BendyFlyer
December 6th, 2016, 14:08
I know there is a painters forum but appears little used so I thought I would post this here.
I have been trying to redo a number of the textures for the JBK S23/30 Flying Boats. The original was FS2004 and then a later FSX portover was issued. While I have been able to extensively rebuild the panel and modify gauges etc to more correctly have the aircraft look as it did in the 1930's. I have struck a real hurdle with the VC textures in particular.
First, I am using DXTBmp to open the textures, flip them and send them to the paint program (Paint.net). I save the changes reopen in DXT flip and apply alpha then save ast DXT 3. I then load into the texture folder (shared) and reload the aircraft with it open in FSX, then the fun begins. (Oh and yes all file permissions and access are properly set to allow writing, editing and saving etc.)
Now I am able to modify the textures to some extent. First I tried directly repainting sections but that was defeated because a small change would throw up a bleed in the colour across sections of the VC that were not painted or the new paint does not display at all. For example I painted the panel black (and the panel.bmp in the panel file for good measure) this resulted in the roof and floors and other bits not painted all turning the black the panel was painted in. I then decided to layer and only paint on the layers and recombine them and export re save reload etc. Same results. I then tried not flipping the image and repainting it, again another weird outcome with paint going somewhere else. I am starting to think the original textures were layered somehow and when the model file goes into action it is referencing those original layers for texture mapping. Not sure if they can be pulled apart have not seen anything that suggest they can be. I do know the model has a weird construction with textures being used to fill in non meshed parts somehow.
Another thing that occurs is the texture repainted will not show at all when I reload the model in FSX not even if I shut the program down and restart FSX all over again. Then again, now and then it does. For example I redid the primary VC texture (virtual cockpit) to correct colours and to remove some artwork designating radios etc because I had managed to get actually operating gauges into the area where the painted set was which seems weird but it did it and works and looks great. I save the repaint loaded it and nothing, tried a second time etc. nothing. So I left that one and moved onto another texture and did that. It showed some changes not all. The next time I fired up FSX reloaded the aircraft to do something else and there were the modified textures no issues. So I tried redoing the problem panel. Again no show despite 4 reboots of FSX and a reboot of the computer in case somehow FSX was caching some files. I thought of posting some screens but the outcome is inconsistent so there is no point.
Does anybody have any suggestions or do I just surrender with this one? But I have to admit I cannot stand the green paint colours used in the original as the original aircraft was not green but a combination of blacks, light cream/olive and bare aluminium.
As an after thought I may just have a memory issue as I will have FSX running, Paint program running, DXT running, Internet and browser running, and probably two to three different file directories open at the same time and it is a Win 7X64 bit system so it could be that too, Read-write changes not saving properly due to memory being taxed to the max. Or given this MS and FSX probably all of the above in a perfect storm.
I have been trying to redo a number of the textures for the JBK S23/30 Flying Boats. The original was FS2004 and then a later FSX portover was issued. While I have been able to extensively rebuild the panel and modify gauges etc to more correctly have the aircraft look as it did in the 1930's. I have struck a real hurdle with the VC textures in particular.
First, I am using DXTBmp to open the textures, flip them and send them to the paint program (Paint.net). I save the changes reopen in DXT flip and apply alpha then save ast DXT 3. I then load into the texture folder (shared) and reload the aircraft with it open in FSX, then the fun begins. (Oh and yes all file permissions and access are properly set to allow writing, editing and saving etc.)
Now I am able to modify the textures to some extent. First I tried directly repainting sections but that was defeated because a small change would throw up a bleed in the colour across sections of the VC that were not painted or the new paint does not display at all. For example I painted the panel black (and the panel.bmp in the panel file for good measure) this resulted in the roof and floors and other bits not painted all turning the black the panel was painted in. I then decided to layer and only paint on the layers and recombine them and export re save reload etc. Same results. I then tried not flipping the image and repainting it, again another weird outcome with paint going somewhere else. I am starting to think the original textures were layered somehow and when the model file goes into action it is referencing those original layers for texture mapping. Not sure if they can be pulled apart have not seen anything that suggest they can be. I do know the model has a weird construction with textures being used to fill in non meshed parts somehow.
Another thing that occurs is the texture repainted will not show at all when I reload the model in FSX not even if I shut the program down and restart FSX all over again. Then again, now and then it does. For example I redid the primary VC texture (virtual cockpit) to correct colours and to remove some artwork designating radios etc because I had managed to get actually operating gauges into the area where the painted set was which seems weird but it did it and works and looks great. I save the repaint loaded it and nothing, tried a second time etc. nothing. So I left that one and moved onto another texture and did that. It showed some changes not all. The next time I fired up FSX reloaded the aircraft to do something else and there were the modified textures no issues. So I tried redoing the problem panel. Again no show despite 4 reboots of FSX and a reboot of the computer in case somehow FSX was caching some files. I thought of posting some screens but the outcome is inconsistent so there is no point.
Does anybody have any suggestions or do I just surrender with this one? But I have to admit I cannot stand the green paint colours used in the original as the original aircraft was not green but a combination of blacks, light cream/olive and bare aluminium.
As an after thought I may just have a memory issue as I will have FSX running, Paint program running, DXT running, Internet and browser running, and probably two to three different file directories open at the same time and it is a Win 7X64 bit system so it could be that too, Read-write changes not saving properly due to memory being taxed to the max. Or given this MS and FSX probably all of the above in a perfect storm.