Re: Aircraft BMP Format for repainting

[luck17]

I've just installed CFS last night and have to say that this one's gonna be


fun. I've been flying sims now for over ten years and they just keep getting
better and better.
I decided to see how the textures were created on the aircraft and they
appear to be in windows256 BMP format. Hmmm!!! How about a repaint of the
supplied aircraft. I opened up Fractal Designs Painter 5, loaded the windows
256 color palette and started to edit the images. After saving and loading the
new textures in the texture directory for the specific aircraft I launched the
sim and selected the repainted plane. To my suprise the textures were absent.



Next I opened up MS paint and marred one of the images for testing
purposes. Would you believe that this cheesy program will allow you to repaint
the textures without trashing them? Unfortunately there are not enough effect
and brush options to even consider using this application to create realistic
texturing such as engine exhaust carbon deposits and so forth. What a bummer!
My $750.00 art program and hardware are useless!!!!! I've even expierienced
this with Janes F-15 and had to use a sub standard art program that allows you
to save the image as a 8 bit PCX file before I got a good repaint of the f-15.
Can Anyone shed some light on these problems or better yet let me know what


image editing program these sim developers are using to create the textures on
their aircraft? Any help would be much appreciated by myself and the CFS
community. We've got some planes to paint!!!!!!!!

Ken Boudreaux
woody@fastband.com

I'm just takin' a shot in the dark.. Does Fractal Painter not save as an
8 bit PCX file? If not, can you edit in FP, save as a bmp, then open the
bmp in MS paint and resave as a PCX file? I've no clue, as I've never
messed with editing textures, but thought I'd throw out a thought...

~John

[rackerly]

You could use a program such as Paint Shop Pro (I work for Jasc Software so I
had to advertise at least a little) for this, although your current programs
may also be suitable. what you need to do to get the desired result and the
best use of your tools is to open the texture BMP and make a copy of it. Then
increase the color resolution to 16mil and perform your modifications. select
the newly created texture image and paste it over the original. I need to
advise anyone doing this to make backups of the originals in case of user error
or unwanted results. Anyway, when you paste the modified image over the
original it will assume the pallette of the original and you are done. Now
simply save the texture and your ready to fly.

One of the things I noticed in modifying the P-51 was the rather odd overlaying
of the textures in areas such as the cowling. makes it very hard to place an
image or text due to the model wrapping the texture. Of course I could be
missing some integral piece of knowledge about the model but anyone that tries
to place a simple image on the cowling will be in for a test of patience at the
very least.

Hope this helps

Ron Ackerley


I've just installed CFS last night and have to say that this one's gonna be


fun. I've been flying sims now for over ten years and they just keep getting
better and better.
I decided to see how the textures were created on the aircraft and they
appear to be in windows256 BMP format. Hmmm!!! How about a repaint of the
supplied aircraft. I opened up Fractal Designs Painter 5, loaded the windows
256 color palette and started to edit the images. After saving and loading the
new textures in the texture directory for the specific aircraft I launched the
sim and selected the repainted plane. To my suprise the textures were absent.



Next I opened up MS paint and marred one of the images for testing
purposes. Would you believe that this cheesy program will allow you to repaint
the textures without trashing them? Unfortunately there are not enough effect
and brush options to even consider using this application to create realistic
texturing such as engine exhaust carbon deposits and so forth. What a bummer!
My $750.00 art program and hardware are useless!!!!! I've even expierienced
this with Janes F-15 and had to use a sub standard art program that allows you
to save the image as a 8 bit PCX file before I got a good repaint of the f-15.
Can Anyone shed some light on these problems or better yet let me know what


image editing program these sim developers are using to create the textures on
their aircraft? Any help would be much appreciated by myself and the CFS
community. We've got some planes to paint!!!!!!!!

Ken Boudreaux
woody@fastband.com

[rastos]

I've just installed CFS last night and have to say that this one's gonna be


fun. I've been flying sims now for over ten years and they just keep getting
better and better.
I decided to see how the textures were created on the aircraft and they
appear to be in windows256 BMP format. Hmmm!!! How about a repaint of the
supplied aircraft. I opened up Fractal Designs Painter 5, loaded the windows
256 color palette and started to edit the images. After saving and loading the
new textures in the texture directory for the specific aircraft I launched the
sim and selected the repainted plane. To my suprise the textures were absent.



Next I opened up MS paint and marred one of the images for testing
purposes. Would you believe that this cheesy program will allow you to repaint
the textures without trashing them? Unfortunately there are not enough effect
and brush options to even consider using this application to create realistic
texturing such as engine exhaust carbon deposits and so forth. What a bummer!
My $750.00 art program and hardware are useless!!!!! I've even expierienced
this with Janes F-15 and had to use a sub standard art program that allows you
to save the image as a 8 bit PCX file before I got a good repaint of the f-15.
Can Anyone shed some light on these problems or better yet let me know what


image editing program these sim developers are using to create the textures on
their aircraft? Any help would be much appreciated by myself and the CFS
community. We've got some planes to paint!!!!!!!!

Ken Boudreaux
woody@fastband.com


I assume you could download file reptutr.zip from library. The problem is,
the program has its own color pallette. If you try to use mspaint or something
else, it won't work that simple....
Rasto

[richilieu]

I've just installed CFS last night and have to say that this one's gonna be




fun. I've been flying sims now for over ten years and they just keep getting
better and better.
I decided to see how the textures were created on the aircraft and they
appear to be in windows256 BMP format. Hmmm!!! How about a repaint of the
supplied aircraft. I opened up Fractal Designs Painter 5, loaded the windows
256 color palette and started to edit the images. After saving and loading the
new textures in the texture directory for the specific aircraft I launched the
sim and selected the repainted plane. To my suprise the textures were absent.





Next I opened up MS paint and marred one of the images for testing
purposes. Would you believe that this cheesy program will allow you to repaint
the textures without trashing them? Unfortunately there are not enough effect
and brush options to even consider using this application to create realistic
texturing such as engine exhaust carbon deposits and so forth. What a bummer!
My $750.00 art program and hardware are useless!!!!! I've even expierienced
this with Janes F-15 and had to use a sub standard art program that allows you
to save the image as a 8 bit PCX file before I got a good repaint of the f-15.
Can Anyone shed some light on these problems or better yet let me know what




image editing program these sim developers are using to create the textures on
their aircraft? Any help would be much appreciated by myself and the CFS
community. We've got some planes to paint!!!!!!!!

Ken Boudreaux
woody@fastband.com

I'm just takin' a shot in the dark.. Does Fractal Painter not save as an
8 bit PCX file? If not, can you edit in FP, save as a bmp, then open the
bmp in MS paint and resave as a PCX file? I've no clue, as I've never
messed with editing textures, but thought I'd throw out a thought...

~John

I managed to repaint the default P-51 to red over black, instead of green over
white with Adobe PhotoDeluxe 2.0. It worked without any problems, save that it
looks crummy when I open the texture file in MS Paint. It looks great in the
game, though.