she really is, going out of style). I get to chip of paint from the corners of bolts and screws, scratch it of from panels or add it a little too thick where the tech guy that did some maintenance was a little to enthusiastic with his bucket of blue paint. I get to play with adding 'texture' to the 'Initial Cruise Segment EPR Card', making sure it reflects differently than the surrounding panel area it is glued on, making sure the paper itself has a different texture than the metal. All hand painted so we can match the diffuse, specular and bump map seamlessly.  In the past year, I may have glanced at the DC-9 project as big hurdle once in a while, but now I can (happily) say:

'She's right up my alley'.

We ended 2010 with a bang, started 2011 with a (although slightly smaller) bang and now -halfway on our way to 2012- there's still 'banging', but this time mostly in the form of hands, shaped like fists on my door and on my desk...

The year has been hectic. Although we wheeled in some new talent, 'old' talent also left. People whom had been with us for years left and the toll it has taken is apparent. Yes, some of the new guys (and girl) are just as talented or perhaps even more, but you take a hit when people leave, who know the company inside and out and we took the hit alright. Hard. Right on the nose. Twice.

Where our frontliners (Texture Artists and a handful of painters) used to solely focus on the core of our business (that would be Textures), supported by staff who lead the company, most of them now have dual roles. From basic overhead, to project management, from creating Youtube content to research and from Marketing to Support. Because this change happened gradually, over time and because it was a necessity (as is the mother of invention) opposed to being planned, along come the 'challenges' of all us getting comfortable within our new roles.

The last couple of weeks I've seen my attention shift from the frontline to -almost on a daily basis- talks, meetings and discussions with my team. Some lengthy, some exhaustingly lengthy, some ridiculously lengthy.

And if that isn't enough, with the DC-9 3D development phase nearing its end and with four 3D Artists on the team (and another 2 joining soon), guess what has to happen? Indeed :  talking and discussing our next steps with the ones on board, and creating, shaping, explaining and enrolling with the ones who are about to join.

All and all, there's been a lot of talking lately and although it apparently is part of my job description, I hope I can soon get back to 'work'...

If you ever read the AVSIM feature on McPhat Studios (if not, click and read it) and especially the part where we're called 'Dutch Masters', you would think our team consists only of 'Dutchies'. Where it started out as solely a Dutch outfit , this soon changed and with a couple of Argies (people from Argentina, yes I make up words on the fly), a Canadian, an Icelander, Brit and a couple of Yanks you could even say we've been overrun by foreigners. Masters we still are, but Dutch, you could hardly call us and the next team member I'm introducing doesn't quite balance that out in favour of us cheese eating, wooden shoes wearing, electronic music loving inhabitants of the world :

Luke van de Rest

The name may imply Luke's from 'The motherland', but he's not. He's from the one place on earth where women have sexy accents and people are always enjoying themselves : Australia. Don't ask me where it is exactly I got that mental picture of Australia, but it works out for me like that. It's basically England, but sans all the sour looking people, the hooligans and with a whole lot more sun. Or so I imagine.

Luke's role is to mould, create and shape the exterior 3D model of the DC-9 (dash 30). Initially supplied with the Super 80 source files, he soon decided to start from the ground up, getting rid of all the work previously done. The Super 80 may look good and has awesome performance, it also was a development once made for Flight Simulator 9. Besides, 3D Artists don't like working of somebody else's work/work flow. Or so I've been told.

The main reason for starting with a clean sheet, was that our assignment was to make the model not only up to today's standards, but it also has to last for at least a couple more years. Like the guys and girls at Microsoft proved ; Sometimes it's best to leave the old cornerstones for what they are and build from a fresh and new foundation.

With that being said, we gave Luke a pile of work that kept him occupied for a good few months. Me, asking for renders every other day (who doesn't love renders right?), didn't really speed things up, but it gave us a fair idea of the quality of his work :  He made the model look sweet like apple pie and with (how he likes to call it) the usual McPhat One-Two (as in textures), you guys are in for great looking exterior graphics.

As a closing remark, I'd like you to check out the first ever render of what you may expect not here in this blog, or on our website even, but at our freshly created Facebook fan page.

Don't forget to hit that 'I like' button guys!

A couple of months ago -while doing my usual weekly rounds, checking out forums, portals and websites from our colleagues and fellow developers- I landed on the Captain Sim forums. Browsing the repaint section to see what was new, my attention was soon drawn to some pretty skilful texture work.

Those of you familiar with Captain Sim's artwork know that you don't have to be no Van Gogh to shell out a top notch repaint, using their paintkits. The detail and quality their stock paintkit delivers is truly that good. Yet, here I saw someone take the time and effort to alter and customize the already solid textures, tweaking specular and bump maps and even taking it to the next level, by going High Definition.

There was only one thing I could do : Wheel her in and do it fast, before somebody else would.

Beccause I've been a Captain Sim customer, since the first Block for the 757 came out for Flight Simulator 9, many, many years ago I am also a forum member. Being an absolute mess when it comes to backing up my installers, I bought the 757 at least three times, (and some of their other products) therefor having multiple accounts. Being somewhat inconsistent  with the whole password thing (and because I am -at times- a lazy sob), I gave up logging in after 3 tries and asked our 'Captain Sim man' Dave Sweetman to do it for me and recruit her. Her name?

Sara Louise Coupon.

In charge of slapping some colour on Jamal's 3D Virtual Cockpit, Sara's has been working mainly on the 3D gauges for the Coolsky DC-9. All 40 or so, in all their different states (powered up, down, flags showing etc). She''s the kind of Texture Artist that vectors all her work, jumbo size, just because she can and if you think she makes just one gauge per instrument, guess again. She tracked down all three Altimeters used on the -30 and made them all. Again, just because she can (and because she hopes Espen will throw weeks of work overboard picking the best looking and not the one he already did the work for). All screenshots are scaled down (50%) : Type 1, Type 2, Type 3.

During the years I have learned a great deal from the Texture Artists we have on staff. Everybody has their own ways, skills and even though I've been Photoshoppin' for over 12 years, once in a while I scratch the back of my head when I see the resourcefulness displayed and techniques utilized by some of these guys. Six out of ten times though, I don't have to open the source files to see what it is they did. The other 40% I open and is usually in the 'Ah yes, of course'-category.

Not Sara though, for weeks I've been eyeballing her gauge textures, pondering my head, trying to figure out what it is exactly she did. Today she send me one of her PSD's, and where I usually go 'Aaaaha', followed by an 'Ofcourse', all I could now think was 'Huh'?, followed by a 'I didn't know you could do that with Photoshop', immediately followed by 'So THAT's what's that is for'...

As she works on the gauges, I work on the remainder of the VC. Interior and Exterior textures are two completely different skill sets and although I am fairly confident I got a good thing going on when it comes to l'outside, I can also say Sara has found her niche and at least for now, is untouchable.

(Next up, Luke van de Rest, 3D Artist, exterior modeller)

Go outside and ask a random person what Photoshop is and in most cases people will know. You ask them if they ever heard of 3DsMax and they'll probably gaze at you in awe, then uttering something like : '3Dswhatnow?'.. 

In the past couple of years, we discovered that finding talented, skilled Texture Artists is one thing. With applications pouring in on a weekly basis, we've literally seen dozens of them. In the end, only a handful remained, cause the definition of 'talented' seemed to be a 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'-thing.

Finding 3D Artists is what one would call 'a whole different ballgame' though.  First of all, there's not that many of 'em. As Lead Designer, with a slight fetish for detail, I thoroughly enjoy textures, and although we texture guys sometimes (okay, all the time) think we're the centre of the creative universe, we only create on a two dimensional, flat plane. True creation is when you can add that third dimension.

So, I tried my hands on 3D'ing more than once and right away came to the conclusion why there aren't that many 3D Artists floatin' around as there are Texture Artists : Mastering (cause that is what we're talking about) 3DsMax is painstakingly difficult, awesomely time consuming and has a seriously steep learning curve.

Because we could count the applications for a 3D Artist position on one hand (alright, we had only 1 in 3 years), we had to go out and find them ourselves. The first one we picked up was... : 

Jamal Ingram.

Responsible for the Virtual Cockpit, Jamal's been with us and working on said part of the project for almost 8 months now. As he was at that time the only 3D Artist we had on staff, he was more or less on his own. No backup, no watercooler 3D talk, just him amongst 10 odd Texture Artists. Jamal is what we call a behind the scenes-no-nonsense-kinda guy. You won't see him on the public forums, you won't see flashy Work In Progress renders. Raw 3D, focused on the end product only. Being designers, (read as : Showboat Flash Ponies) we had to get used to his style. Alot. Why work hard, focusing on finishing, when you can stop and show off right?

Having worked on military projects in the past (even seen his work published by Flight1) and with a love for military jets, we gave him the absolute unfamiliar : A tube. An old tube. One that has seen more modifications, over the past 40 years than M.J. (may his soul rest in peace). It was a difficult task, getting to know commercial airliner instruments, what they do, how they should be animated, how they behave : 'Does that switch tumble?', 'Does it rotate?' 'Can you push it in?' or 'Can you perhaps push it in AND rotate?'

He's proven to be a skilful 3D artist, working on the VC for months at a time, silently, by himself but when the time came for Coolsky to Quality Control the work ingame for the first time, only a few minor changes came up. I guess it pays of being focused on the job.  

It is safe to say, we are nearing the end of building the 'virtual pit', texturing has slowly begun and teamed up with him, responsible for the VC textures is another little gem, Sara Louise Capon. But that's a different story (or should I say blog), for a next time.

My better half always rubs my nose in 'The Fact' that women are better at multi-tasking than men, and although I usually agree with her (trust me, THE ingredient for a healthy relationship), I have to disagree with her on this. The past couple of weeks have been crazy at the McPhat Studios offices. Working on (or Alt-Tabbing as I call it) between 3 three Texture- and 2 full 3D and artwork projects simultaneously is something we could not have managed a couple of years ago.

Although the 'main podium' may seem calm and serene from an audience perspective, backstage is one big dynamic, crazy mess.

Like the Boeing assembly line, every single member of the team works on and supplies his or her part of the final product. Dhierin's working on the PMDG 747-X GE's, Tito on the LDS767 RB211's, Frank's pathing the 747 fuselage like a mad man, Snorri's working on the 747 wings and tail, Sara's brushing her way through the DC-9 gauges and main panel, Jamal tries to keep up, mapping the DC-9 VC, Luke is shaping the exterior 3D model, Nicolas crafts a yet to be disclosed twin, Kevin tries to keep the website from not crumbling under the weight of the 25.000 odd monthly visitors, while I'm working on the 767 pay-ware World Airliner and freeware liveries.

Where we used to have a weekly , relaxing Friday afternoon 'how are things going'- meeting, these are now replaced and pushed to late night 23.00 quick and occasional Skype talks due to the hefty workloads. I sometimes catch Frank at home, still online at 2A.M, Snorri pushed it to almost 5AM a couple of days ago and I get a regular 'I'm off to bed, see you tomorrow' at 12AM from Dhierin and Kevin.

If one would look at this as a bad thing or a problem, finding a cause of what or who to blame so a solution can be found, is part of my job as a Lead Designer and after a lot of tinkering I can only point the finger to ourselves.. It's us. We did this ourselves, we're the ones to blame.

Raising our own and subsequently also the entire industry's bar when it comes to aircraft graphics by launching High- and Ultra High Definition Textures is where things quickly 'went south'. The days that we could start and wrap up a repaint in a mere few hours went down the drain when I first talked to Leen (our Quality Controller) about 3 years ago, asking him the question : "Say Leen, what if we blew up those tiles to 4096?" Words I sometimes wish I never uttered in the first place. It was a good thing though, PMDG followed with the J41 (2048), Captain Sim with their 767 (2048), Carenado has a whole line of (brilliantly) 2048 mapped GA planes and we take care of the remainder.

Choosing to go Flight Simulator X only was our second 'mistake'. Not only do we have to redo stock kits from the ground up for the diffuse maps ; Specular and Bump maps have to be HD as well. If that paint chips off on the diffuse map, it better chip off from the spec and bump as well. How else would you make a tail look like this? How else would you 'detach' the wing root joints from an ageing Super 80 so it looks like this and not this, without touching the actual 3D model?

Looking back, as we near our third anniversary as a real, 'tax paying company', I can only say : 'We raised that bar, we took it, threw it up high in the air and yes sometimes when we're at work in the middle of the night, it comes tumbling down on us like a Stuka bomber, but we can only blame ourselves'. Still, I think I speak for the entire team when I say :

It's a 'mistake' I don't regret making..