Mosquitoes

[Falcon500]

I was just wondering how i would make a gradient on the alpha in Pixia? I have alsmost finished repainting the Mozzie below and a slight shine would be nice because even matte colors give a shine. (emphasis on slight) All i need to do is monotone the colors (my word for making the whole thing one color not shades) but i will add weathering to it in a different layer.

[Sytse]

Two questions:
- Do you know how to make a gradient?
- Do you know how to edit the alpha channel?

[Falcon500]

Posted by: Pigeon Posted on: Today at 6:59pm
Two questions:
- Do you know how to make a gradient?
- Do you know how to edit the alpha channel?  

Thats what i was asking... 2. i was going to make a new sketch, make the alpha, and add it to my texture using DXTBMP

[Sytse]

Ok... so your question is how to create a gradient in pixia? I don't have any experience with pixia, so I can't walk you trough it. (Big words.. shouldn't be to hard...)
Aren't there any help files / manuals / tutorials on this?
Search on google!

[Falcon500]

lol i feel stupid...... i ended up finding a tutorial in swedish, luckily they have a translater on the google toolbar ..... any who.....http://www.bildsajten.com/pixia/pixia3/pixia3en.htm here it is

god bless smart people...

[Falcon500]

Sonofa!  >:(

It converts the alpha to a 256 color bmp and loses its gradient, and viola (not the intrument, its late and i dont want to spell) kinda surprised to see through my plane...

[Sytse]

Don't save to 256 colour mode. Save to 8 bit bitmap. This will give you 256 colours most of the time, but sometimes even less.

[Falcon500]

lol when add the alpha it promts me that it's going to save it as a 256 color in which it makes shades of blue. Is thier anyway to change DXTBMP to save i as 24 color?

I dont understand why it does that, when i import the alpha it promts me and says that it is going to convert the alpha to a 256 and resize the alpha to fit the image. As you can see from the picture the alpha has a gradient but when i save the image as a DXT 1 it converts the alpha and i lose the middle section of the wing..

[Sytse]

OOOOPS! Not 8 bit! LOL That's for CFS!

[Falcon500]

i cant figure out why its not saving it right...

[Sytse]

Ehm... I'm sorry, I have provided you with wrong information.  :-[ I mixed up some file types...
So let's clear things up!
- You should save all your normal textures as 256 colour 8 bit .bmp's
- You should save texture files with added alpha's as DXT3 extended bitmaps. (using DXTBMP)

Now, how to create an alpha channel in the right file format:

- Load your texture file in DXTBMP (You'll see it has a blank alpha channel)
- Click on "send alpha to editor
- You will now get a file in your image editor called TRANS.BMP
- If you want to load your textures in the alpha channel to edit you can simply copy and paste them into TRANS.BMP, but make sure the bit mode doesn't change. You can set the colour mode to grey scale if you wish.
- Edit the alpha to your likings
- Save to TRANS.BMP (or just click save) and refresh the alpha in DXTBMP (you can now see your new alpha channel in the top right screen)
- Click on Menu Item - FILE - SAVE EXTENDED IMAGE
In File Save As Type select DXT3 with Alpha as the format.

Good luck!  ;)

PS. most info from "Creating aircraft textures" tutorial by Garry J. Smith.

[Falcon500]

Uh would that also work with DXT1 because with CFS2 the pixels get scrambled.. it already bad enough since the actual texture samples are only 256X256 and were save in 256 format.

And does this give the aircraft a shine or just make the paint on top lighter to give it a look of shiny-ness.. thanks a plenty..

[Hagar]

It's a long time since I messed around with this stuff but if I remember correctly the shine has to be defined in the MDL when it was originally exported. If not, shiny textures will display as transparent. This could well be the cause of your problem. It might be possible to convert the MDL to add dynamic shine with the latest MDLC by Ivan Hsu (aka archisoft).

PS. Check this out. http://www.combatfs.com/index.php?loc=downloads&page=info&FileUploadName=morten&FileID=2693

[Sytse]

You'd better do as Hagar told you, however... saving in DXT1 format doesn't save the alpha channel so you don't get a shiny plane.

[Falcon500]

yeah that's the end of that. lol i just made an alpha and applied the alpha which gave it a permanant shine from a sun that is going to always be straight above the aircraft. good enough... I still dont know if i should make missions to go along with this aircraft or not, i also need to find out who made it and which site it was on in the first place  ::) i was thinking of uploading it here on SimV.