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FSX Baffled by alphas

seippg

seippg

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unitedstates
I have *almost* no idea what I'm doing here. Never done a repaint before and have precious little knowledge about Photoshop, but, I've started making a repaint of the Flight1 Mustang using their paint kit. I follow their instructions, gingerly, and get a pretty decent start, I think...

mp3Pq6J.png


The problem is, when I go inside, the windows are almost completely opaque. I think, this must be one of those alpha channel issues. I go back to their paint kit (in Photoshop) and, from what I can see, they don't seem to have alpha channels. They have a group named "Alpha" with two layers called "Alpha" and "Alpha Base"...they have another group called "Spec-Alpha" with a layer called "Spec Alpha Base"...another group called "Specular" with a layer called "Spec Base". They even have a "Bump Mapping" group with "Bump" and "Bump Base" layers. When I look at the channels there's just RGB, Red, Green, and Blue...no Alpha. No idea what any of that means. Alphas are a mystery to me.

As an experiment, I made the "Alpha" group visible and compared it to an existing paint but comparing a PSD to a DDS isn't working...there are things the same and other things vastly different. I thought that, perhaps, I could copy the alpha channel from the original DDS to an alpha in the PSD but I have no idea how to do that or if it makes sense. I've been digging through threads trying to educate myself but making precious little progress thusfar. Hoping for some guidance.

HELP!!! :):):)

Gregg
 
If you want to create an alpha channel for your text just do a random selection, click Save selection from the Select dropdown in PS and name it Alpha.

The Alpha channel could be used for many things in FS, in this case I think it's driving the "see-through-ness" of the texture.

So try to select the Alpha layer and copy it to your Alpha channel.

But if you can't get it working this way just copy the Alpha channel from an existing DDS of this bird.

Hope it helps,

Attila
 
Skinner_11 said:
If you want to create an alpha channel for your text just do a random selection, click Save selection from the Select dropdown in PS and name it Alpha.

The Alpha channel could be used for many things in FS, in this case I think it's driving the "see-through-ness" of the texture.

So try to select the Alpha layer and copy it to your Alpha channel.

But if you can't get it working this way just copy the Alpha channel from an existing DDS of this bird.

Hope it helps,

Attila
Click to expand...

Um...okay, so just select some part of the image, select Save Selection... and name that "Alpha"? How is that different than the existing Alpha with its own Alpha Layer and Alpha Base? How do you then take your newly created Alpha and copy it to your Alpha channel? And what does that do?

The existing Alpha group contains what looks like a grey scale version of the aircraft. It also has an Alpha Base which is a blank white layer. Neither of these have any transparency and sit above my paint layer. Am I supposed to "copy" one or both of these to a new "alpha channel"?

Also, when I open the existing .dds file and look at its alpha layer, it has what looks like both layers in the Alpha group combined. Double clicking on it shows a dialog box that shows Color Indicates Masked Areas, Color is set to Red (though the entire alpha is grey scale), Opacity is set to 50%.

I'm finding some pieces of tutorials but, mostly, for old versions of Photoshop. I have CS6.

Gregg
 
Tomorrow I will show you some pics and explain it.

You only have to learn these kinda things once, and btw welcome to the world of livery painting :)
 
Ok, I'm gonna show you how to do this for the F1 Mustang paintkit.

So, when you finished your paint, open the Alpha group and merge (Ctrl+E) the two layers (Alpha, Alpha base) in it.

tut1.jpg


Now, press Ctrl+A and click on Select in the menubar, and choose Save selection. The following window will open:

tut2.jpg

If you go to the Channels tab, you can see that you now have an Alpha channel, but its full white currently.

tut3.jpg


In the Alpha, you only use grayscale colours, different shades of grey (black to white). White means no transparency and full black means completely transparent.

So, go back to your Alpha layer, Ctrl+A to select all and hit Ctrl+C to copy it. Click on your Alpha channel again, and hit Ctrl+V.

If you now set every channel to visible, you should see something like this:

tut4.jpg


When you cutted your kit to 1024by1024 resolution, export it and choose DXT5 interp. alpha, with no MipMaps.

tut5.jpg


Regards,
Attila
 
Thank you! This makes things clear. I created the alpha channel per your instructions. A question about making the 1024x1024 dds files...

After I made the alpha channel in the paint kit (I see it and it looks right), I went back to Layers and selected background. I then used the magic wand to select the 1024x1024 rectangle, pressed Ctrl+Shift+A to select everything visible, did File->New... and pressed Enter to create a new bitmap with the right size. I pressed Ctrl+V and pasted. Looks good. Then I look at the channels of my new bitmap but there's no alpha channel...just RGB, Red, Green and Blue. How do I get the alpha channel to copy over? Do I repeat the process in the new bitmap with a twist?

  1. After pasting the selection in my new bitmap...
  2. In the new bitmap, do Ctrl+A
  3. Do Select->Save Selection...
  4. Go back to the paint kit, select the alpha channel, make sure the 1024x1024 area is still selected.
  5. Ctrl+C
  6. Go back to new bitmap, go to alpha channel (which is blank).
  7. Press Ctrl+V
Is that it?

Gregg
 
There is an easier way around:

When you selected the 1024 rectangle, simply click Crop in the image menu, and click Save as to export that bit.

So the Alpha will be also cropped and you won't need to copy it again.

Then press Ctrl+Alt+Z to revert the cropping, and repeat the cropping for the remaining parts.

Attila
 
It worked! Now I can fly and see outside!......
s8YS6xG.jpg


Passenger view....
Fk4IOmJ.jpg


I'm officially an AMATEUR at this! Just one last question...what does the _T_Spec do?

Gregg
 
Okay...so...the lighter the T_Spec, the more reflective? Also, it seems to enhance the colors some, perhaps, yes?
 
seippg said:
Okay...so...the lighter the T_Spec, the more reflective? Also, it seems to enhance the colors some, perhaps, yes?
Click to expand...

Yes, basically.

And you can also add color, so for eg. if you have a deep blue stripe on your fuselage, you can make it to reflect back a lighter blue...

Experiment with it and you'll see what we're talking about.
 
Thought I'd post the final result. The first pic is what I found on the web...

citation-mustang.jpg

The second pic is my repaint...

GgyJ0iu.jpg


Thanks again!

Gregg
 
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