Help - Editing Scenery Texture files

[Daviddv 0]

I am trying to make some very small 'paint' alterations to a scenery texture file.If I open it in MS-Paint it shows as a white square. If I open it with Imagetool, I see the proper 'view', but there are seven 'tiles', and I would like to be able save it/them in a format that I could play with in Paint, and resave them back into the standard flightsim .bmp format.Essentially, I am looking for a step-by-step example of how I can read/modify/write the scenery file. I have to admit that I am very much a novice when it comes to scenery design, what with Mip-mapping, Alpha channels and the various texture formats etc.Can anyone point me in the right direction?ThanksDavid

[Guest stevenroyals]

Hi DavidI use two programs by Martin Write to manipulate my textures BMP2000 and DXTBmp. They are abailable fronm his site. I also use Gimp which is a standard freeware apint program.Open the texture you want using DXTBmp, save it as a normal 24 bit BMP file somewhere else. Open it up in Gimp do what you want. Save it as a 24 bit bitmap. Open the file up with DXTBmp and save it as a 'save extended image' 'DXT1 image' file and put it into your fs texture folderSteve

[Daviddv 0]

SteveThanks for your prompt reply - I will give them a try. I had already downloaded Martin Wright's prgrams, but wasn't quite sure how to use them.David

[arno 1]

You can do the same with ImageTool if you want. You can change the format from DXT1 to 24 bit there. If you want you can also extract the mipmaps. If you then save the biggest mip in 24 bit format you can edit it in your paint program like ussual.When you have made the changes you can load the texture again in ImageTool. Select DXT1 again as format and create the mipmaps again.

[Daviddv 0]

Thanks Arno, I'll give that a try too!David

[Guest ChrisD]

Greetings.Just to expand Your possibilities a bit more, here is the way I do it.The program Convim.exe can convert the FS bmp's to normal OS2/Windows format. Now, even Paint can Your editing :)FS Texture Converter v1.03 by Elrond Elvish available here at AVSIM can compress the edited images back, so FS can use it. Several texturecompressors are available including one from MS but this one has a dialog window that lets You specify Source and destination Dir as well as compression mode (with or without alpha channel.Good Luck with Your Work.ChrisD

[Guest stevenroyals]

Hi ArnoWhat are mip maps for? Are they important?ThanksSteve

[arno 1]

They are smaller version of the texture that are included in it as well. When you are far away from the object the scenery engine uses these and that is better for the performance.