Really close on editing textures - but HELP

Gang - I found a post on flightsim from a few years back talking about how to edit sky textures. I have cut and pasted the text from these instructions below. But he doesn't clearly state how to edit them just to make the blue sky bluer. He speaks to the lower few pixel lines and how to enhance them for sunset. But I can't figure what pixel lines to make darker blue to make my sky bluer. Does anyone have any insights based on what is below???

 

Editing a texture file:

 

When you watch a sky texture file in an editor, you may think that the image is too small – just enlarge it. After enlarging it you’ll think that the resolution is to coarse (32x32 pixels) but that’s enough for fs9 – even relatively hard transitions in colour and brightness from one pixel row to another or from pixel to another (as perceived in the editor) are blurring sufficiently in fs9 to get almost smooth transitions.

 

 

Different pixel codes in a texture file (for reflections from ground, aircraft, clouds and water)

 

At the very upper row of pixels you should see six pixels having different colours or tones – five pixels at the left (starting with the first pixel in that row) and one pixel at the right side (last pixel in that row).

 

- First pixel (from left to right): colour and brightness applies to the reflective colour and power on more dark parts of terrain and aircraft

- Second pixel: colour and brightness applies to the reflective colour and power on more bright parts of terrain and aircraft

- Third pixel: colour and brightness applies to the reflective colour and power on more on more dark parts of clouds

- Fourth pixel: colour and brightness applies to the reflective colour and power on more on more bright parts of clouds

- Fifth pixel: colour and brightness applies to the reflective colour and power on more dark parts of water or water shadowing

- Sixth pixel: colour and brightness applies to the reflective colour and power on more bright parts of water

 

The colour and brightness of the lowest row of pixels is determining how the sky above the horizon is blending to terrain beyond the horizon. I think, to certain degree it also determines the reflective colour and power on terrain just beyond the horizon.

 

To a certain degree this also applies to the second row of pixels from below. Whereas this also seems to determine how the upper part of atmosphere near the horizon blends to faraway clouds above the horizon.

 

When giving the lowest two rows of pixels the same brightness and colour (just try a yellowish, reddish or orange coloured grey - concerning sunset colours) so that it fits to the appearance of your terrain textures, you’ll certainly get very smooth transitions between atmosphere and terrain at the horizon.

 

Haven’t tested sunrise -, daytime – and night textures yet but I think they’ll work the same way

Have you edited all 10 versions of a given sky texture?

yes. I went in and edited all 10 of afternoon sky the exact same way. And they all came out with the streaks of yellow red etc in the sky. There must be like one line of pixels dedicated to the actual sky color

Sound to me like you have save them in the wrong format use Microsoft's free image tool to determine what format to use the DXTBmp tool does tend to save sky textures in the wrong format.

Howard

Web : http://biggles11.wix.com/the-natural-world

Mail : biggles11@btinternet.com

It appears that sky textures are standard 24 bit BMP textures. This is the BMP format that regular paint programs use. There may be no need to use DXTBmp or Imagetool.