Textures Made,,,,need help

[beowulf2014]

Ok i have been making some custom airport runways systems and taxi ways textures for ofp. I have each section created in 512 x 512 pixels and saved into .tga format.

My questions are this:

1. I have tried opening them with textview and can't see them let alone move them into .paa format. Could someone tell me how to do this?

2. How do I add these textures into a MAP...I have WrpEdit but not sure how to get my textures into it.

If someone would be so kind as to help me here I would appreciate it and when they are done  and working in my map I will release them for everyone to have. Thanx in advance

[Leone]

When you made them did you check to see whether or not there was an alpha layer created, and what colour it was?

I'll give you my process....I use Adobe Photoshop...so I don't know whether it will work for you.

1. Make texture.
2. Make sure Alpha layer is white (see-through)
3. Save as 32-bit tga
4. Open in TexView using "Source Files" as the file type.
5. Save it (as a .pac or .paa)!

Now that you've done that, put your textures in a pbo.

1. Open you island.
2. Click the Surfaces tab
3. Click "Add" (new window opens)
4. Click "Add" in new window
5. Find and add your pbo
6. Find it down the bottom of the list in the new window. It must be MYPBO not /MYPBO
7. Select your textures and add them.

Have fun!

[beowulf2014]

Thank you for the help, I will have to make sure and check alpha channel that is prob what I did wrong and will let you know if it works. The Alpha channel is just the background right? It should be white..? I might be lost lol
Ok after talking to a friend I now know that I have no idea how to do that.  I have
Adobe Photoshop 6.0
Paint Shop Pro 5.0

 So if you can show me how to do this I would be very apreccaitive. thanx

Im wanting to get into addons i have 3d Exploration and O2 and StuffPBO and UnPbo.
I downloaded the specs on a F22 and seperated front side top apart and saved as .tga then tried to load in O2 and it said that there was a paa/pac error....so I will have to see whats up with that...anyways spilling at the mouth here,,,,thanx for the help will let you know how is goes

[Leone]

Alpha channels are best thought of as a mask. They are greyscaled (meaning white---grey---black) with white letting all the RGB (or CMYK or whatever) show through, black letting none show through. Open up some BIS textures and have a look at how they use alpha channels (Texview=>Show/Hide Alpha=>Show/Hide RGB).

Photoshop (I have 5.0, but I imagine it's the same...):

1. Open your .tga file
2. Windows=>Show Channels
3. You should have 5 channels showing...RGB, R, G, B and Alpha
4. Click on the alpha channel name (so it turns blue...you are now editing the alpha channel and not the RGB component)
5. Click the little eye so you can see what you are doing.
6. Grab your paint bucket and make it white.
7. Save as a 32-bit tga file.

If your textures don't have an alpha channel, then something else is wrong  :-\

There ya go!

[beowulf2014]

Ok I think I got it down..looks good on the ground but preview in side window where it says to add looks funny to me..odd... well my texture pack isnt ready yet but I practiced by turning the North And South Runways East and West as well as Taxi way systems. So I will give those to you just so you can tell me if im doing this right or not.

ftp://ftpserver.stogroup.net/Textures1.zip  (will be ready at 2315 eastern time)

Let me know if this is good and also if people would be interested in these thanx!

[beowulf2014]

if you think people would want these then ill also put in the green grass runway/taxi system thanx

[Leone]

Ok.....here's what is happening. First of all you need to understand that when you look at a texture in Photoshop/Texview and even the preview screen in the PBOManager window of WRPEdit your texture looks like this:

1 2
3 4

When you add it into your list of surfaces, and the way it will be placed on the island (and appear in game) is like this:

3 4
1 2

That's the way it is....I found the easiest way to think of it is that "North" and "South" get reversed, "East" and "West" don't.

Now onto texture rotation. If you have an EW runway and you want to make a NS version, the temptation is to just rotate it 90 degrees. Don't do it! Here's why:

Lets say this is your texture, with 1,2,3,4 being the "background" and the line being the runway.

1 2
----
3 4

When you rotate it, you rotate everything:

2 | 4
1 | 3

So your background texture may not fit with other textures around it, even though the runway will.

What you have to do is keep you runways and your background textures seperate until both components are in the correct positions then merge them into one. You are going to have to learn to use the selection tools, plenty of copying and pasting, merging and flattening layers etc to get around this problem. It's way more tedious I know, but the results are worth it.

There you go!  

(Should I just make a tute?....it's almost one already)

[beowulf2014]

LMAO ya...ya.....im new at texturing but trying here...I appreciate all your help there Leone. I actually know how to use those utilities though lol, just didnt occur to me...its the blonde hair lmao.......anyways I appreciate all your help the mate! ;D

What ill try doing here is actually cutting the runways out and fixing the background through the whole 512x512 and THEN putting the runway on at the angles I want...lol

[Leone]

Yup...that's the way to do it.  ;D

(I guess I did get something out of 5 years of ArtSchool   )

[beowulf2014]

ok Leone, I did everything you said to do, and I get the Textures in the WrpEdit. But the are weird looking on the preview look. And when I load up my map after editing it, they are just white! Which is REALLY weird. So anyways if you wouldnt mind helping me, I have upload the Textures as well as a island I did a quick Mod to check out the airport textures. Now I know the grass doesnt match this island wasnt worried about that cause i included a grass texture with the addon as well....work in progress here. but if you look, you will see the runways on the WrpEdit, even in camera preview. but when you load the map all i see is white where my textures should be...HELP lol ;D

http://www.stogroup.net/editingteam/images/Textures1.zip

this will be up about an hour after this post

[Leone]

I'll get back to you on this...got a busy day or two ahead