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FSX Illuminating Letters

tgycgijoes

tgycgijoes

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us-northcarolina
I have started creating the terminal at KCSG Columbus Georgia Airport. I want to create night textures in FSX. That involves illuminating the letters in this sign, letters ONLY. Can anyone help. I illuminated the whole board at chippewa Falls that I did a couple months ago sucessfully with night textures. How do I illuminate the letters if there is a way. Help please. There are three sides with Welcome to Columbus Airport.
https://imgur.com/JYQ4Yvf
 
Hello..

Select the blue area only and copy it in a new layer. Now this layer should be in a clear background (checkerboard). Nothing else really needs to be done.

Of course, this depends on what you are using to texture it too.
 
Wait, so I can take a .jpg from Imgur, copy the blue letters to a new layer with a clear background - and voila, I have night textures? It seems like a page is missing..
 
Pyscen said:
Hello..

Select the blue area only and copy it in a new layer. Now this layer should be in a clear background (checkerboard). Nothing else really needs to be done.

Of course, this depends on what you are using to texture it too.
Click to expand...
I already created a PNG in Corel Paintshop Pro. Is that what you are referring to? I have textured a raised rectangle on the sketchup terminal top with a jpg and I know how I can illuminate that I have already at other airports but not just the letters. Can you explain a little more exactly how you select the blue area ONLY if not in Photoshop or Paintshop Pro. Thank you for taking the time to answer
 
In MDCx V1.3 which I like to use better than 1.5 for this operation, its easier and works as well for this. I put in the night texture of the png "checkered background" blue letters only and I get it illuminated but the whole rectangle.
 
Following your leads I deleted the rectangles with the jpg texture and directly applied my Welcome.png onto the structure as an image. Then I exported it as DAE and opened it up in MDCx V1.3. Added the png as a night texture and I am looking at beautiful illuminated blue letters all by themself. Thank you for your help. Signing off.
 
The white area is most likely from the original layer. If you placed just the blue area only into the new layer, hide the original layer, This is usually done by clicking on the eye so it isn't there. Resave it. The only thing visible are the letters. The white area should be hidden and what is left within is transparent.
 
thanks for all your help. I've got it working perfectly and will apply this to another airport to get the white area to disappear as well.
 
People come here for solutions and often it is found in chronicled conversations. Yours, seems like a PM, brought public, without any attempt to chronicle the problem and solution. The original post:
tgycgijoes said:
I have started creating the terminal at KCSG Columbus Georgia Airport. I want to create night textures in FSX. That involves illuminating the letters in this sign, letters ONLY. Can anyone help.
Click to expand...
"Need help, night textures FSX," and the reply:
Pyscen said:
Hello..

Select the blue area only and copy it in a new layer. Now this layer should be in a clear background (checkerboard). Nothing else really needs to be done.

Of course, this depends on what you are using to texture it too.
Click to expand...
I feel like, anyone reading along, besides the OP, would either be intuitive on a psychic level, or lost. Maybe I am just projecting my dumbness, but I think, other people as dull as me, might also want to create night textures, those poor souls.

My technique for creating night textures, seems very simple, inside my own little echo chamber. I use the same day texture and select the elements I want illuminated, windows, etc, those remain unedited. The rest of the image gets darkened with black, 90% opacity. That image is saved to .DDS format and renamed with a night map suffix "_LM," if I am using FSX or P3D, saved to .png, if I am using MSFS. I use MCX to assign the texture to the model and in the case of MSFS, the final result must be compiled with fspackagetool.exe.
Now, there are other details, like color shading, or also, slightly darkening the illuminated elements, because using the same daytime brightness, in night time window textures can be too bright, but this technique should get someone started.

So we see, there are many ways to skin a cat and we can fervently hope the sum total of those are euphemisms, but I am glad your situation is resolved and I feel like this thread also has some ideas how to make night textures, for people to find.
 
First, I want to thank all for taking the time to reply and help. I have successfully created a number of airports with night textures since finding out how here AND on the internet in other forums. This particular problem for ME was how to illuminate ONLY the letters not a rectangle which is what I did before because those airports spotlighted like a billboard and FSX will not spotlight only P3D does in MDCx. Again thank you to all. I hope that this thread will be a help to others on how to add night textures. If I can help with this with the little I know so far by experimentation and creating I am always glad to. I have gotten SO much help from so many here that I want to give back where and when I can.
 
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