J41: Three new (fictional) repaints

[Evincare 1]

Hi Guenter, superb, i'm impressed in your paintjobs - good to see a german livery on the JS41 - makes it more usefull to fly it in central europe :)As i'm an austrian fellow, i am currently working on a repaint for the Austrian Arrows and i'm in trouble with a glossy effect on my shiny plane. I exported your alphachannel, i used the delivered one (with the paintkit), and i made one by myself completly black but apperantly i still have a glossy effect on my plane and that annoys me really really really (cant say how much it does). Once i figured it out with the alpha channel the gloss was less than without the alphachannel - but never completly gone. Is there a special trick to get rid of the gloss. it looks like white polished chrome. I'm sorry if i hijack your thread right now but i feel you can help me with my issues. Would appreciate any help.Thank you and all the best from AustriaAlexander Roithmair

[hodge001 15]

Hi AlexanderWhich program are you using for your repaints, I only ask as using Photoshop I don

[Evincare 1]

hi jim, thanks for your response. i use photoshop for the paintjob itself. But i got a problem when saving it directly from PS to DDS Filetype. (Too many layers to export 5) - so i deleted the alphachannel - saved it to dds and imported the alphachannel to the dds file by using dxtbmp. If its necessary i'll post screenshots in a few hours, as i'm currently @ work and need to get to my pc first (of course)Tanks a lotbr, alex

[guenseli 1,591]

so i deleted the alphachannel - saved it to dds and imported the alphachannel to the dds file by using dxtbmp.

Servus Alex,that is maybe the issue:You have to flatten the image before saving as DDS. Don't delete the alpha channel.Just right click at the layers (Ebenen) and select the lowest entry (flatten image - (auf Hintergrundebene kopieren oder so - hab leider die engl Version))Now save as DXT3 explicit alpha - no MipMaps(thats the settings I use normally without problems. maybe others have better advice for it)

[Evincare 1]

hmmm - i flattened the layers. but that does not flatten the channels as well - there are still 5 channels left and that does not allow me to save them to dds. Don't worry too much to find german Menu objects for Photoshop - i use the english as well :) br, alex

[guenseli 1,591]

hmmm... really sure you have flattend and not just merged?Don't care about the channels; it's correct that they will be there...Again: window "layers" - right click at a layer and get the context-menu and chose the lowest entry "flatten image"Then you must have only one layer left which is caled background.Then you can save as DDS.But I can only speak for CS3.... but I don't think that it would be anything other with other versions...

[Evincare 1]

Thanks for all your replys, but something does not work as it should :) for the better understanding i made a few screenshots: Here you can see the flattened image and the alphachannel. I saved that as "PMDG_J41_Fuselage_T.dds"Afterwards i resized it to 1024x1024, added black layer above and set opacity to 76% and saved that as "PMDG_J41_Fuselage_T_spec.dds". i rechecked that the alphachannel is still in the dds file, with dxtbmp (and it appears to be thereAnd now the texture on the js41 in fsx as you can see - polished chrome :( All the best from Austria, Alex

[guenseli 1,591]

And why don't leave the spec files as they are?I have also just reworked the files from the paintkit and copied the spec files from the other original textures into my texture folders without doing anything with them...

[Evincare 1]

ok i think i got it. the pmdg paintkit is deliverd with a readme file.

Copy this flipped map, open the livery folder that you've just copied and renamed, open the PMDG_J41_Fuselage_T and paste your livery map here. Save this in DXT5 format. Now creating your spec map for this texture is simple. Resize your newly pasted PMDG_J41_Fuselage_T_Clean (Dirty) map to 1024 x 1024 then fill this with black with Blending settings of Mode - Multiply and opacity set to 76%.

So with opacity set to 100% (full black) - there is no glossy effect left - that looks so beautiful now :) Can you confirm that the spec maps needs 100% black layer, or "what does the spec map exactly?"Br, alex

[DJ 0]

Thanks for trying to fix this issue. Just noted that the tail horizontal and vertical stabs also look funny with the lgo lights ON.Cheers and thank you for sharing your great work.Dan