But I want to see night textures

last update 23rd September 2001

It's good to see we still have all of you here. Just a small reminder. You must be using Barry's aircraft in order to carry on with the tutorial. I know I have said this before but now it is more important than ever. You do want to do the night textures don't you. Good, I knew you would say that.

Points to note: Why do I keep on about using Barrys' CRJ-200LR. Well, if you remember this is a "how to paint" tutorial. Barry has done all the hard work and provided us with both the day and the night textures as part of the model. You cannot just stick a night texture onto an aircraft if it was not meant to have them. As I said previously, check the textures of your aircraft before you decide to paint it if you want night textures. If you don't, then this is not an issue.

Before you do anything else I want you to look at all the images below. Once you have done this I will explain what is going on.

First off, I want to point out something that some of you may have already done. Do you see that the top two layers of text do not have the raster symbol next to them? Well that's because they are vector layers. If you used a vector layer(s) for your text then you can change the size any time you want. If it is a raster layer then, simply, you are stuck with it and you would need to delete the text layer and add a new one in the size you want. Give it a go on your own aircraft. It is the same as adding a raster layer. Go to the layers menu and instead of selecting "new raster layer" you choose "new vector layer". Yes I know I have been jumping between Raster and Vector layers for the text. By now though you should be able to use both without getting a headache

To explain the pictures above I have given you all the pictures in one big lump. As you are using Barry's aircraft then you will already have the windows both day and night. Oh yes you do! Go and check them out, see I told you so. What I did was just copy one window from the night texture "crj-mid0_LM.bmp. Then paste it over your original windows texture. That's the second one from the left. Do this for all the windows. This way you will have the correct position for the night windows. The last image above is what it all looks like together.

Points to note: There is only one new layer, other than the vector layers for the text. Found it? Yes, it's the mask layer. I want you all to create a................Ok I feel sorry for you this time around. I want you to all download the file below and open it up in paint shop pro.

Click this link crj-mid0_LM.zip and you can download the PSP image we have been working on.

Exciting stuff or what. This is the entire texture with all the layers in place. Don't worry about the green text. What I want you to do is to play around. Before you really go mad with it all I would like you to notice the placement of the mask layer. You see that we want the windows to shine through so they are on top of the mask and that the blend mode is "normal". Also notice that even though it is dark we still include all the layers. Including the text and the paint.

Why?

Well dear painter when your flight sim is going from dawn to dusk or the other way around there is an overlap of textures. If you want to see how this works try painting only the day texture or only the night texture and change the time of day. You will see a point where one set of textures show through each other and if they are not done right you will see a terrible mess. This is even worse if you get your text out of line. You will actually see both textures one on top of the other until it is either full daylight or full dark. That's why.

Did you realise that to create a night texture from a day texture we just "mask it". To think you have all waited this long to be told something as simple as this. Sorry, but yes. I did tell you this was easy. Look in the textures folder and for this one texture you will find 3 versions. The basic day texture, crj-mid0.bmp. Then there is the night texture, the one with the windows lit up, crj-mid0_LM.bmp and lastly we have the night texture with the windows and the light on the fuselage, crj-mid0_LL_LM.bmp. Any time there is an aircraft with night lighting you will find a selection of images such as this. Don't forget to paint them all.

I still want my night textures to have lights as well

I did promise this didn't I. OK, we are half the way there. We have our windows shining through and all we need to do now is to get our lights working. Please note that this is only on the textures and not lights shining out from the aircraft. This part will add the lighting effects that shine on the side of the body and of course each side of the tail.

Points to note: We used a mask to darken but not delete our aircraft. We will use another mask now to add light.

Now you have used layers, both raster and vector and on top of that I have introduced you to using masks. This is getting too easy.

You have seen how to add a mask so that should provide no problems for any of you. As I am in a good mood again I have given you the texture, in zip format for you to browse through.

Click these links crj-mid0_LL_LM.zip and crj-vstb_LM.zip and download both the side and the tail light sections.

I have had some nice e-mail from my readers asking me the same question, "how do I add the lit areas to the textures". This is no harder than creating a mask, same as the one we used above but instead of masking out everything it masks out only a small part and leaves the rest alone.

Creating this mask is probably one of the hardest things you will do as it will probably need to be changed several times before you are happy with it.

Believe it or not, this is the first ever aircraft that I added night lighting to. You should recognise it by now. See also the green text "Celtic Airways"?. That's what happens when you get it wrong. In this instance I have the text colour wrong. It looks like it is glowing in the dark. This is a good example of just before nightfall when we are seeing both the day and night textures overlap each other. However you will see that there is two areas where there is lights shining on the aircraft. What happens is that as the light changes, FS2000 swaps over to the other set of textures. For this model it also adds the lit sections when you turn the lights on. Hence three sets of textures. Day, Night and Night lit.

Points to note: A night textures is nothing more than a masked day texture. Simple.

OK if you are still reading this and not messing around with the files I have given you then I have one thing left to tell you. That is how to create the masks in the first place. Well, dear readers that is for the next time. You now have the masks that I used on the CRJ-200LR. I hope you all know how to copy a mask from one aircraft texture to another because that's exactly what I want you to do. If you want to use the windows on your own aircraft then go ahead.

If you don't know how to copy a layer then here's how. Open my PSP texture with the masks and open your own so you have both showing in PSP. Make sure you highlight my texture first then highlight the mask layer. It doesn't matter if it is visible or not just highlight the mask layer in the layers menu. Select copy 'CTRL-C', highlight your own texture and select paste as new layer 'CTRL-L'.

You now have the mask added to your own texture and maybe the windows as well.

Points to note: The windows belong to Barry Blaisdell so if you use them in an aircraft give him credit. Indeed the whole aircraft is his. Point I am making again is even if you only use a small section of someone else's work. "Give them credit"

As always if you don't understand a section let me know. I will be showing you how to create your own masks next time around but for now, Happy Painting.