Hi Lou,Back when you were helping me scale this model, you mentioned converting the textures to "something more appropriate for GMAX". They were in the form of PNGs that were left in my "import" dir and found no problem by GMAX. The exported model still knew to look in the AC container for its textures, not back in the import dir.Would you mind describing this process (or pointing me to the relevant doc)? My new maps are sitting as DXT3 extended bmps in the container and I would like to have them converted to pngs and moved to the import dir while still referencing the dxt3 bmps in the texture dir of the AC container. The problem is the sim doesnt seem to like a raw 24bit bmp and GMAX does't recognise DXT3 "extended" bitmaps...I want to be able to include these files as part of the source I will release back to the community and, well I don't think giving them the entire container would be entirely efficient. (-:TIAShad

Hi Shad,What graphics programs do you have? You could use DXTbmp to read the DXT3 files, then save from there to a tga format with out mips of course. Then any good 2d graphics program like PaintshopPro or Photoshop should be able to read the tga and save it as a png. Doing it this way will retain any alpha channels.Lou

Sorry, I meant within GMAX. I use PSP and DXTbmp, and should have no problem converting them. I just don't know how to get them into gmax while still having them point to the bmps within the container after exporting.CheersShad

Shad,It doesn't matter what format you use in gMax. By that I mean any format that gMax supports. So you can use mytexture.bmp (non DXT types), or tif, tga, png, psd or jpg in gMax with out any problems. When you export, makemdl changes the file extension to bmp regardless of which format you use in gMax. This is handy in that you can actually keep all of your textures in the aircrafts texture directory like pngs for gMax and bmps for the sim.Hope that answers your question.Lou

Indeed it does answer my question, just not in the way I expected. I suspect my original question was based on my observations when doing things wrong. Now that I have been doing them right the problem seems to not be there.What was happening was the exported model was somehow using the PNG texture you made within the VC (within the SIM) yet the texture did not exist anywere but the import dir of GMAX.However, doing things the way Bill described results in the textures behaving normally, so it was me who was broken not GMAX :)Thanks and sorry to bug you with this mundane question.Shad