Newcomer to Repaints

[masmith]

I do not know any thing about repainting aircraft..

But i`ll like to give it ago

Could someone explane repainting to my please?

[igorski]

well,

you get your textures,
convert them to a format you can edit them it,
do your editing,
convert them back to fd format,
and go fly.

Thats the outline anyway!!

Heres a better set of instructions!

"imagetool" and "dxtbmp" are teo programs used for texture format conversion, both freeware.

download dxtbmp here
http://www.mnwright.btinternet.co.uk/pr ... dxtbmp.htm

download imagetool here:
http://www.projectopensky.com/files/ind ... getool.exe


1) Make a copy of an existing texture folder in that aircraft in FS, and rename it to texture.***** where **** is an appropriate name for your repaint

2) Using imagetool, browse to your new texture folder, and open up all the files (may have to do his a batch at a time, as imagetool dosnt like opening large numbers of files in one go.

3) Look through and convert any files that contain parts you will want to texture (eg wings, fuse, tail) to 'normal' bmp format (24 bit). If you want the textures to remain visbale in FS until you edit them, convert them to 32bit.

4) go texture those parts!! For me that means making a layered repaint kit in .psd format normally, then working on that. But for simpler repaints you can just edit straight onto the bitmap.

5) Once you have edited a part, and want to see how it looks in FS, open dxtbmp or imagetool, load that file, and save as 32 bit. Especially if your just editing the bmp, always save as 32 bit, at least until its completely finished. This is because repeated conversion to and from dxt3 really messes up images. With my .PSD's, imagetool reads them directly, and then lets me save it as a bmp in whichever format I like. So as its not the psd file that gets converted each time, I can use dxt3.

6) Load fs, see what needs changing, and keep editing until its all perfect!

7) Decide what format you want the textures to be in. 32bit keeps all the detail, but has a large files size. DXT3 Looses some detail, but is a quarter of the file size of 32bit - open the files you edited in imagetool or dxtbmp, and convert your files.

Give it a final test fly to make sure it all looks as you want it to, and your done :-)

Any questions, just ask!

[gryshnak]

Just emailed you a file, hope it helps.

Gryshnak

[wji]

Click the first post at the top of this NG -- SimV has it all right here.