texturing in Gmax

[jamez]

I am trying to add textures to an airplane I am working on (sorry for such basic questions but this is my first project). The texture comes up fine in Gmax but does not show up in fs2004 (the aircraft is invisible in FSX).

I used a UVW map in Gmax to position the texture correctly. I then opened up the texture with the image editor tool that comes with the fs2004 SDK and mipmapped and then converted it to DXT3 and saved it to the aircrafts texture folder.

Does anyone have any idea what I am doing wrong? I have looked at several tutorials, and they all say to do exactly what I am doing. I also cannot get the virtual cockpit gauge texture to work, maybe it is the same problem.

Any help will be greatly appreciated,
James

[Brett_Henderson]

It's been a while since I used Gmax...

I'll ask the obvious question first. Are your textures binary in dimension.. i.e.   sides that are; 128, 256, 512, or 1024 ?

They don't have to be perfect squares but the width and height HAVE to be one of those.

256X256 is fine..  256X512 is fine.. 1024X1024 is fine.. BUT  1024X800 or 800X600 are not.

Another thing I did for the mapping, was to just use 8-bit bitmaps. Then when I got into detailed texturing I used hi-res textures and converted them to extended bitmaps..

Hope this helps..

[Brett_Henderson]

Oh.. and this is probably quirky on my part.. But I create the file structure for the model in the aircraft folder and work from there. The Gmax file AND the compiled model file are in the Model folder and the Texture files are IN the texture folder before I even try to map them.

[jamez]

Thanks for the reply.

I am using a texture sized 1024 X 1024...

I'll try again.

-James

[jamez]

ok, i tried it again and it works.  I don't know what I did wrong the first time.

The VC still isn't working. I made a plane in gmax and textured it with a dummy texture called $panel.bmp. Then I just used the extra300 panel.cfg file, and of course modified it to reference $panel.bmp. Am I missing something?  The VCpanel is transparent in FS2004 and no gauges show up??

[Travis]

Well, with what you did, it should be transparent.  If you want a full texture behind that one, make a copy of the panel and then apply a regular texture to it, so that it appears in the normal way.

[jamez]

I know it should be transparent. The problem is that the gauges aren't showing up on it

[SkyNoz]

If you didn't parent the texture to the object, under the Martial editor it will guarantee not show up, weather the texture is applied to the object.