I've been painting in MSFS and Sierra's NASCAR series for about 5 years now using Paint Shop Pro, so I know my way around the painting booth pretty well. Recently I've been seeing repaints of acft with 32bit textures. Is there a tutorial that anyone knows of to give an overview of how to paint in 32bit? Can it even be done in Paint Shop Pro, or is Photoshop needed?Any help would be greatly appreciated.Tim13

Hi,Well I am pretty sure I am right in saying (and I am sure someone will correct me if not ;)), that a 32 bit image is a normal 24 bit image with an 8 bit alpha channel.So repainting a 32 bit image is just a case of making your paint a 24 bit image and having an 8 bit alpha (a grey scale image that controls the amount of reflectivity) and "merging" the 2 files together to make a DXT3 extended bitmap.You should get Martin Wrights DXTBMP program to do this http://www.mnwright.btinternet.co.uk/.Dan.

Thanks Dan. I do use DXTBMP from Martin Wright. I'll have to nose around that program a little more. I guess that I'm a creature of habit and need to learn a new way of manipulating the textures.Tim13

Actually, with DXTBMP you can save the texture in DTX3 format or as a, 10Mips 32bit 888(8bit Alpha) Extended bitmap. A 1024x1024 texture file is some 5+ meg in size compared to a DTX3 w/Alpha, which is about 1.3 meg.

Hi,If you are not familiar with handling the alpha channel from within PSP, I have a repainting tutorial on my Cal Classic page which shows how you can use them as a Mask, which makes it quite convenient.Hope this helps,--Tom GibsonCal Classic Propliner Page: http://www.calclassic.comFreeflight Design Shop: http://www.freeflightdesign.comDrop by! ___x_x_(")_x_x___

Thanks to everyone for the responses. Time to start reading!Tim