Have the Wilco Airbus and have d/l'd textures for it, several by the same person. All are great, but on 2, I noticed a problem.One was the A319 Northwest paint. The large nwa on the fuselage should be black, but on my a/c, it was shiny/chrome-like. The same went for the US Airways - Arizona Cardinals repaint (the cardinal's face was shiny). Something made me try and untick the aircraft reflection box in FS, and a/c were ok now. From doing some reading here, I'll assume this has something to do with the Alpha channel. This person's other repaints were not like this, and on these only the areas I mentioned were affected. I would like to fix these myself. I have DXTbmp. Could some of you experienced painters point me in the right direction, as to what to look for in the textures and/or alphas for the areas affected.Thanks!Rick

Hey Rick :)It should be fairly easy to fix.. however be warned. If the textures are in DXT3 then opening and resaving them will reduce the quality, although shouldn't do too much.I made the following tutorial which shows how to add an alpha channel to a bmp.ClickWhat you're looking for is, when the bmp is loaded in to DXTBmp the alpha channel should display top right. Using the controls underneath the image you can export that alpha.. make the changes and reimport it. Then save it using my tutorial.. and you should be good to go :)

Thanks!I found out what was going on. The problem was with all the authors paints, but was showing up up only 2. On the Wilco "house" paints, and other painters textures, the alpha channel was a light grey, and in spots varying shades of grey. But in the problem repaints, the alpha was white with outlines in solid black. These were the areas that showing up as reflective. I simply loaded the correct alphas into the editor, then replaced & resaved with the wrong alphas, and all is good now.I wish I could understand this better....maybe with time & rereading.Could you explain though, why did the black cause all the problems. Was it the just the black, or was it a combination of the black and the alpha having a solid white background?Thanks!Rick

The way the alpha channel works in FS2004 (different now in FSX) is by the shades of grey. 100% white being no reflections at all and 100% black being a totally chromed surface. The alpha channel is in grey scale and so a particular shade of grey will give a particular amount of reflection.So in this case the bits which had black on the alpha channel would show a chrome type effect in the Sim :)

Thanks for the reply! I thought what you described is what was happening. Your explanation though, made it easier to understand. I think what messed me up in my thinking was that I usually only mess with the alpha in the light bmp's to correct night lighting issues, and just didn't fully understand how alphas worked in relation to reflectivity.Again, thanksRick