I,m doing a re-paint of a Blackhawk using the paint kit from hovercontrol.com. It's all done no problem using photoshop to paint the textures and BMP them then Dxtbmp to convert them to extended as well as apply an alpha channel to the black areas. The only thing is the window areas are completely clear, which looks a bit odd as if there's no glass. Previewing the transparency in Dxtbmp shows the alpha areas completely clear, straight through to the white/grey checkerboard. when I compare it to the standard Blackhawk ( using FS repaint as a viewer ) it has tinted transparent windows, 5% black or something similar.http://www.hobra.net/hc-images/tinted.jpgNotice how on the defult textures the windows are tinted and on my repaint they are compleatly clear, as if there is no glass in there. It just looks a bit weird.The help page in Dxtbmp speaks about the formats that it supports that have varying levels of transparency (eg. DXT3 formats have a 4 bit Transparency giving 16 levels of transparency ) but not how to acheive those levels. I'm at a loss. I also have imagetool though I'm not sure what to do with that either.So to my question, how do I create tinted transparent areas for the windows?

I am doing a repaint of the same helo, through not from the paintkit, but straight from the sand texture folder, and I have some windows showing black--not transparrent at all.If you find out anything, send me a pm please.

It is indeed to do with the alpha channel. My flight sim PC is out of action so i can't check it out myself.. you'll have to try and find out where the window texture comes from. First camel, just to make sure, count the number of files in your paint scheme folder and the amount in the standard paint scheme. Not knowing how the textures a set up.. it could just simply be you missing the bmp but I doubt it.Using the original paint scheme, a tried and tested method is to remove a bmp from the folder and see if the windows become invisible. If not move it back in to the paint scheme folder and work through them until they do become invisible.Once you find it apply a strong alpha channel to it, usually the windows are a separate bmp due to the different parameters (instead of reflections, the alpha channel controls transparency) and named something like "window.bmp" but not always.

mcwdainow,Thanks for the information. Is there a way I can tint the windows of the helo to a darfker shade than pure clear?

If you can locate the mapped area to the window, then theroretically if you have a alpha channel of dark grey then the segment would not be 100% transparent. This would probably produce a dark tint effect.

"If you can locate the mapped area to the window", etc...I do not understand what that means. Does it mean if the window tinted area of window is on the window in the bmp or what?Does it mean moving an area from somewhere to the area of the window?Excuse my ignorance. The two zips from which the Blackhawk helo in question was got are:http://64.34.169.161/ifolio_files/file_gal...lBlackhawk1.exehttp://64.34.169.161/ifolio_files/file_gal...1_WindowFix.exeThese are the HOVERCONTROL site, Downloads page.The 2nd puts a fix to the first.And the texture on which the windows are and which I want tinted is:tx_bh_doors.bmp (of the sand scheme texture folder).The bmp with the windows has a number of windows on it AND area which are metal and dark greenish, not only the windows by themselves. It is the same aircraft as Camel's picture above. I include a screenshot showing my repaint to an RAF scheme here.I have managed to make them totally clear by selecting the areas with the magic wand and coloring 0-0-0. Beyond that, my problem is what can I do to give them a slighly darker tint, like the canopy windows on the EA-6B Prowler jet.

Are the window areas black? If you remove the alpha channel (as in make it 100% pure white) do the windows turn to solid black?