Skinning World War I Planes

[Skuzzy]

World War I planes have a special requirement for skinning.  Please read this before you submit any World War I plane skins.  Thank you.

[Krusty]

I was wondering how that would work. Thanks for the "thousands of words" 

I have 2 questions:

If the skinner is advanced enough, would HTC allow them to map their own damage out, or would you prefer to have a more standardized damage that folks will recognize as the same from skin to skin?

Going forward, do you know if WW2 planes will eventually follow suit, or is this only for the cloth covered biplanes?

[Skuzzy]

Do not try and make your own mask.  We are providing the masks because they have to be precisely what we used.  WW1 planes are the only ones who will have this.

"Thousands of words"??

[Spikes]

"Thousands of words"??

Think he means a picture's worth a thousand words.

[Krusty]

A picture is worth a thousand words 

Thanks for the answer Re: damage layers

[Nr_RaVeN]

If I understand correctly We are to:
1. place the PNG damage mask over our new texture layers and compress it to a usable BMP for use in game giving us A new damage texture for our altered BMP.
2. We now have 2 two new BMPs. Our new texture /un damaged, along with our new texture with the new mask you have provided for our damaged texture
3 We do this for both the Wing BMP as well as the Fuselage section. giving us a total of 4 bmps to send in two undamaged two damaged in the case of a D7 files : (D71.bmp)(D71D.bmp)(D72.bmp)(D72D.bmp)
 
If I have that right This is the result when I tested of line.
 
Below is after the mask was added to the damage BMP.you can see  pink in from external view on wing supports wont show if zoomed in fro wide view it shows only.... If I paint over the supports on the new mask the same color as the supports it disappears... Is that a bug?

 
This Is what I get if I don't use the new damage mask. Still an issue there, you can see the original wings, as I left the layer on for the internals to show.

 
Here is what it looks like with the new mask added to my new texture damage bmp.

 
Did I do something wrong, or is there a problem with the mask?
 
Please advise. .
Thanks In advance RaVe

[Krusty]

I suspect when you flatten your bitmap down to 256 colors it's shifting the color the alpha uses. Try using a sample of the pink alpha, creating a small square paint bucket fill somewhere on your skin (between mapped areas) then down-sample it to 256 colors.

Compare the RGB values on the skin and on the template, merge these layers (may need to switch back to RGB again after downsamping, merge, re-downsample???).

Seems like an extra step in there, but should be something you can figure out. I had the same problem in the past with old Ah skins that use alpha colors in them, like the P-40E and the old 109E. It can be a pain, but it's doable.

[Greebo]

To make the damage bmps work offline you also need to alter two text files, in the case of the Camel these are camel1d.txt and camel2d.txt. These are included in the bunch of files you get when you get the default files for a skin. They contain the palette number of the pink colour used for the transparent areas.

To find out what palette number to use in the text file I opened each camelxD.bmp file in Paint Shop Pro, selected colour/edit palette and clicked on the pink colour in the palette. The palette index number is the one you enter into the text file. Every time you make any alteration to the skin you will need to alter this number to get damage to work offline again.

[Skuzzy]

Hmmm.  I can see where a problem might occur with a color shift in the damage mask.

Just a thought, but what about finding one pixel that is not being used in the regular texture and coloring it the damage mask color?  This way your texture should not be resampled when you add the damage mask to it.

I could be clueless here as I am still sucking down the first cup of coffee.

[Nr_RaVeN]

Just woke up too, this is bouncing off my brain.

Ill come back to check later.

 

[Mus51]

I've got the same problem:

[Nr_RaVeN]

To make the damage bmps work offline you also need to alter two text files, in the case of the Camel these are camel1d.txt and camel2d.txt. These are included in the bunch of files you get when you get the default files for a skin. They contain the palette number of the pink colour used for the transparent areas.

To find out what palette number to use in the text file I opened each camelxD.bmp file in Paint Shop Pro, selected colour/edit palette and clicked on the pink colour in the palette. The palette index number is the one you enter into the text file. Every time you make any alteration to the skin you will need to alter this number to get damage to work offline again.

Thanks MR Greebo and Skuzzy.. More awake now

Then I should include that altered text file with my submission? so It will work of line as well?
RaVe

[Krusty]

That would depend on what HTC wants. Do they want that specific mask color used for their damage system to work, or do they just want that damage pattern used as the mask?

If they want that color it gets tricky. If they just want that pattern, then it's okay if the color shifts a bit as long as you get the right number in your camel1d.txt and camel2d.txt files.

[Skuzzy]

Ok, here is a step by step for you who have not figured it out.

1) Create your two textures for your skin.
2) Save them down as 8 bit indexed bitmaps.
3) Edit the bitmaps and find a 4 pixel area not used in the texture and make it the color of the damage mask.
4) Save it.
5) Now, load the bitmaps and copy them to a new 32 bit file.
6) Lay the damage mask on top of that texture as a new layer.
7) Flatten and convert the texture to a bitmap.  

The RGB of the color in the mask is 255, 0, 255.  It cannot be deviated from.

What I missed was the text files containing the index value of the mask color from the bitmap.  It will vary.  No way to prevent that from happening.  You have to get the index value, from the bitmap, where the mask color is stored.  Once you have that value, you will have to edit the corresponding text files and change it.

EDIT: I  have modified the instructions at the link in the first post.

[USRanger]

This should be...fun.