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.

As we are slowly easing into the last month of Q1 of 2011, I think it is safe to relax, sit down and look back at what was a hectic, but also a successful 2010.

In our second full year of operation as a pay-ware outfit (we started halfway 2008 with the first E-Jet), we released as many as thirteen World Airliners for the PMDG MD-11, the Captain Sim 757 and the FeelThere E-Jets v2. One would say quality would suffer from the sheer quantity, but our first AVSIM Gold Star award (for the E-Jets v2), which we received in November has proven otherwise. We worked hard, shifted from Normal Definition to primarily High And Ultra High Definition repaints, brought in some new talented people, while some of the main stayers upped their ante and had fun in the process.

That was 2010 in a nutshell. Time to look forward at what 2011 has in store for us.

As a design studio specialized in exterior textures we have worked for and with 'the big boys', (the) PMDG (MD-11) being the latest in the list of developers that already consisted of Wilco, FeelThere, Level-D, Flight1, Captain Sim and Coolsky.

Now, if you ask me (and for the sake of virtually having a conversation, I'll just pretend you are indeed asking me) ; the only one missing from the list, the cherry on the pie, the cream of the crop, is the PMDG 737NGX. As talks with Robert -from PMDG- progress it is just a matter of time, before we've achieved the (highest?) goal we set for ourselves when we first started doing freeware repaints as a group back in 2007 : adding a flagship PMDG product to our portfolio.

With the vast majority of operators and liveries of the 737 it is a project that will keep us occupied for the most part of 2011 (and perhaps even into 2012). But if wheeling in the NGX was 'The Goal', the highest achievable, we set for ourselves, what's next? Does it end? Retire and spend our days on our yacht (we don't have a yacht), hop on our private jet (nope, no jet either) and relax by the pool of our beach house (wait, no beach house?) in the Maldives?

H to the No, it is time to move on and broaden our horizon, something we have been doing behind the scenes for the past couple of months as we were hired by Flight1 to do all the artwork for the Coolsky DC-9. This means we are responsible for not only the exterior (HD) textures, but also the interior, but most noticeably ; the 3D model, both exterior, virtual cockpit and virtual cabin. Being 'eye-candy enthusiasts from the EGA (some even CGA) era' we set the bar high and in my next entry I will let you guys get a taste some of the stuff we've been doing.

For now, back to work on the PMDG MD-11 World Airliners 5 and the first couple of Level-D 767 World Airliners.  Duty calls..