FS Repaint, Windows Paint, and DXTs.

[Sbob]

Something I've been noticing of late:

I installed FS Repaint (from Abacus) a while ago just to load MDLs and figure out where the textures were going.

While you can assign your normal paint prog to FS Repaint when it runs, I've kept it paired up with Windows Paint because I've always done my repaints with Paint Shop Pro and Martin's DXTBMP and used FS Repaint as a side-line tool. I'm also running Win10 (64 bit) and Windows Paint has had updates recently.

So, here's the payoff. I've been noticing that DXT textures are behaving much better in Windows Paint.

As you all know, DXTs don't reload well for editing work. Then tend to pixilate and color shift between different colors.

With the newer versions of Windows Paint, the "decompression effects" are still there BUT its not as bad. I've done touch-up work on DXT textures using FS Repaint and I can't see
any textures "blow up" when I go to FS2004 to check out my work. The edited textures look just fine in the sim.

Has anyone else noticed this? Is good old, "yeah its installed but I never use it", Windows Paint going to become our Go To paint program?

[rgatkinson]

I've used FSRepaint for years and I have the latest version from the developer that fixes a few bugs in the older Abacus version. My go to paint tool of choice is Paint.net which is free and pretty amazing to be honest.

Taff

[Mick]

I'm not familiar with FS Repaint so I can't comment about it. I don't really see the point of it. I have never seen any need or use for a program to do what can be done so easily in imaging programs like Paint and PSP that work through DXTbmp.

I've been using MS Paint for all the years I've been painting planes, and I still do. When I got my current Win7Pro rig I hated the then-new version of Paint. I found it visually ugly, but more importantly, very clunky and annoying to use. Like so much MS bloatware, it seemed to add complexity without increasing utility. I made a copy of it, renamed it OldPaint, and set it to run in WinXP mode. I still use it for the majority of my paint jobs.

Of course Paint is rather basic, and there are lots of things it can't do, like adding many kinds of details. For those things I use Paint Shop Pro 7.

I guess I'm living in the past when it comes to painting models. I hate the current Paint and have replaced it with a backdated hack, and when someone gave me PSP10 I hated it and gave it away to stick with PSP7.

But I digress. My intent was to comment on your remark about how DXT3 behaves better in Paint. You wrote that DXT3 don't reload well for editing work, and you're right but maybe not in the way you expressed it.

There is nothing wrong with the way DXT3 opens in any program capable of reading DXT3 files. The problem is that DXT3 is a highly corruptible (or "lossy") compressed format and it degrades when you save it after you finish it, and further after any edits, not when you open it to make further edits. You don't see the corruption when you first close the image but it's already there when you next open the file - it's been there since you saved the file. It happens when you save the file for the very first time, and it gets worse every time you open and re-save it. I have a suspicion that it corrupts a little further every time FS open the file to display it on the model and then re-save it when you're finished, but I haven't been able to find out if that's true. Maybe not.

Anyhow, the point is that no matter what program you do your editing with, a DXT3 bitmap will corrupt the first time you save it and will corrupt further every time you make and save an edit. It's not the software - it's the nature of DXT3 files and there is nothing we can do about it.

This is why I only use DXT3 for files like seldom seen interior bits like inside bomb bays, or simple images that have no small or complex detail that would corrupt in ways that would be easily visible in the sim - and not even then except in situations like the recent B-47 project, where the project got huge and reducing file sizes became more important than usual.

32-bit images are not lossy. To avoid messing up your textures as you work on them, always work in 32-bit format. When you're finished you can save in DXT3, but if you do that and then open a file and take a good look at complex details like the American national insignia, you won't like what you see, even though you did all your edits before you converted to DXT3.

If you really, really want to minimize file size, there is a non-lossy format you might consider: 256 colors. They tend to be a bit low in resolution for external textures and may look a bit soft in the sim, but they work fine for interior bits. Kazinori Ito made many models with 256 color textures exclusively, and they look pretty decent on most rigs, though converting them to 32-bit will make them sharper.

Back when I started with FS model painting, 32-bit textures were tough on a lot of computers, wrecked frame rates, and I think the reason MS didn't make them standard was because so many computers couldn't handle them. That was almost twenty years ago and today's computers have no trouble displaying 32-bit formats. My rig is ten years old and it has no trouble with 32-bit textures. I've been releasing skins for David's models, and repaints of other models, with 32-bit external textures for at least that long and not once has anyone indicated to me that my textures were killing their frame rates.

Bottom line: it doesn't matter what software you use - you cannot keep DXT3 textures from getting corrupted.

OK, rant over, I'll be quiet now.

[wombat666]

A very educational 'rant' Mick.

[Mick]

A very educational 'rant' Mick.

Thank you!

I know I tend to ramble but I can't seem to help it. I've been excessively wordy since I learned to write and my best efforts to be more concise have been fruitless. I probably could've said what I wrote here in half the words I used.

I need an editor! It frustrates me to no end that I can edit other people's writing but not my own. Drat!

[Sbob]

FS RePaint is handy if you have 500+ aircraft installed or if you want to find that one texture you want to edit.

What surprised me was that I could do basic stuff like changing helmet colors in DXT texture formats and it didn't corrupt the image as much as if I had used DXTBMP and PSP (my favorite is still PSP6). I was just posting to point out what I've noticed of late.

Back in the day, the FS5 die-hards didn't want to move over to FSfW95 even after I told them about how 16 bit colors were the bee's knees (now that the sim had shifted over to a Win platform) and they didn't have to lay out a blue-and-red single pixel mosaic to make purple.

With Kaz Ito, I always liked the guy. It took a while but I started to realize that Kaz didn't design real aircraft for FS. He produced flyable versions of plastic model kits (think about it).
That was one of the reasons he didn't want us to add weps effects to his uploads. He just wanted to see his plastic models fly in FS.

Mick, one last thing and I promise I won't bring it up again. Is there a chance you could come up with some bare metal textures for Alphasim's B-52? Its not the easiest aircraft to paint, there are some problems with textures being "stretched" or "compressed", but this is the one paint scheme (anti-flash white over bare metal) the plane really needs. I tried it but I just can't pull off bare metal. You da man, as it were.

[rgatkinson]

The main reason I use FSRepaint is that it allows you to view and edit your chosen aircraft and skin rendered in 3D outside of FS9 and FSX etc. This is very useful if you're trying to make minor adjustments/alignments that would take ages jumping is and out of the simulation itself. I always create my skins as 32bit bitmaps and allow the user to convert to DXT format if they wish. Each to their own, it's a free world and we're free to do as we please - mostly ;-)

Taff

[huub vink]

Like Mick I'm quite old fashioned. I do my repaints mainly in PS7, although I have a newer version of Photoshop. I use Martin Wright's DTXBmp to covert my textures. For FS2004 in 32-bits format and for FSX in dtx5dds format.

Using an addon like FS repaint doesn't fit in the way I work. It just be something extra, which will consume more time. I have my sims installed on an SSD, so they start up very fast. I can assume when you have to start FSX from a conventional disk FS Repaint would save a lot of time.

Cheers,
Huub

[Mick]

Taff, I see your point and it has merit.

But Huub, like you it just wouldn't fit in with how I work. Nothing wrong with it, it just doesn't suit my way of working.

[Mick]

With Kaz Ito, I always liked the guy. It took a while but I started to realize that Kaz didn't design real aircraft for FS. He produced flyable versions of plastic model kits (think about it).
That was one of the reasons he didn't want us to add weps effects to his uploads. He just wanted to see his plastic models fly in FS...
... one last thing and I promise I won't bring it up again. Is there a chance you could come up with some bare metal textures for Alphasim's B-52? Its not the easiest aircraft to paint, there are some problems with textures being "stretched" or "compressed", but this is the one paint scheme (anti-flash white over bare metal) the plane really needs. I tried it but I just can't pull off bare metal. You da man, as it were.

I don't think Ito even flew his models. I think he just liked to boot them up and see them on screen, perhaps just in the Select Aircraft menu. I'm not sure but I always had the impression that he was opposed to CFS2 conversions because he was a pacifist. Or is a pacifist. He's probably still living, but I believe his deteriorating eyesight forced him out of the hobby.

As for the AlphaSims B-52, it's among the very many aircraft I felt compelled to download and install in my hangar despite the almost certain knowledge that I would never have the time or the interest to fly it. It would fit right in with my FsJetAge sim, which is set in the 1960s, that I set up about ten years ago and still have never found the time or interest to fly in it.

But I just took a look at it (I should say them, since the B-52G and B-52H are separate aircraft) in my hangar perused the textures, and there is a livery with silver and anti-flash white in the G model and I think in the H model as well (if I haven't already mixed them up.)

I hope I'm right about that. As for painting it myself, I'm not that interested in the plane, and I have a long list of things I'm very interested in that I can't find time for. You're welcome to copy the silver and white from the B-47 textures, or I'd be happy to share the paint mix recipes with you if you'd like.

[rgatkinson]

Taff, I see your point and it has merit.

But Huub, like you it just wouldn't fit in with how I work. Nothing wrong with it, it just doesn't suit my way of working.

I totally agree but it's nice to have the choice and I like to support developers that take the time to produce tools for our hobby. As I said, I use Paint.net to create my skins and FSRepaint to view/check them and occasionally make minor modifications to the skin from within it. It's great to be able to zoom, rotate and view the model/skin from any angle you wish. You can also view the VC only and its textures, click on any part of the model and view the corresponding texture that it is mapped to (saves a lot of "where and on which texture file is this part mapped to" questions) and also allows you to view night textures/lighting effects which comes in handy for tube-liner repaints ;-) TBH I can't imagine producing a paint without it. Isn't diversity amazing.

Regards, Taff