altering & saving texture ...BMP

[Guest rog54]

Hi,I'm just beginning to learn about repaints. I removed UNITED from the fuselage BMP then saved. Opened FS chose the aircraft and the entire fuselage was grey. Replaced the BMP with another from a different paint and had my colors back. I see most everyone is using paintshop pro or corel. I made this small change with Microsoft's default paint program. Are the BMP's of a special type? I noticed some other programs could not open them? Anyone have any thoughts on this problem?Thanks!Roger

[Guest Patrick_Waugh]

Roger,Yes, many bmp's are in a special 8-bit format that MS uses that has an alpha channel. This none-standard format cannot be handled by many graphics tools. MS provides a tool called imagetool.exe in the aircraft SDK gamepack that you install with GMAX.If you attempt to edit such an image with other tools you will most likely have problems due to them not seeing this special alpha channel info.There are other tools you can get that repainters use to read these as well, such as DXTBmp (google that).Patrick

[Guest rog54]

Thank You Patrick!Onelast question, If I open and save the renamed texture using imagetool will I be good to go or will I need to start from scratch?Thanks!Roger