I need help with uploading the new paintjob

[tas03]

nope..still cant man.... ....err...can you repaint for me?..i'll give you the design..can you garry?

[garryrussell]

I don't have FS.X

Can you see two entires now in the chooser??

[tas03]

I don't have FS.X

Can you see two entires now in the chooser??

yup..i have 'RCA 2008' and 'RCA 2008 new paint'..but both aircraft came out all white..

[garryrussell]

Sorry mate

I made a error in that cfg..I've corrected it, can you try it again and see if you get two different aircraft in the chooser..just paste that whole section in as before

[tas03]

yup..i notice the error and i've change it..but still both aircraft came out all white,only the wordings near the tail shows 'N747RCA' ....

[Hagar]

Hi Hagar

If I save a 32 bit in photoshop then DXT converts it OK but my FS crashes when it tries to load that.

It could that if you have the alpha embedded you need to use 32 as you have for channels but for ordinary 3 channel RGB 24 bit is all that is being used.  I always make and load my alpha's seperately.

I get loads of queries from folk who get this crashing and it due to them not saving as 24bit.

Hi Garry. Perhaps I should have qualified that by saying it works on FS9 on my system. I obviously can't speak for every combination of OS + video card/driver + display settings etc.

tas03. I can't confirm this as I don't have FSX. It might also depend on whether you have SP1 or SP2 installed. I suspect your problem is caused by using DXTBmp to save the repainted textures in DXT5 DDS format. I've been told that this will not work & you have to use the latest Imagetool I mentioned earlier. You could try saving them in Extended DXT3 BMP format & see what happens. You might have to flip the images before saving for them to display properly.

[todayshorse]

Well, it is interesting that you dont have this 'quirk' but mine does exactly that, if i save in 32 bit in PSP i can open in dxt.bmp and do everything with it, but it either crashes fs9, or i get a blank aircraft!!!

In fact it was one of the first queries i had that Garry answerd for me when i started on this long voyage called 'repainting'  :D

[garryrussell]

Hagar

I was think that myself afterwards and some folks have various plug ins to aid thing.

I have been on with tas03 this afternoon and there is an ingrained problem and two others since I spoke to him have a problem as well.

The question of DXTBmp and DDS came up.

Problem with formats is they look OK

If I turn a DDS to 32-888-8 I can't transform it at all in photoshop....all that is greyed out indicating a bad bit depth but it checks out OK via the numbers.

However in PSP7 there is no BMP option and the BMP can be scaled and rotated. Almost as if Photoshops ability top handle different types of BMP see a conflict where as PSP just gets on with it.

It's a minefield and that's why I tend to stick to the save in 24 bit and bring in separate alphas.

As you quite rightly say different set ups mean different things

My first model is in beta and one gets it doing odd thing others not so bad some not at all.....same model, same version, different setup.

One good thing about this thread is the amount of oddities that have shown up...all good to know

TD Horse.yep  your problem was of no surprise to me as it is common, but some don't seem to get it.

So frustrating when all you need to do is see it and it won't show.

I hope not too many potentially good painters have been put off by this.......but thread like this will hopefully sort them out.

Garry

[Hagar]

To summarise, most of what we've discussed here is irrelevant as the original topic concerns repainting an FSX default aircraft. The edited textures will have to be saved in one of the DDS formats, most likely DXT5.*

If I'm reading it correctly tas03 is using Paint Shop Pro so the question of converting 32-bit images does not arise. I've been told that DXTBmp has problems with the DDS formats used in FSX & that Imagetool is better for this job. Imagetool is included with FSX Deluxe Edition or you can download it in the FS9 Terrain SDK. This version will not open DDS images but can save in that format. I've checked it out in the FSX Demo & it seems to work.

I don't have FSX so obviously can't read the SDKs. From what I've seen of it the texture folders work in a different way to those in previous versions of FS. If it's configured as a standalone aircraft the RCA repaint should only need one Aircraft.cfg entry providing it's pointed at the correct texture folder. The original white variation does not need to be listed on the FSX aircraft selection menu.

*PS. I used an old trick & saved a texture from DXTBmp in DXT3 Extended BMP format. I then renamed the file extension from BMP to DDS. This works fine in the FSX Demo. I had to flip the texture in DXTBmp before saving it.

[Hagar]

If I turn a DDS to 32-888-8 I can't transform it at all in photoshop....all that is greyed out indicating a bad bit depth but it checks out OK via the numbers.

However in PSP7 there is no BMP option and the BMP can be scaled and rotated. Almost as if Photoshops ability top handle different types of BMP see a conflict where as PSP just gets on with it.

Ah, I think I understand it now. Photoshop can't handle Extended BMP textures direct but it should work if you load the texture into DXTBmp & send it to Photoshop for editing in the usual way. That's the reason I never had these problems.

[garryrussell]

Nope....this was all done through DXT BMP I have never had problems loading into photoshop and don't have problems saving BMP out of photoshop but many others have done and I have given them the solution.  Photoshop handles the 32 extended quite correctly.....this is the one exception.  I even tried loading as 24 bit which would ignore the alpha but it has no effect......still can't do any transformations on it.

There are guys looking at this.........I do know from what they say there can be problems with BMPs.  The one I have heard back from can't get it to work either.  As to the other who is very experienced suggest the original transformation by DXTBmp into BMP may have  corrupted it

There were several problems

The BMP is corrupt

It was orientated incorrectly

The alpha was not attached correctly

The file was not being read after saving to DDS DXT5....which was the correct format to save into.

Some of my own files have been turned into DDS before without any trouble....the difference here is the files started as DDS where mine started as BMP.

I'm going to try image tool and see if that converts properly

[Hagar]

I wouldn't expect a standard graphics editor (even one as advanced as Photoshop) to be capable of working with compressed Extended BMP images including an Alpha Channel. That's what the texture converters like DXTBmp were developed for. They split the Alpha channel from the main image when opening textures so both can be edited separately.

One thing puzzles me about all this. What is the advantage of saving from Photoshop in 32-bit BMP format? I believe Targa format (.tga) is more suitable for creating FSX textures.

[garryrussell]

That's exactly what the converters do

But as I mentioned before.I am not having trouble with formats like 32 bit or whateverand haven't in  over 600 paints..except the odd occasion I forget to switch to 24 bit and FS crashes without fail.

Here we have BMP that is not behaving properly and it could be that DXTBmp is not coverting the DDS to BMP properly.

I have his files..they and these are the ones that I have sent on to others that work in FS.X

[Hagar]

Try Imagetool.

[garryrussell]

Try Imagetool.

I ended two posts ago that I was going to try image tool...............