Simviation Forums

Check out my new toy.....CF-18 painted in the colours of my favorite hockey team, The Calgary Flames....









BTW, I saved the texures as a basic DTTS file with no Alpha before I realised you could change those settings. Can someone explain the differences, pros / cons?

Nice job.

Alpha channel will give you a shine. White = none, black = maximum. But in most cases, you can't get anywhere near full black. I usually end up somewhere around 25% black when I want shine.

If you are just doing a palette shift, same pattern, different colors, and want the same amount of shine, the easiest way is send the alpha from the original to your editor, clone it, and close the original

in the editor, leaving the clone open. Then send the repaint alpha to your editor, copy the original and paste it to your repaint alpha. Close the repaint alpha and save, close the clone but don't save.

Then save that particular texture. Repeat for all the textures.

A repaint shold have an all new alpha not a clone of an exisiting

There are the areas like markings etc that need taking out of the alpha.

An alpha really needs to be specific to a paint.

Well said! I spent many hours tinkering with the alpha, using one from some other repaint just wont work.....Use it as a start point by all means but lettering, markings and so on just dont have the same 'shine' as they are not the same material as the fuselage etc.....i think i used to use the magic wand on my .bmps to 'cut out' the markings, and transfer to the alpha, then lighten them up vis a vis the rest of the fuselage/wings/whatever. Its difficult :-/

But well done on getting your paint into the sim and working 

BTW, its took me two weeks to get the windows right on somthing ive started working on My first repaint in blooming years!!!

Well said! I spent many hours tinkering with the alpha, using one from some other repaint just wont work.....Use it as a start point by all means but lettering, markings and so on just dont have the same 'shine' as they are not the same material as the fuselage etc.....i think i used to use the magic wand on my .bmps to 'cut out' the markings, and transfer to the alpha, then lighten them up vis a vis the rest of the fuselage/wings/whatever. Its difficult :-/

No need for all that messing about. You can use the main texture as Alpha in DXTBmp. Alpha > Import Alpha. It will be automatically converted to 8-bit Grey Scale. You can then tweak it to get the effects you want.

Thanx for all the replies. Im still trying to digest all this knowledge. All that technique needs to catch up to my creativity....

Awesome Job!

I keep a group at the top of my .psd

The group is called alpha and contains the grey alpha tint and the usual cut outs details like door handles, vents etc

To make an alpha for the paint I select the layers of the livery bits that need to be cut out, copy then merge the copy into one layer

Place that layer in the Alpha group on top of the others, turn the group on so now I have an all grey bitmap with the usual cut outs in white and now the livery...change the livery layer to white, save as name_alpha and call that in using DXT.BMP

If your editor doesn't support groups then just two layers at the top to turn on...Alpha tint and usual cutouts above that will do.

Takes about 30 seconds to make a specific alpha for the paint

I've never taken more than a very few mins making an alpha

Well maybe i spend too much time on them then!!! But i do like to faff about with it, down to individual panels and various parts. I dunno, its just how i like to work

Individual panels etc are already taken care of in the main paint via different layers with areas of black or white at different opacity's to lighten or darken various panels

To alter those or copy and use to alter areas in the alpha again only takes seconds

Point here is folks spend ages trying to line up and match alphas to their paints when all they need is already there

I agree with Todayshorse. I spend quite some time on alphas because they do more for a model than most realize. I get out of them what I put into them.

Layering is the key to repainting. If the main texture file is set up with layering to your liking - including layers specifically for the alpha - then the alpha file can be created from the texture file. Open the texture file, convert to grayscale, then turn on and off specific layers depending on how you set things up to make life easier. I have a checklist for each model I do, and presets of "brightness/contrast" for specific layers. It IS a quick easy job once the texture file is set up right.

I use the "negative" method as the foundation of my alphas. By changing a texture file to grayscale, you can then negative the image, inverting the lightness. Most objects in a texture require the opposite light value in the alpha. There are numerous exceptions to this rule, but it's a good place to start for experimentation.

Many secrets can be found by experimenting with alpha channels. You'll get out of it what time you put into it.

I agree with Todayshorse. I spend quite some time on alphas because they do more for a model than most realize. I get out of them what I put into them.
Many secrets can be found by experimenting with alpha channels. You'll get out of it what time you put into it.

I just recently figured that out.   And whhhhhooooooooooowheeee do they make a diffrence!
Never imagined the results I got coming!

A repaint shold have an all new alpha not a clone of an exisiting

There are the areas like markings etc that need taking out of the alpha.

An alpha really needs to be specific to a paint.

Garry, I did not say clone for the repaint. I said clone for the palette shift. There is a huge difference. A palette shift is the exact same pattern, except for colors and it works fine.

For the repaints, I often make a copy of the texture I'm working on and then alter the light/dark/contrast for the alpha.

Cool paint job there Bullock [smiley=thumbsup.gif]

[quote]Cool paint job there Bullock [smiley=thumbsup.gif]