General repaint question regarding layers.

[CBris]

It may well be a Corel Draw and Corel Photopaint thing, but I have often noticed that when I open a psd, some layers / objects are either larger than the 4096 square and/or are positioned so that their outlines are outside the 4096 square and/or when copy/pasting a layer or object, the new object size is just a pixel or three different to the original. The latter is no problem as such - I can re-size. Bu what if the original has been constrained differently.

Just one for example - the P51 paintkit opens up to an image size of 4121 x 4097 pixels. Now as some of you may know - if you save that size and open it in dxtbmp for conversion to dds you'll get a black plane in sim because the sim relies on exactly 4096 y 4096 or variations thereof such as 2048 x 2048 and 1024 x 1024 etc. I've often ignored this and simply cropped the image to my 4096 square background layer, but I started wondering if this could not be fixed at the modelling stage. So, the Mustang... (I have zeroed my Corel axes at top left = xy 00)

UV Map size 4092 x 4093, XY 0, 0
Baked Shadows size 4103 x 4097, XY 0, 0
.
Weathering size 2206 x 2400, XY -5, 1574
.
Base Parts size 4114 x 4092, XY -18, 4

Those are just the layers that exceed the 4096 frame. Most of the other layers fit inside the boundaries but aren't exactly 4096 tiles. One thing that would REALLY make a difference would be for each layer, whatever its transparency or merge value, could be constrained to 4096 by the guys doing the mapping. For all we painters may know, there may be required detail in these out of limits areas. do you not have a constraints option, when exporting your textures? I know... paintkits are a bonus service to the buyer, not a right. I usually crop to the 4096 pagee and make a "naked" texture first when I start repainting a new model. If I then see that there's layer mismatches, I have to go through a paintkit layer for layer and try to read the modeller's mind until I get a bare mesh paint that works. That way I can reference future paints.

All the best,

Your friendly neighbourhood pedantic so and so...

[EightyFiftyFive]

Not sure whats going on, on your system and why your seeing different layers at different sizes and so on.... All of mine match to the main pallet and all layers fall into place. If your using Photoshop try forgetting about the dxtbmp program for a minute and try using the Nvidia Photoshop Plugin (in photoshop) when saving your work to a dds file.

Save it as 8-888 ARGB 32 bpp unsigned and make sure *No mip Maps* box is selected. Also you have the option to save it *flipped* or not. When I save my work I save it with the option *Flipped* checked because that way I don't have to flip the pallet before saving it, all I have to do is Flatten the pallet and that's it.

This should fix any mismatched pallet sizes you may have but again only in photoshop. I'm not sure about Coral or paint shop pro.
I use to use the dxtbmp program but now I only use that if I have to get data from a specific file or something different but i hardly use that one anymore.

All in all, check your program's setting too because something else is causing your paintkit to come out, lets say: *Off Balance* to the effect of mis-matched pallets... everything should be the same size and match together as one.

[CBris]

No, it's not just an A2A paintkit thing - many multilayered PSD graphics open up with shifts and parts outside the "frame" (visible or not) and each layer is only as large as the drawing on it. This is experienced gaind over 13-14 years and hundreds of paints. Some PSDs have uniformly sized layers and some don't. I don't use Photoshop or Illustrator - I've been using Corel for over 20 years now, nearer 25, and I am more than happy with performance and price. You probably pay for the Adobe name with Photoshop and co.

It's not that I can't handle these issues - they're easy enough to sort out, but I do wonder if there's something in Photoshop exporting that could possibly make a difference? And maybe an answer why some Photoshop layered paintkits don't exhibit these issues while others don't.

Just curious folks.

[EightyFiftyFive]

try and see if you can find a demo of photoshop and give it a try. They usually allow full use for 30 days or so. Just for kicks and giggles I would try it and see what happens.

[mountainhighair]

CBris, I have only had similar experiences when using the layer dragging feature in Paint Shop Pro - dragging a layer from one file to another. When dragged over, a layer will always "center" on the receiving file's space. For this reason I always have a "Registration Marks" layer at the top of my layer stack. This registration layer just has two pixels on it - one at the upper left (0,0) and one at lower right (4095, 4095 etc). These pixels could be at upper right & lower left. Doesn't matter. This just sets the outer extreme corners of a layer. I do this for raster and vector layers alike.
Whenever I need to drag an art layer over to another file I just duplicate the Registration layer, merge it with the art layer, and then I can drag it over with my mouse and it will position perfectly into the receiving file. Is this similar to your situation? I haven't experienced exactly what you're describing. Hope this helps in some way.

[CBris]

Sorry, my bad. I should have said that I notice this happening before I even do anything with a paintkit. I.e. When I open a PSD for the very first time in Corel. Sometimes "their" layers are all aligned and sized, sometimes not. Once I start, I make sure each layer gets noted and described in my "little black book" on my desk. What worries me is was the original artists work opened correctly by Corel.

I guess you have to be quirky if you use Corel - and I have, for around almost 25 years.


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