By the Gerbil Jedi I GOT it!ALL HAIL the Gerbil Jedi!!!!!!!!!!yes, I was sitting here petting my pet Gerbil when I finally got a dash of desperation and though -- "Everyone keeps telling to to convert these frigging textures. I wonder what would happen if I didnt? Cant be any worse than what is happening already"So I place the gerbil down to wonder on my desk happily in search of -- well -- whatever the heck she searches for (nuts perhaps?) and I saved my BMP as 256 color depth BMP. Slammed it into my texture folder -- all the while giving that !@#$ing imagetool the bird and WHAMMO!!!!! Celtic Airways took flight in a CRJ200. LOL Then I realized the lettering was behind the engines. Whoops.No alpha channels - no funny business. What the heck are all those alpha channels for anyway? My texture shows just fine. just gotta redo the texture -- move the lettering -- and make sure to ERASE the green from in front of the windows this time and I got it.Though I admit I DO need imagetool to convert the BMP from whatever mess it is in to something readable by Paint Shop (for some reason if i try to open the raw file straight from the texture file with paint Shop it comes out in funny lines).Now . . . to create NIGHT textures for this bird and I'll be GREAT! In fact, if I can get PAI's permission I'd love to share some of the Celtic Ways textures I am doing with you all. I am going to take out "air" from airways just to give it even more individuality in the airline But that is for another post. THANK you gerbil jedi -- and thanks to those who responded!

>No amount of knowledge of PSPro would tell me what format >FS2k2 requires for it's textures. That is the main >procedure blocking me right now. If that's the problem, try this:Before editing an image, open it with Imagetool and take note of the specs on the right side of the window. It tells you the size of the file, the size in pixels of the image, the format, the type of alpha channel, and the number of mip-maps.

Slow down, bud! Yes, you managed to get the texture to show up (sort of) correctly. But there's a lot to know in order to get a really good result. The alpha channels control reflectivity, something that's important to do right on a Gmax model to get things looking the way they should. But using Alpha channels isn't a black art, it just takes a little patience. Conversion in ImageTool is a snap, so don't get hung up about that. The trick is maintaining all the information in your texture file when you export it from FS2002 to a format readable by your image program. I use the Targa format because it retains the alpha channels and can be used for a 32-bit image. To export from and to FS2002 in ImageTool, do this:1. Open the original texture you want to repaint in ImageTool2. Under the Image menu, choose Format, and then "32 bit"3. If the image is displayed in ImageTool as a set of the same image in various sizes, choose "Extract Mipmaps" under the Image menu. Then select the largest of the images it creates.4. Do a "Save As" for the image to your hard drive wherever you want to put the image you're going to paint and save it as a Targa (.tga) file.5. Open up the image in PSP or Photoshop and edit it.To put the image back into extended bitmap mode for FS2002, do this:1. Open the .tga file you edited in ImageTool2. Under the Image menu, choose "Create Mipmaps" -- this will create the multiple resolutions of the image used for displaying the texture at various distances efficiently.3. Under the Image menu, choose "Format" and set it to DXT3 -- this will enable the reflections if you have alpha channels in your image.4. Under the File menu, choose "Save As" and save it as a bmp file in the same directory in FS2002 that you took it from originally. Make sure you give it the same name as it had before, and choose "yes" when it asks if you want to replace the file.That's it! It's quick, easy and it works. Try it out.thanks,

Heya Bill.Sorry, friend, but if you see in my original post above, that is precisely what I was doing. The images will, of course, appear as solid black planes in FS2002. If I bypass Imagetool for the final part then the textures come out fine. They just do not reflect. Someone else referred me to some DXTbmp application I am going to try. heck I'll try anything once - hence the scars on my forehead, but I was indeed following the precise procedure you just quoted and it makes airplane black in FS2002 :-(

Okay, all. I think I figured it out. The DXTBmp application converted the file successfully and I got it to work in the FS2002. Imagetool was doing something wierd to my files making them appear as black ghosts in the sim, but with the DXTBmp file it worked just fine, and i did not change my procedure I was using in Paint Shop Pro 7.Frustrating as this was, I am glad i found a solution. I just wish i knew what Imagetool was doing diffferent to my files that it hasnt been doing to anyone else's, but since I have a converter that works now, I know it was indeed NOT the tutorials - it wass the frikking application tool.I hope I do not sound egotistical when i say this, but at least I know it wasnt operator error either. I confirmed that by most of you either posting here or emailing me telling me to do exactly what I was doing in the first place - like the post just above with the procedure for Imagetool. Wierd - do it step by step and get a black ghost.I wish I knew about this DXTBmp program sooner. Took me last night and today to figure it out, but I got it. Hopefully by the end of the day I can share some of my repaints with everyone.

Are you sure the models you are trying to paint are Gmax-based? If they are FSDS, no amount of alpha channels are going to make them shine; you'll just get the result you mentioned. I don't think using DXTbmp can do anything about that. In fact, if you followed my points to the number in ImageTool (and you had a good alpha channel to begin with) you'd have no problems, so something's wrong there.