Ok, Tolwyn now I have some questions with PSP10.

Lets take a insignia you want to put on a plane. How do you get the area around it to be transparent so you can just paste in on the airplane ?

That is the biggest one right now. I spend lots of time editing the insignias and removing surronding colors I don't need.

The rest i have to learn on my own. It take awhile.

Thanks
Jib01/02

It depends upon the background.

Open in PSP10.
Promote to layer.
Use the magic wand tool with high(er) levels of tolerance to select and summarily delete the background.

Use anti-aliasing OUTSIDE the selection.

Delete background (sometimes piece by piece).

If you have trouble, email me the graphic, and I can do it for you. Save the graphic as a 32 bit TGA or a 24 bit PNG to preserve transparency.

Use export-->PNG for best results.

By the way, never edit the original. Open in PSP10 and Copy/Paste to new "working" image.

Tolwyn,

Ok, now I need some other questions answered.

How do you do aluminum (what color do you use ?)

How do you get the shine with the alpha ? Is it automatic ?

Regards
Jib01/02

Bare aluminum is...well, it's something that tends to elude novice painters, if only because most of us are just trying to do basic painting instead of reading tutorials. However, there ARE several good tutorials out there, I thought I saw one the other night, I'll try to dig up a few for you...

http://www.simmerspaintshop.com/forums/articles.php?action=viewarticle&artid=32

http://www.gjsmith.net/Tutorial/tutorials.htm

http://www.calclassic.com/repaint.htm

http://www.projectopensky.com/files/index.php?dir=paint-resources/
http://forum.projectopensky.com/index.php?showforum=27


http://www.simviation.com/fsdutilsdesntute1.htm

Aluminum is generally tough because you have to "set in stone" the reflection.

Generally a gradient works well, with the sheen shifting to white where the natural light highlight is hitting the metal, and darker gray where the shadow of the cylindric body would naturally "have."

Like the round part of a fuselage or airframe.

Find a clean, non-labeled pop can. Take a picture of it (or a scuffed or buffered can of soup with the label gone). That should help you.

Now, the other thing is to include these "parts" in the mask so that FS9 can render the specular highlights (or whatever) as the "aircraft effect."

There are other planes in your inventory with aluminum. Check to see how they were done for guideance, too.

Tolwyn,

You're talking Greek to me. Haven't got a clue what you are talking about. Need more detailed instructions. First of all what bit depth do I need ? How many colors ? How do I add the Alpha ?

Regards
Jib01/02

Ahhh.
Ok.

Always "work in" 24bit color (16 million). Now, PSPX introduces new terminology. They call it 8bits per channel. There are 3 color channels (red, green, and blue). So, 8x3=24. Save your masters that you work on in either PSP's *.pspimage format, or photoshop's PSD format. This retains all the layers.

Your output format from any paint program should be TGA, 24 bit. The Mask Layer (sorry, I'll call it Mask Layer), should be BMP, Greyscale (256 shades of grey). Normally, you do NOT want to save as 32 bit TGA (which is the 24 bit image with the embedded 8 bit mask). This is because in the BMP tools, you specify the mask to use for a particular texture as a separate image file.

An Alpha Channel is a place where you can store selection data, masks, etc. So sorry for the confusion. You can store "masks" inside alpha channels. For FS2004 purposes, you will have a mask that is a separate image. It's like a digital pocket(s) of an image.

FS2004 supports images of different bit depths and some of those image formats support alpha channels that contain a mask.

This mask, again, depending upon the image format can be:


DXT1 = 2 bit (black or white)
DXT3 = 4 bit (16 shades of grey)
DXT5 = 8 bit (256 shades of grey)

All of these formats I believe are 16 bit color (16,384 colors)

Some of the 888 format BMP files can be 32 bit (24 bit RGB + 8 bit Mask)

Or, you can use a full-blown, uncompressed, big-ass 32bit BMP.

The different formats allow for faster texture loading at a cost of image quality (less bits per pixel for color representation); however, for the most part, the end user will NEVER even notice.

I assume you have FS2004's bmp tools? If not, please let me know. You absolutely need this to work in the texture formats that FS2004 supports. This program also generates mip-maps for you when you save, so that the further away the aircraft, it "shifts gears" to a lower resolution texture (MIP).

e.g.:
1024x1024 -> 512x512 -> 256x256 -> 128x128 -> 64x64 -> 32x32 -> 16x16 -> 1x1

7 mipmaps for a 1024x1024 image. Increases filesize, but is nominal.

These mips can be embedded in the extended BMP and usually is a good practice.

A Mask is a 256 greyscale image. Those 256 colors from white to black represent how much "shiny effect" (usually) is applied to the corresponding areas of your texture. Depending upon the model, those 256 shades of grey represent the opacity level of the texture. White being fully opaque, black being fully transparent.

Literally, it's like Digital Masking Tape. Hence the name "mask".


TIP:
Since you have to have a separate mask image the same size as your source texture, in PSPX, it was difficult for me to figure out how the heck to save the mask as a separate image.

The work around:

• Drag the Mask Layer to a blank space in your work area to create a new image
• Adjust this image to Greyscale
• Fill the raster layer with BLACK
• Merge all
• Adjust Image -> Negative Image
• Save as 8bit BMP

By the way...
You can embed the 256 mask into a 24 bit TGA, making a "32 bit TGA with Alpha".

The problem is the BMP tools I'm using for FS2004 never properly render the mask layer. It's always inverted. So, that's why I always recommend having your mask as a separate 256 color greyscale BMP.