|
|
|
|
Graphics Tutorial Computer Pilot Magazine contracted me early in 2002 to create a graphics tutorial for their magazine - after several months of effort the article was published in May 2002 - Computer Pilot Magazine Issue 6 Volume 4 May 2002. They have graciously consented for me to make this entire article available to the simming community as a service to all of the simmers in the world - which I believe is an outstanding example of their attitude of full support for the FS community .
PDF Version 1.41mb The Full PDF Version of the Garry Smith's Creating Aircraft Textures Tutorial - formatted by the incredible team at Computer Pilot Magazine is now available for download from this site. Click on this
If you wish to send comments please e-mail
Why do this process - simple -I just need to keep track of who is getting this article - no mailing lists - no spam - just keeping a record of who is getting the article for my personal management of the distribution.
Note:
These pages and tutorial are copyright and are not to be reproduced in part or
whole without my express permission. Please honour this
expectation.
What's in this Tutorial Important to NOTE: Texture work for FS2002 and FS2004 use the same graphics formats therefore this tutorial can be applied to either. Though PSP5 is the guiding product (chosen as it is often available for free) these steps and processes are easily converted to equivalent functions in more current version of PSP. (1) Preamble - This page of general information and REQUIREMENTS (2) Setup - configuring your Paint Program and getting ready to start (3) Step 1 - Putting the Name on the Aircraft (4) Step 2 - Drawing the Lines on the Aircraft (5) Step 3 - Drawing the Stripes on the Aircraft (6) Step 4 - Painting the Tail and placing the Logo (7) Step 5 - Installing the image into FS2002 (8) Editing - fixings things that need to be fixed (8) Step 6 - Creating
Reflective Textures Preamble - How to Paint Aircraft Textures Aircraft textures are one of the most exciting aspects of
the Microsoft Flight Sim environment.
Just about everyone wants to have a specific or personal texture for the
aircraft that they fly in their Microsoft Flight Sim programs.
Way back when the earth was cooling and flight simulators were in their
infancy for home use, I and many other people started modifying the aircraft
textures to meet their desired effects.
Some even mastered the technical aspects of creating and building their
own aircraft and texturing them for personal pleasure.
They all seemed to eagerly share them on the Internet. This burst of new aircraft and new textures, created by
countless people throughout the world, has been the backbone of the numerous
flight sim web sites that have sprung up and now maintain strong patronage.
From my perspective the greatest fun is to fly an aircraft that has been
painted to match your needs – disregarding technical and visual perfection was
the norm in the early days and many good and bad aircraft and textures were
released. However, with the
advent of more sophisticated simulators, and a rapidly growing number of
simulator enthusiasts, the demand for quality has added momentum to developers
and painters, spurring them into more and more effort to achieve the required
quality and realism. This tutorial will focus on the modification of an existing
texture to create a new texture for an active airline and should be sufficient
to provide the skills to enable you to create your dream texture for your
favourite aircraft. It will be
focused on the default B737 aircraft available for Microsoft Flight Sim 2004 and
2. However, many of the graphics
principles will of course apply to other developed aircraft and aircraft of
previous Microsoft Simulators particularly CFS2 and FS2000. Where do I begin?
- I have been doing aircraft textures seriously now for nearly 5 years,
starting with MSFS then FS98 followed by CFS1 and CFS2 then FS2000 and lastly
FS2002. Each has had various
levels of complexity in relation to the graphics formats used by Microsoft and
even viewing textures was difficult because of the changing formats.
Fortunately the flight sim community came to the front very rapidly with
graphics viewer and editors being created and almost always released freely
within days of the new simulators hitting the market.
These viewers/editors enabled many more people access to the various
graphics formats. From their generosity we have all benefited by the rapid
growth in the release of aircraft textures covering thousands of airline
liveries and imaginary textures.
I believe, that this capability has been a leading factor in the
patronage of Virtual Airlines with a plethora of excellent innovative liveries. The formats we will be dealing with for our tutorial is
standard BMP and for those that want to venture into the Reflective Effects, the
new BMP DXT3 format that includes an alpha channel.
(There will be more on the alpha channel in Step 6.) For user and reader convenience we will start with a standard BMP image and during the course of our development we will create not only a wonderful vibrant texture but will also, for the adventurous, upgrade that texture to DXT3 format and add some reflective effects to make our aircraft shine.
Basic requirements before we start: Important to NOTE: Texture work for FS2002 and FS2004 use the same graphics formats therefore this tutorial can be applied to either. Though PSP5 is the guiding product (chosen as it is often available for free) these steps and processes are easily converted to equivalent functions in more current version of PSP. (1) FS2002 or FS2004 for a starter – without this how can you enjoy your new texture (2) Paint Shop Pro 5 – this tutorial will specifically deal with the tools and capabilities of this product. (3) The blank texture provided with this tutorial and a few other images:
Blank-B737.bmp
- image created by me for you to use in tutorial (in zip file) Place these three images into your proposed work area.
Now go to Setup to get ready for the tutorial
|
