DDS texture question.

[il88pp]

Thanks guys,

I've been working at it since before your posts, and only just saw them.

Paul, I think I did almost what you said.

I saved both the edited right wing and the unedited left wing as .bmp.

Opened both with GIMP. (seperately, opened side by side)

I cut out the wing (underside)

and tried to paste it onto the left wing.

Couldn't get it to fit! I must have been painting outside the lines yesterday. The area I painted is larger then the free area on the left wing.

It's a little hard to make out where the wings end. The background is almost the same blue as the wings themselves.

 

 

I didn't try loading as layers yet, will try the too. Later.

 

As I had them open in paint, I tried doing the editing manually. Very straightforward.

Used "Fill" to fill both upper and lower wing with solid colour. That worked much better the it had yesterday using "Fill" in "Paint".

Then I edited the blue markings.

That was only five minutes work. Yesterday in Paint I spent hours.

I'll use GIMP a bit more often from now on.

 

I managed to get the alpha back in as well.

Did that the other way around.

Saved the edited image as .bmp from GIMP.

Then I opened the original LeftWing .dds file in DxtBmp and used "Import Image" to get the new image. The alpha stayed in place, so all I had to do was save.

 

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Thanks for the tip n4gix

I found the .dds plugin. (here: http://code.google.com/p/gimp-dds/downloads/list )

 

But when I open a .dds file with GIMP directly, the image is covered with a fine checkerboard pattern. (light gray/dark gray).

Is there a fix for that?

[il88pp]

Hi Paul,

I followed your instructions and opened as layers and got it.

This time I selected both wings in one go.

Thanks, that was a perfect explanation.

here's the result:

 

 

Thanks again,

il88pp

[PAULCRAIG]

Only to glad I could help.

 

You can find Gimp tutorials on the gimp.org website if you want to learn more about it, it's a great tool almost as good as Photoshop.

[il88pp]

Yes, GIMP is very powerful. A bit too powerful for me perhaps. I've had it a long time, but haven't used it much.

 

It has many great tools available, and that's great. In some cases it's the only program I know that can do the trick.

 

But it also sometimes adds things to an image unexpectedly. Transparency for example.

I saved the left wing from gimp, as .bmp file, and opened in picture viewer it looked great. But when I imported it into the .dds file using dxtbmp, the colours were all weird and faded purple.

I remembered the transparency issue.

To fix, I opened the .bmp file in paint, then simply saved as bitmap. That strips the transparency.

After this the .bmp file showed the correct colours when imported into dxtbmp.

 

Same happened a while ago creating a gauge. The gauge images looked great, but the gauge didn't show in fsx. Took of hours to find out gimp added transparency and that makes the gauge transparent.

 

I find it very confusing that two copies of a file look identical in every way I look at them, yet are completely different because one contains an invisibele transparency.

When creating that gauge I had perfect looking images that wouldn't show. I re-did hours of editing already, now in paint, before I accidentally found the solution.

 

I will see if the manual is of help to me. I'm afraid it might just cause an information overload though, but thanks for the pointer.

 

In the mean time, very happy with the symmetry in the omars blue. Had two flights in it already. That layer trick is really cool, that will come in handy often. Thanks again.

[PAULCRAIG]

That's strange, I have been using Gimp for the past 6 years & have never had a problem with transparency, which version do you have? I started with Gimp 2.6 but I am now using Gimp 2.8.0.

[il88pp]

I use 2.8 as well. (2.8.14) (win7-64, probably GIMP-64 as well)

 

I remembered yesterday when exporting there were a few options to select. I had just clicked ok yesterday.

 

After you said "that shouldn't happen" I thought I would try it all over again, this time selecting different options when exporting.

 

I tried again.

(reloading both as layers, Lasso, select and copy cut part, Remove layer, Paste.)

But this time I added: "Ancor Layer"

 

Now I exported twice. As windows .bmp file

Once with "Do not write colour space information" not selected. And save as 24bit R8G8B8 ---> AAAA.bmp

(that's the default option)

 

One with "Do not write colour space information" selected. ---> CCCC.bmp

not default option. I left save as 24bit R8G8B8 alone.

 

So, AAAA.bmp contains the colour space info.

CCCC.bmp does not.

 

----------------------

I opened the leftwing.dds in DxtBmp

Used "Import new Image"

Imported CCCC.bmp

that went fine. No weird purple colour. Thought I had cracked it.

closed everything.

 

Then I opened the leftwing.dds in DxtBmp again.

Used "Import New Image"

Imported AAAA.bmp

ALSO WORKED FINE.

 

-------------

So what had made the difference was not the saving options.

The difference was because of the step "Anchor Layer" it seems.

Trying again now to test that.

------------------------

Ok, did it all again, but didn't anchor the layer. (dotted line stil visible when saving)

This time the default save option was different!

When exporting the selected options were:

-"Do not write colour space information" not selected.

-32 Bit - A8-R8-G8-B8 --selected

Hey!!

 

I saved once with the default options: ---> noAnchor.bmp

Once I manually selected 24 bit R8-G8-B8 instead. ---> noAnchor-otheroptions.bmp

 

Loaded both in using DxtBmp.

noAnchor.bmp --->Gave he weird purple colour.

noAnchor-otheroptions.bmp --> loaded right up in the correct colours.

 

They look exactly the same in picture viever.

 

When loading in DxtBmp it warns that the imported image will be converted to 24-bit bitmap.

So it seems the colour-shift occurs when DxtBmp converts the image from 32-bit to 24-bit.

 

------------------------------------

Sorry for the long story. Glad I found the issue.

I'll remember to export to 24-bmp from now on when using GIMP.

 

(Sorry about the rant earlier. I'm not unhappy with GIMP, not at all. It just get's me angry with myself for not understanding.)

[PAULCRAIG]

It still seems strange, your using a newer version than I am, so maybe it's something weird with that version as I have never come across any problems exporting with 2.8.0 even when not anchoring layer. At least you have found where the problem lay.

 

The best thing to do is to take it slow, start painting simple things using the basic Gimp tools & experiment using the Gimp manual to help explain what each tool does, I'm still learning the full potential of this wonderful tool & best of all it's FREE!!!!!

[il88pp]

I agree 100%. GIMP is wonderful.

I've always found editing images difficult. With other programs as well. I need more practice I think.

 

I've decided when using gimp I will from now on save images as .xcf and only then export them to the desired filetype. That way if something goes wrong I can open the .xcf and try exporting again.

Up till now I usually just exported right away, but if that goes wrong you are stuck.

 

Maybe the difference is indeed because of the versions of GIMP we are are using. Or maybe you have some default save options pre-selected. I really don't know.

At least I know what to look out for from now on.

Thanks for your help, it's starting to make a bit more sense now.

il