Repaintviewer for X-Plane

[flybike]

Hi guys,

I have been painting for FS quiet some years and would like to do some repaints for X-Plane to.

My question:

Is there a program alike FSRepaint to view and edit textures.
The paintwork itself isn`t a problem.
Finding the right spots on the model is.

I know a plane can be 3d viewed in Planemaker , but not really edited.
It can edited in 3D view in Photoshop C4, I know ,wich I do not have.

Regards

Leen de Jager

[Lionheart]

Hey FlyBike,


Texture files in XP9 are simply PNG files, which are used alot in websites. If you can get a freeware PNG editor, you are good to go.

Also, you can find used Editions of Adobe Photoshop 6.0 at Ebay now and then. If you can get one for $20.00, you have a gold mine. It is one AWESOME program for painting with. Airbrush alone is brilliant. All the effects it has is also invalable.

But for now, I wonder if Gimp can do PNG files?


Anyways, back to your question, I dont know if a 3D painting program for XP9. I havent seen one yet for it. I do know there is a 'file viewer' for XP9, but I do not know where I had seen this. I know I did see it though at the X-Plane.org website, (maybe in the forums).

EDIT: Also, I found out through Zeke that you can increase texture sizes on the planes. He bumped his up to 1600 pixels square and it worked just fine in XP9. This is awesome news, which means we can put in enourmouse detail levels in these textures and make some of these birds look photoreal.

Bill

[CH_OldZeke]

Hey FlyBike,


Texture files in XP9 are simply PNG files, which are used alot in websites. If you can get a freeware PNG editor, you are good to go.

Also, you can find used Editions of Adobe Photoshop 6.0 at Ebay now and then. If you can get one for $20.00, you have a gold mine. It is one AWESOME program for painting with. Airbrush alone is brilliant. All the effects it has is also invalable.

But for now, I wonder if Gimp can do PNG files?


Anyways, back to your question, I dont know if a 3D painting program for XP9. I havent seen one yet for it. I do know there is a 'file viewer' for XP9, but I do not know where I had seen this. I know I did see it though at the X-Plane.org website, (maybe in the forums).

EDIT: Also, I found out through Zeke that you can increase texture sizes on the planes. He bumped his up to 1600 pixels square and it worked just fine in XP9. This is awesome news, which means we can put in enourmouse detail levels in these textures and make some of these birds look photoreal.

Bill

I did a panel Bill, lol now I'll have to do a model texture too cause I'm curious but yea I'm betting the only size restrict is how much preformanve hit you want to induce.
Also a question. As I am realy not versed in replaceing textures I'm wondering is the ground textures are replaceable? I'd love to get ahold of some that would make some area in xplane look like wwiiol. If I could then replace the trees with the right groupings and figgure out how to model a few wwiiol buildings/hangers etc I could realy setup some nice spoofs for the BE forums without needing to photoshop them


Ok, lol trial and error as usual for me

2048 is max res you can do a ac texture, past that xplane pops up a warning.....trying to load texture with a value of 1 to 2048 (best as I recall without doing it again.

I doubled shyhawk waves textures with no probs to 2048 but when i doubled them again I got a error when I selected that livery.

[CH_OldZeke]

Oh, and the sim will read bmp and DDS DXT1 textures too
Only prob is no transparancy on them so windows are solid color. I can't remember if you can do transparency with alpha channel in DDS or not and no idea if the sim would read the alpha.

I wonder if when applying the textures in the model ya could wrap the windows on a seperate texture map? If so it could be saved in pgn and the rest in whatever type you wanted for the rest.
The sim will read, I think, texture maps of dift types from the same livery folder.

[Lionheart]

Hey Zeke,

Man!! You are becoming the SOH textures guru and pioneer for XP9! Nice detective work man!

Good to know on the limit of 2048. Thanks for the info. Same with DDS and BMP's.

You might be right on the glass needing an Alpha channel.

Yes, you 'can' add and adjust Alphas on DDS textures. If you have Adobe Photoshop, you can download the Developer Photoshop tools that include a DDS compiler. Very nice tools..



Bill

[CH_OldZeke]

Lol' I am poor and cheap, I use paint.net
But I seem to recall Martin's DXT bmpmap (I think that was the name) would
seperate the alpha out/create alpha channels and if it's stiil around it was free.

Now I did edid add to a texture to make sure it was displaying the DDS etc and not defaulting. Also (I'm a pixel count noob) when I doubled the textures I upped the pixel count from 72dpi to 1080dpi. As best as I could tell the sim displayed it as such in that the stripes were much cleaner/not jaggy.
Now oddly there was no noticeable fps change between a unedited/stock livery and my big (tad over 3 megs for both textures) textures.

Will be interesting to see how heavy a file it takes to hit fps

Hey, I figgure it like I did fs/cfs, I bought it so if I break it I own it
And over time I will tear it all apart to see what makes it tick

[Lionheart]

Roger that..

Just remember though, its the resolution quality you want, not the biggest texture. If you can make a plane look great with a 1024 texture, then do that. But if there is so much area on a tiny texture, then 2048 is the way to go. Some parts are fine with smaller bitmaps, (like small color squares, which can be 64 pixels square).

Gimp is a really good freeware graphics program. You might try that one. Some famous sim guys use that.


Bill

[CH_OldZeke]

I could never make heads or tails of gimp.... I'm not a artist just a fiddler

I'm just currious as to what will work in the sim, bumped the textures up to 12megs on the fuse file and 6 megs on the wings file with no change in fps in external view as close at it would go so I don't think heavy plane textures gonna hit fps unless you get a bunch of them in render area.

[CH_OldZeke]

Not sure if this is of help to the OP but in your xplane install\Instructions\Example Plane-Basic
you will find example paint maps that show the positioning of the various bits. Example_paint and Example_paint2.

Also what looks to be a fairly simple planemaker tut that seems to do well covering gauge stuff and at least (I think) 2D panels http://x-plane.org/home/suncoaster/xplanesite.html

[Lionheart]

Thanks Zeke!

I am off to check that out..


Bill

[CH_OldZeke]

OK, would bitmaps like these help? This is from the stock Avanti. To create these you start up plane maker and open the plane you want to map. Then at top click special and in the pull down select "Output texture map starting points" ( the cessna wot output properly for some reason).

Now you have untextured templates. They will be in the planes folder.
Fire up your fav gfx proggie (duel monitors prolly best but can alt tab between programs) and click the "expert" tab (top left like) in plane maker, select "visual texture regions". You now are at a screen with the stock/default texture map.
You'll have little check boxes on the left and as you check one off (like left wing-top) that area will have a red flashing box around it. Carefull!! if you click anywhere near that red bounding box you will change the box size.
I have no idea if changeing the size of the bounding box is useful or not.... You can zoom and such with keys, - and =.


Ohhh, and you can go back to the plane preview, if you have the map you are working on loaded as the texture for the plane, and simply reselect that plane to see what you just painted (after you save in your paint proggie).

Hope this helps with the painting guys