A question for you expert painters

[Warhawk1130]

When I do repaints, the colors in my tail art tend to bleed and change color in the outlying pixels. I use FS Repaint for fsx plus image folio for my renderer. I want to do a squadron package for the RAZ A-7. The more I save the changes, the more the art deteriorates..is it better to save each phase and then put them on the repaint and save once? Your help is greatly appreciated.

[fsafranek]

When I do repaints, the colors in my tail art tend to bleed and change color in the outlying pixels. I use FS Repaint for fsx plus image folio for my renderer. I want to do a squadron package for the RAZ A-7. The more I save the changes, the more the art deteriorates..is it better to save each phase and then put them on the repaint and save once? Your help is greatly appreciated.
What program are you using for the repaints? If you are using Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro (probably others as well) that support layers then you should be able to use a separate layer for each aircraft number or whaterever else is unique to each.

Then when you save them to a single layer BMP file for processing for the game (using DXTBMP or ImageTool) each one will be a crisp as the others. How crisp they are after processing has to do with the resolution of the textures; 2048x2048 or large is obviously going to be better in the end than using 512x512 textures over the same area of the aircraft.

Hope this helps.
:ernae:

[SkippyBing]

Theoretically yes, the DDS format used by FSX is compressed so some detail is lost when you save a file. If you keep opening, altering and saving the same file things will get worse, generally it's best to have a master file saved in an uncompressed format e.g. bmp, psd etc. make all the changes to that and then save as a dds to get it in game.

[Bone]

Theoretically yes, the DDS format used by FSX is compressed so some detail is lost when you save a file. If you keep opening, altering and saving the same file things will get worse, generally it's best to have a master file saved in an uncompressed format e.g. bmp, psd etc. make all the changes to that and then save as a dds to get it in game.


Ahh, good info. I was wondering why the textures tended to tear each time I saved a dds file after manipulating it with FSrepaint, but never when manipulating a bmp file. Another oddity about dds is why I can paint directly into some dds files, and other dds files won't even open with FSrepaint. Thankfully, I have DXTBMP to convert those pesky dds files into bmp.

I really need to get Photoshop and learn to do this the right way.

[falcon409]

. . . . . . Another oddity about dds is why I can paint directly into some dds files, and other dds files won't even open with FSrepaint. Thankfully, I have DXTBMP to convert those pesky dds files into bmp.

I really need to get Photoshop and learn to do this the right way.
I have FSRepaint also, not to do any painting, just to check my work and I have the same problem with dds files, a few will open, some will open but look odd and some just won't open at all. I've written to Abacus many, many, many times and have never gotten any answer to any of my requests for assistance.

[Warhawk1130]

Theoretically yes, the DDS format used by FSX is compressed so some detail is lost when you save a file. If you keep opening, altering and saving the same file things will get worse, generally it's best to have a master file saved in an uncompressed format e.g. bmp, psd etc. make all the changes to that and then save as a dds to get it in game.

As a matter of fact, I found that out away from the thread...that is indeed what was happening...thank you all for your kind advise!

[Stefano Zibell]

You can conserve the alpha channel if you use .tga as your middle format. It's lossless and used in many games. Then you can make an extended BMP or a DXT3 .dds file. An alternative is to use the nvidia plugin for photoshop, this way you can save directly to dds. You can find the plugin on the developers zone of the nvidia website.