Help with Conversion!

[budmorgan]

Hey guys - I've got a question for the painters out there. It's been about a year since I did my last repaint and I'm a bit rusty. I'm using Gimp 2.86 and DXTbmp. I'm also painting the F1 King Air (so if the mods feel it's inappropriate, feel free to remove). My problem is in the conversion.

1) I've been tinkering with their paintkit and you have to cut certain sections out and save them to the appropriate dds file. The image below is what the kit looks like.


http://postimage.org/

2) The next step is to cut out sections of the kit to prepare that section for their respective .dds files. From the master kit, I selected the section that I want and then "copy visible" from the layers I have selected. I then paste into a new file and get this:


http://postimage.org/

3) Once I complete step two, I save the file as a Windows bmp. The thumbnail on my saved folder looks as expected but when I load into dxtbmp I get the following image:


http://postimage.org/

I'm clearly saving the file wrong or missing a setting somewhere. This is driving me nuts! Any advice is gladly welcome.


Cheers!

Bud

[bladerunner900]

I'm not an expert with Gimp, but setting it to 24 bits in the "Advanced Options" just before exporting seems to do the trick.

[budmorgan]

Thanks Blade - I'll try that and report back. The integrity of the image won't be compromised will it? I know very little about the technical aspects of painting.

[bladerunner900]

Technically, going from 32 bit to 24 is a step down, but I don't think the eye will see the difference to be honest. Of course, when you finally convert the finished texture from bmp to DDS, there will be a real drop in quality then.

Interestingly, when I save the same file as a 32 bit bmp from Photoshop, it shows no sign of the problem when loaded back into DXTBmp. The resulting picture is fine with no blue hue at all.

Perhaps there is a Gimp expert out there that can clarify what is happening.

[budmorgan]

Hey blade - the 24 bit conversion achieved the desired results... but once in dxtbmp, it is resized to 2048 instead of 4096. There's got to be some setting in gimp that I'm missing on the 32 bit conversion and my guess would be that there is a similar setting with paintshop. Any ideas?

Cheers!

Bud

[Fedex B17Pilot]

are you saving the file in psd first then opening it in dxt?

if so save as dxt first then open in DXTbmp.

[bladerunner900]

Hey Bud. That is just weird. DXTBmp halves the size of my Photoshop bmp files as well, so I'm not sure what's going on now. Hopefully, Fedex B17Pilot can clear this one up for us.

[budmorgan]

Ok I think that DXTBMP is doing something funny with the bmp's alpha channel. When I load the 32 A8 R8 G8 B8 file, the alpha channel box in the top right corner appears to be filled in. When saving in 24 bit, the alpha channel box appears all white. I only have two options in the advanced bmp features but don't really know what they are intended for and neither produce the desired results: My options are: A8 R8 G8 B8 and X8 R8 G8 B8...

What little hair i have left is just about to fall out.

Cheers!

Bud

[budmorgan]

Ok I think I figured it out. I wasn't "Flattening" the image prior to export from Gimp. I was able to save as 32bit A8 R8 G8 B8 and open in dxtbmp @4096 with my desired colors. See if you get the same results.

Cheers!

Bud

[bladerunner900]

It gets weirder and weirder. When I do what you did it comes out at the correct size but has a YELLOW tint to it. I think I'll stick with Photoshop.

[CBris]

I know this is an ancient thread, but I was looking for an answer to this resizing question too. It's been a few years since I did any repainting and - oh the shame - I wanted to do some painting again and couldn't save 4096 textures...

Then I started digging in my own files.

The answer (at least of Corel Photopaint users) is to export the images in TGA format and then load into dxtbmp. The size stays put now.

The reason I say Photopaint is because I do not know if the other art programs can export tga.

One other thing - do all your paintwork first and use 2048 from bmp exports - it's quicker. Using the tga save takes time so use this as sparingly as possible if you have a slower PC.