EagleSkinner

Same here - again!We had this a couple of days ago - is this going to be regular?Mind you - the fix shouldn't take long.

Fixed here too! Now THAT'S service..

Also... same error header.

Me too. Either the problem described above, or a hang up on program initialization. But the main one is as described here.

>Hi,>Excuse me for saying, but I do not think Stormpup`s solution (>which is generally spoken correct) is of any help with solving>the problem this topic was started with.>>.......>>Leen de Jager(Oh Leen, fancy posting a photo of a real plane - see the other posting - to show your alignment on the Fokker ;-) ....that is one very pretty paint there!)Anyway, back to the alignment question nd "any help with solving the problem this topic was started with.", which was about aligning parts of different textures.>:-wave Oh but it does - that's probably because I personally can't stand FSrepaint. FSR places far too many limitations on repainting, IMHO, and these outweigh the benefits of "instant replay". I personally do not find FSR capable of the detail I like to see. (see images)But let's not get into an argument about "My paint kit is better than yours" :+ I did start off with FSR, I just found that I personally prefer the control you get with a Photoshop type software (Actually I prefer to use the Corel Draw Suite).If you ever get down to painting some planes like the Piper Cheyenne or the Dornier D027 (both from Digital Aviation) you'll sea what I meant in my original post. Both Paintkit makers there provide a separate texture where they have joind the fuselage sides for the painters.Now if FSR allowed you to draw lines in real time directly on a 3D image, then the paints below would have been easier. And, as I suggested, the extra work of making a grid for your paint, is worth it - especially (perhaps) when one part of the plane is to a differeent scale than the other. In this example, the lines on both fuselage and fin are all 10 pixels apart in the textures, but on the mdl...Or you can get a plane where the whole of one side, including the fin, fits in one texture ;)Besides, the best paints are those you sweated blood and tears on. All the best and do enjoy whichever painter you use.Chris. AKA Eagleskinner AKA Stormpup

Easy solution.Copy the parts concerned out of the base textures and NOTE the exact X,Y coordinates.Now paste these into a new PSD / CPT (or whatever) and line them up with each other. (Do not merge layers)Paint your line. (You could, alternatevely, paint a grid of 1 pixel lines 10 by 10 pixel spacing. Every fifth line blue, every tenth red and keep such a texture set as your master)Mask, trim and merge COPIES of the lines to the sections of the fuselage.Copy these back to the aircraft texture. Convert to the DXT or DDS format of choice and go flying. look closely for any misalignment and apply this to the appropriate part of the PSD / CPT you created above.Done once, useful often.

>It looks like its just a grey-layer overlay In>PhotoShop it's a grey, Multiply Layer and in Pixia it's a>Hybrid Layer.>======It isn't, sorry...The texture types guide is in the SDKC:/Program Files/Microsoft Games/Microsoft Flight Simulator SDK/SDK/Environment20Kit/Modeling SDK/texturing aircraft models.htmlHere's a cut-and-paste of what MS say about the specular:Specular Map and Specular Alpha channel (Falloff map)The specular map controls the specular characteristics on a model

I'd go along with the general comment "Don't upsize - downsize"...I have plenty of paints behind me too. Anyway, just think of one of the reasons for upsizing - you want a thin line on the fuselage. If you have anything 1 pixel wide on a double sized texture (or any odd number), where does that odd pixel go, when you half things back? Ain't no fractional pixels yet...The major detail loss is as you mention yourself - the size of the texture sheet against the amount of mdl being covered. Remember, the images are dimensioned in pixels, so there's no point in increasing the dpi level either. Try using 72 dpi or even less - that gives you more screen real estate in Photopaint for painting in the detail. Although a 1 pixel wide line remains that when you use a photo editing software.You can always use a vector graphic programme - I use Corel Draw a lot and copy/pasting detail objects from Draw to Paint does help keep the level of detail high.Have you used phototextures yet? The pros who can lay there hands on detail photos are at an advantage here. A high res photo copied over to the lo-res texture carries a lot of detail with it and the jpg to bmp losses aren't that bad. Besides, an Airbus A340/600 that uses only one 1024 texture for the fuselage has, by simple math, a lot less space for detail, than the DO27 where there are three sheets for the fuselage side plus two extra sheets for fin and nose - i.e. the number of pixels per foot of aircraft is another deciding factor. One paint I am working on is using three sheets for one fuselage side (i.e. about 250 pixels per foot for my project against about 5 or 6 per foot for the A340 implication above) and the plane I am helping develop is probably only half the length of the DO27 . The detail is high enough on this to actually recognise screws and the like. 32 bit textures aren't any larger than dxt bitmaps - they're still 1024 by 1024. There's just more detail per pixel so things like blends and anti aliases are a lot smoother. There's 4 times as much information per picture, so there are more colour nuances. There is a penalty for this of course - the more data you make available for the image, the more the PC has to think - there's an FPS penalty to consider. Best suggestion so far was to use the zoom function of your paint program. I'll expand that by saying paint your objects separately and paste them in to size.Another useful tool is the Gaussian Blur effect. Just a smidgeon on some objects smooths and blends no end of artistic mistakes out and it works out pixel fractions too. Oh, and finally, some modelmakers cheat. Well, a just a little... ;-)They mark off an area of the plane on the lo-res texture and map that part of the mdl to a separate texture sheet which is maybe just one sheet of things like decals, markings etc. The DA Cheyenne is one good example. The Cheyenne logo next to the pax door is about 400 pixels on the texture but only about 5 inches on the plane, so when you zoom in on the plane in external view, the Cheyenne logo is very highly detailed all the way up the zoom.

You got it...If you have the FSX SDK installed, go to the SDK folder: "Environment Kit/Modeling SDK" and read the "texturing aircraft models.html" file.Basically, you make a greyscale copy of your aircraft texture details (rivets, panel lines, window frame edges and so on. Convert this to a height map using the height/bump/3D effect tool in your favoured painter program.Then make this a 24 Bit RGB imageNext, separate the three colour channels and save the red channel separately (MS did it this way for some reason - don't ask, I don't know why)Back in the separated RGB image, flood fill the red channel with full black and the blue channel with full white. Save this image. This is the blue texture you see in the existing bumpmaps.Add the previously saved red channel as the images alpha channel.Done!Beware - the height values you set in your greyscale height map has to be done with care. Make the height value too much and the final result is lousy. You'll need to practice.This is only a very rough guide! I am not an expert on this! This is just what I discovered by trial and error myself!To recover any lost data, you just need to re-install / copy the missing files from the original.

Hi Kim,I don't know if my answers are correct, I have only learned through messing about myself. There's some useful stuff in the SDK help files and readmes, by the way.The relevant html file is in program files/Microsoft Games/Microsoft Flight Simulator SDK/SDK/Modeling SDK/texturing aircraft models.htmlThe "basic image" and it's alpha are as per FS9. i.e. an RGB plus reflection alpha.Caution! Specular and Bumpmap only work if the modelmaker has used something like 3DSMax to build the plane - AND has set certain "triggers" in the program to "tell" the mdl to use these.Here is a cut 'n paste from the html file re. specular:"The specular map controls the specular characteristics on a model

Painting.... yes, that would have been fun and I would be able to satisfy requirements - well there's plenty of other folk who would think so. Check out my repaints on Avsim by searching "Chris Brisland" (that's me :) BUT two things go against my participation:1. time - I will not be freely available for possibly the next 4 to 6 weeks as I am in the process of moving house and job.2. model type - I get the undercurrent here, that you're talking "tubes", i.e. commercial aviation of the 737 (or a320) variety and beyond... Sorry, don't do tubes. If I am wrong and time is not yet important, then we may have possibilities.

Yep, the problem is indeed the image format - bmp is not equal to bmp. What happens is that bitmaps are generally rather large, and games programmers need to compress images more. JPG is far too 'lossy' for this so different compression formats are used. There are several formats that FS understands. DXT 1, 3 and 5 are the usual. Then you can use '32 bit 888' (just another compression "type" and there are longer winded explanations around)You need to convert images using a freeware program called DXTbmp. You can get this free from http://www.mnwright.btinternet.co.uk/ (you will also need mwgfx.dll for certain operations - read the details on the MNWright website)Another choice - go to the microsoft flightsim pages and download the freeware program Imagetool. Use of these is fairly intuitive. Load your "unreadable" image and "save as" 24 bit windows bitmap. Then go ahead and repaint your textures and save again as windows bitmap......and use DXTbmp or Imagetool to convert back to FS-readable bitmap.Now comes the Caveat!FSX prefers a different format called DDS. Don't ask me why, but this now means that images need to be flipped vertically during the conversion from windows bitmap to DDS. "Imagetool" from microsoft does this for you without any input from yourself. Just save as DDS. If you're using DXTbmp, I think you have to manually select "flip" image and alpha from the options menu.There is more for you to learn as well. FS also makes optional use of "mipmaps". I don't understand the meaning of the term properly, but what these are are a series of smaller and smaller copies of the original texture image. The further away you are from an object, the less image data you need to load and FS does this by loading the appropriate mipmap according to distance. Thing is, mipmaps sometimes cause "blurries" because of FS loading the wrong one... You'll find that most repainters switch "save mipmaps" options off. You can read about these more in other forums and tutorials, this was just intended as an intro.

That's rather a short answer to give someone who's probably new to painting... :)Let's tabulate that and expand some more, shall we?1. Some form of graphics software - Photoshop, PSP, Corel PhotoPaint etc. (Even Windows paint will do basics)2. A "paintkit" for the plane you want to paint. Look on the maker's website, they often have a download somewhere. It'll be one or a series of square images with parts of the aeroplane on.3. Practice4. FS does not work with normal graphics files, you need a convertor software like DXTbmp (google DXTbmp and look for the mnwright website) or you can use "imagetool" which is included on the FSX Deluxe DVD set, or by downloading from Microsoft somewhere.- these convertors ar needed to convert your paints to DXT or DDS formats. FSX prefers the latter but can use plain DXT3 format still; you just won't be able to use the new lighting effects.5. If you're painting for FSX then the SDK has a lot of useful information about the various images you need to create for an FSX model. FSX makes use of different paint technologies, so you'll have to learn about specular and bump map files (see te SDK info files for starters)For FSX you can have four different images per texture sheet - Base colour, Specular, Bump map and Night shine You also need a fair deal of patience while you learn and practice, because the specs and bumpmaps will take you out of the world of just painting and into deeper realms of alpha channels, height maps, colour wheels, RGB channels and pulling your own hair out by its roots. There's a useful website and forum at http://www.simmerspaintshop.com/forums/ where you can get plenty of adviceI don't want to frighten you off Jason, I guess you want to do "Spirit" logos for your VA? But all I will say is "beware" - you could get bitten by the repainting bug and end up with no time on your hands for flying or managing a VA :-lol Anyway, once you get over the first hurdles, it's not that difficult to get the basics. Have fun.Chris

I have searched around these fora at Avsim and found many mixed responses about copyrights, but no really clear cut definitive answer. The background: Many planes don't just have a main sponsor paintscheme (viz the Red Bull planes), they have things like "Aeroshell", "Lycoming", "www - someone or other" and all those other trademarked logos that can be found on many planes. The Question: How thin is the ice we painters tread on, when we repaint a plane seen on airliners.net for instance?Personally I try to make contact with the owners and in at least 8 times out of 10 I get a response which has always been yes so far. In the other cases I simply haven't got a reply (Carlsberg, for instance, and their Christen Eagle). Certainly I research as much as I can when doing my "authentic" paints.But even in fictional repaints, when we painters sometimes add a small badge of sorts, are we infringing the copyright laws if we paste a small "Lycoming" transfer on a cowling? And what about freeware models that we paint - what if the model maker has added logos to his model, are we in the wrong if we publish "his" logos with "our" paints.Do the photographers on airliners.net have to get permission from the airlines and plane holders seen at airshows before they submit their photos?Or are these things in the public domain? And if so, isn't a repaint based on a photo also in the public domain? It is merely an animated reproduction.

me too... it is not immediately obvious that you have to click the upper button to send a picture. can the upload file be amended?Second post - I received an error message despite being logged in.