FFX 727 blank textures observation

[Hornit 3]

On the Blank textures for the 727 I just noticed something important for repainters. I went to go try and repaint a Delta old colors scheme and ran into a big obstacle. I converted the textures into tga and went into PSPro to start painting. I wanted to start with the forward nose area and thought I would start on the blue cheatline and then do the widget around the door. I tried to do a flood fill for the blue line and noticed lots of little speckles in the paint. DOH! Doesn't seem to matter if I convert to 24 or 32 bit either, they are still there. There is no way Im gonna touch them all up by hand! Flood fill won't work, niether will the airbrush of selected sections due to this. I checked the 737's blank and they are pure white so no problem there. I hope this small image is ok to show what Im talking about.http://www.x-plane.org/users/hornit/tex.jpg I am betting that is why there are no repaints yet for this fine model. Any way to fix this short of totally redoing the textures? Anyone at FFX have some good blank masters for us eager repainters? Thanks for a great model, now I want to repaint it!!!! :)Hornit

[Guest]

From all apearances it seems your not at 16 million colors. Make sure its set at 16 million then try again. If you still got problems, i'll try to help further.When converting from DXT3 to TGA, select 32bit then save as TGA and it should appear/work fine in your paint program. You may have done something wrong in the process, but I'm only guessing right now.mike@sgair.nethttp://sgair.net/images/member_name_banners/mike_small.jpg

[Hornit 3]

This is a zoomed in shot of the texture in imagetool, no changes have been made to the download/texture, I am in 32 bit color. As I said earlier, the 737-200 white textures are fine, but obviously not these. I can repaint this but its a ton of work to do and will keep me and I'm sure some others from repainting this.http://www.x-plane.org/users/hornit/72tex.jpg

[Guest Tim13]

I never could understand why most paint kits from the developers aren't released as layered .psp or .psd files, it would make things so much easier. In the NASCAR Racing 2003 community, there are many layered templates available for cars to be painted. For some reason, the thought of giving out the layered temp in the aviation sim community is like giving out a national secret or something.I hope you get it worked out, the more repaints that there are, the better FS gets.Tim13

[Guest]

Hi,I think you must change the settings in the fill tool. You have it proberly in "RGB value" selected. Try to select "cover all".I hope the words I use are correct, I've translate it from my Dutch version of PSP.Hope this will help.Cees, from Holland.

[John_Tavendale 453]

It does that when you change textures from DXT to 32 bit.Not much you can do about it, add a new layer, trace the cheat line, use the fill tool and flatten :)

[Guest]

You should be able to adjust the tolerance of the fill tool at fill a contiguous area of all pixels within, say, 32 shades of the color you are filling. This setting will allow the fill tool to fill all the white, and all the "sort of" white (grey) pixels within the border or cheatline that you draw.Although I think you should add a separate layer for the color you want to add, then merge it when you have it complete. (Blend with multiply or transparency or darken to keep the detail from the base layer)Of course, this is all for Photoshop, although I think PSP has many of the same functions.BrianEDITAlthough I just looked at the texture (probably should have done that before posting :-)) and noticed that the original format of the 737 and 727 textures is 8-bit index. So, while you may be in 32bit texture, the original file is 8-bit, and all shading is done by those annoying little dots. The 737 has no shading on the blank texture, so does not have the dithering. The 727 does have the shading (and thus the dithering) so your best bet for repainting it is to try layer blending to get the colors where you wnat them, but still show the base texture through the layer color. Or recreate the shadows when you are done with the painting. Sorry.(yes, A PSP or Photoshop layered file would make it much easier to repaint.)end EDIT

[Guest David20UK]

I paint my aircraft by using a PSP7 Multiply Layer on top of the image, so that the colours mix and you dont have to worry about those dots. However - it does mean that when you are doing a cheatline you have to draw round each window so that they dont fill over aswell, but it is very worth the effort as the textures can look amazing by doing it that way.The 737-200 paint kit is good though, I'm working on some T-43A and CT-43A aircraft of various USAF squadrons, and the JANET also, just searching for the squadron emblems!David Johnson