Help with painting please

[Headwind]

I have photoshop cs4 and I have installed the .dds plugin from nvidia to read and save .dds formats. My question is when you make changes to the P-51 paintkit from A2A how are you suppose to save the files so they work properly with fsx. If someone would explain this to me or point me to a tutorial or something I would be greatful.

:ernae:

[Cazzie]

Not possible to save them in an FSX readable format AFAIK. You will need to open the image in martin Wright's DXTBitmap or the MS Image Tool from the FSX SDK to save it in the proper format. Photoshop is merely for manipulating the images, as DXTBitmap and Image TOOL do not allow for such.

Get DXTBitmap at Martin Wright's website. It is an absolute must have for doing repaints.

http://www.btinternet.com/~mnwright/

Caz

[Headwind]

Thank you I'll give that a shot. I guess that is where I was confused, I suppose I thought I could just do it all from photoshop.

[BananaBob]

I use Martin Wright's DXTbmp application with those mentioned above. You have to flip the texture and alpha, it's in the menu for his program, then refresh the alpha and save as DDS texture, 32bit 8888 unsigned is the highest quality then DDS 5 or DTX5 can't remember, when done doing that, I open with Photoshop and bring it in with default settings, it will ask you. Then hit "Save As" and choose DDS of course and done. Also I make sure mip-maps are always unselected even in Martin Wright's application, because it causes blurry textures. :ernae:

[BananaBob]

Caz beat me to the punch! :ernae:

[Headwind]

ok I think I have the main gist of it down, the one thing that is throwing me off is what to do with the alpha channel. I either have no shine or shine with a touch of snooks left over. I have found where the alpha channel is in the psd file that is causing this however how do you make a new one? What I am trying to do at this point to learn this is just make a bare metal paint. Thanks for all the help, I appreciate it!

Edit: I just found this tutorial http://www.flightsimulatorguide.com/repainting03.html will this work for teaching me how to do this stuff in FSX with acceleration?

[Lewis-A2A]

If your usaing CS4 ignore the DXTBMP program and just use the adobe plugin, much easier to keep everything in one program

Nvidea website hold .dds plugin.

[Tim_Horton]

I use cs4, and dxtbmp cause of alpha layers and they are usually not touched unless your adding details such as logos.

Make sure "mipmaps" is turned off in dxtbmp otherwise it will look blury

With dxtbmp open your .dds or .bmp then go to "image", "send to editor" if you have CS4.exe set as the editor it will open up in cs4

I usually do my work in the .psd paint kit then when I am ready I save.

then ctrl + shift + e to merge all visible
ctrl + A to select all
ctrl + C to copy

then go to the norm.bmp that dxt sent over and
ctrl + V to paste.. then ctrl + e to merge down and save.

go to dxt bmp and reload after edit and voila its now your new texture. save it in dxtbmp and your done.

ALSO with alpha if you send the alpha now and it opens up as trans.bmp in cs4 press CTRL + V again and you will have a Grey copy of your exact texture, save that and refresh alpha and you got a good Alpha.

Aplha works like this, The darker it is, the more shine, the Lighter it is the less shine so if you dont want stickers to be shiny make them white.

should help out. That is my steps for doing it and it works for me quite well.

When your done that go back to CS4 to your paintkit and press

Ctrl + Alt + Z untill you got your layers back, usually twice and then keep working and save, save, save. if you accidently save while merged just ctrl + alt + z again and then save again.

dxt3 is good, dxt5 is better, But FSX really goes with Image size, so 2048 square is good details, 4096 square is The most clear.
Night time textures can be look off when saved so for most CHRISP detail use DDS 888 32 bit (usually 16mbfile) or use .bmp 888 32bit

[Tako_Kichi]

For the alpha channel you will have to make a new one for each repaint you do. At the top of the 'layers' pallette is a folder called 'alpha' that is turned off by default. This contains all the layers used in the alpha channel. When you do a repaint you will have to copy any painted layers on your paint into this folder and find out just where in the 'stack' they need to be by trial and error basically but I put mine below the 'main' layer and above all stuff below the 'main' layer. The method I use is below....

1. Save your paint as a PSD file before working on the alpha stuff.

2.Turn on the 'alpha' folder by clicking in the box next to it's name then copy any paint layers into the 'alpha' folder and merge them into a single layer.

3. Select all the items on your new layer and set them to a grey level with the amount of 'shine' you would like. The more white the less shine. For painted areas I like to use a 5% grey and I use the 'fill' command to fill the areas with paint.

4. Turn on or off any layers you require in the finished alpha channel (i.e. turn off any 'Snooks' items so that they do not show on your paint).

5. In the layers pallette select 'Flatten Image' and then select the entire area and select 'copy'.

6. Go to the history pallette and delete the 'Select Canvas' layer and then the 'Flatten Image' layer so that you are back to where you were before.

7. Turn off the 'alpha' folder and click on any of your paint layers then click on the 'Channels' tab and select the 'Alpha 1' layer at the bottom.

8. Paste your copied alpha channel info into the 'Alpha 1' layer then click on the 'RGB' layer at the top to get back to the standard setting and then click on the 'Layers' tab.

9. Save your work as a PSD file with the new alpha channel.

10. On the 'Layers' pallette select 'Flatten Image' again and then go to 'Image\Rotate Canvas\Flip Canvas Vertical'

11. Now do a 'Save As' (this is very important DO NOT do a 'Save' at this stage or you will be cussing for a week!) and select 'D3D/DDS (*.DDS)' as the format of choice. You will then get the following nVidia plug-in screen.....



Set yours up like like mine and you should be good to go.

Hope that helps.

[Headwind]

Alright! That was exactly what I was looking for there.... I thank you all very much for helping a complete moron when it comes to this stuff out. The root beer is on me That way was much easier than going back and forth between programs.