Producing Damage Textures for Morton's Skins

[Ian Astill]

Hi Guys,

I love Morton's work for CFS2 and in particular for the aeroplane heaven hurris, spits and Bf109. I am a bit of a pedant though and noticed he hasn't produced damage textures for these aircraft. Therefore if you break a part off you sometimes get a glance of the stock damage texture underneath and the much brighter paint. I know this is really a non-issue however I found a very quick work around which will produce damage textures which blend in. All you need is Martin Wright's wonderful DXT Bitmap Manipulator.

Here's the routine.

1. Go to your plane texture folder. In this instance it's the AH Spit mk1. Notice the difference between the textures....


2. Open up this texture Spitfire_mk1_d.bmp using Martin Wright's program and head to the 'alpha' toolbar. Select ''Create alpha channel (black) and ok it...

if you are succesful, the alpha viewer window in the top right hand corner will display a pattern resembling the black bits on the texture.

3. Now go back to the 'alpha' menu and select 'Export Alpha Channel'. It will come up with a save screen. Save the bitmap in a handy place (I usually place in the aircrafts texture folder and name it 'Alpha damage' or similar.)


4. Now, go back to the aircraft texture folder and delete the damage texture file (in this case, Spitfire_mk1_d.bmp). Make a duplicate of the main texture file (Spitfire_mk1_t.bmp) and rename it as the damage file (Spitfire_mk1_d.bmp)

You should now have Spitfire_mk1_d.bmp and Spitfire_mk1_t.bmp and they should look identical.

5. Now, open up your new Spitfire_mk1_d.bmp with DXT Bitmap Manipulator and go to 'alpha' on the toolbar. Click on ''Import Alpha Channel''. Click ok to the message that comes up, then on the next window select the 'alpha_damage.bmp' file you created in step 3....


6. Check that top right hand alpha viewer and you should see the same pattern as step 3. Now go to 'file' then 'save as' and select 'extended bitmap'. Save in your aircraft texture folder as Spitfire_mk1_d.bmp and as type 'DXT 3'



Voila. If you shoot off a part of the spit, the texture will blend in much better. Theoretically if you go into paint and do some paintwork you could even add bullet holes etc using the black colour. You can also use this for pretty much any aircraft with damage textures although in the case of multiple textures it gets a bit time consuming.

[Rami]

Ian,

Great tutorial! Would you be interested in making damage texture for the Battle of France aircraft during beta testing?

[Ian Astill]

Hi Rami,

At the moment I can't really commit to a big project as I have a fair amount of irons in the fire. (Digitizing a truckload of handwritten music for the brass band I play with being a major one.) Also, in the time since I last frequented here I became a primary school teacher. Fantastic job which I love but it does tend to eat in to downtime (We're studing WW2 as a topic this term, which led me back to CFS2. I'm trying to figure out a way of shoe horning it into a lesson.)

That being said, if you give me a list of what you require, I can almost certainly get a few turned out. I'm pretty sure I have the templates for the Defiant and AH Hurricane knocking round so a few new skins might be possible!

[Ravenna]

Ian, Many thanks for a great tutorial.

Primary teaching gives the opportunity to make connections across the curriculum. With this sim, depending on the mission structure, you can introduce your class to all sorts of stuff from historically based simulation to computer graphics to writing.

[Rami]

Ian,

I can follow it through, you are a great teacher. The only problem for me is the final step; I can't get the new damage textures to show.

[Ian Astill]

Haha. I spent half an hour chasing spits around in various cannon armed aircraft last night trying to get a good screenshot. Failed miserably! If you get a good nose or tail shot with 20mm, enough to break the part off, you should see the results!

[Roxane-21]

Haha. I spent half an hour chasing spits around in various cannon armed aircraft last night trying to get a good screenshot. Failed miserably! If you get a good nose or tail shot with 20mm, enough to break the part off, you should see the results!

Instead of chasing AI Spitfires, it would be far easier to fly a Spitfire yourself and let AI aircraft shoot at you.