Simviation Forums

When trying to view aircraft texture files, or open them in Picture It! etc. I get the message "Drawing failed" or "Unable to open picture" and the texture will not open.

Has anyone any idea why this is, and how to rectify it?

happens with model pictures. some people are able to protect their model and paints by some sort of picture encryption.

thats about all i can offer for you.

Ramos

Its just because the format is not supported.
The way that painters do it is with a program called dxtbmp, available for free download.
Download it, open the texture with it and save it as a different format, as a targa with alpha if you want to paint it.  :)
Theres no problem, even photoshop wont open those textures. Just downloading dxtbmp will make it work.

Where can I get dxtbmp, and what is it?

dxtbmp is a viewer for DXT encoded bitmaps.

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

For repainting purposes, bitmaps come in two varieties - 24-bit (normal) and 32-bit (extended).  Most graphics software, including Picture It!, only works with the 24-bit images.  FS2004 only works with the 32-bit kind.  DXTBMP converts one to the other and back again.  So you start with a 32-bit file, convert it to 24-bit, make any changes or repaints that you want, then convert it back to 32-bit so FS2004 can use it again.

(Apologies to all experienced repainters for being over simplistic and not even mentioning alpha channels)

There's a link in my sig if you want to get started in the fun world of repaints.

Gryshnak

"(Apologies to all experienced repainters for being over simplistic and not even mentioning alpha channels)"

Nor 16bit DXT3  

"(Apologies to all experienced repainters for being over simplistic and not even mentioning alpha channels)"Nor 16bit DXT3  

Required for CFS1, FS98... However, converting to the higher color formats for texture editing will usually provide much better results (as long as one converts back to the original when done editing, of course ).