A question in texture editing Thread - Vector Thrust

To start, I've done very little editing with .dds maps in the game FreeSpace (Which was nothing more than editing trims or light hues in tilemaps), and currently I'm wanting to try my hand at an edit of an aircraft skin.

I think it shouldn't be too difficult to make a JASDF livery from the F-15B ACTIVE's second skin, which would simply need to be changed from the two shades of grey into two different shades of blue. This is where my question comes in.

Now, the main problem is that I have a total lack of knowledge in this sort of software, so I'm not sure if such a thing exists. What I'd like to ask is if any modeling software would allow me to actively edit the textures while viewing the model at the same time.

If this sort of thing isn't around, then I have GIMP and PS CS5.1; both with plugins for handling .dds images, and I'll work on things from there.

Well some of the later versions of photoshop (I think CS4 onward) let you paint directly onto a model, but it has to be converted to .3ds format first. You should be able to do that in blender but it's been a while since I've used it.

I checked out possible solutions through 3ds Max and Blender, though I'm not so set into making maps that I would use the 30-day Trial or buy Max, and getting the right things for exporting to Blender seemed to require too much effort, so I just went with PS and had a blast trying to get tolerence settings to where it wouldn't select 60% of the image.

Anyhow, I did manage to get something pretty close I believe. I'd just need to slap on the Japanese roundel and find a squadron marking for the tailfins, and this would be a decent JASDF skin.

Though I shudder at the thought of making the damage skin for this.

sin;t there already a damage template you can use?

There is. I probably should have said "editing" instead.

Hey timesymmetry, what's your workflow for making skins? I noticed some shading that looks like ambient occlusion but the more you tell me the easier it will be for me to make my assets match the rest of the game world.

When the next aircraft is done it will also became available the whole creation process.
But meanwhile there is a small tutorial of the light cooking.
After you have the modeling and mapping you can start this step.

First make sure your model has the default grey material and there is no other light.

As you can see in this render.

Then add the Skylight and activate the check “Cast Shadow”

With this light the render takes more time, but now you see the ambient occlusion effect in the model.
(note: for ground objects add a plane below the object)

The next step is to write the light to a texture, open the Render To Texture by pressing “0”.
Add the “Lighting Map” option, set 2048x2048 and press Render.

This process will take some time, but after it is done you will get this.
Save as a .png file.

And finally when making your skins add that texture as a top layer and set the blend mode as “Overlay”.
And that’s it.

I'm having trouble making the top layer of my texture fit the damage skin. All the outlines seem to be in completely different places

I have a little question about texture editing...
What is the max texture size supported by VT? I noticed the default planes are 2048x2048, but would it be possible to go over that?

Yes I think it is possible to use 4056x4056.
Although is not as convenient as having everything in a single texture, I think it should be best to use multiple texture files instead. Because higher resolution texture files can impact the PCs with lower specs, also there are some graphics cards that does not support texture files with that resolution.

@ bornloser, the damaged skin has 512x512 size as the normal has 2048x2048, if you resize to 25% of the size it should fit.

Ah, well how many separate textures are supported?

As many as you like.
You can define de quantity in the skin file:
“NumSolidSkins=”
And your model the must have the material names like this: “mat_Solid#”

For example if you want 3 solid skins:
NumSolidSkins= 3
Solid_1_Difuse = (name of the diffuse texture)
Solid_1_Specular = (name of the specular texture)
Solid_1_Glow =
Solid_1_CustomMatCall =
Solid_1_CustomRefMaterial =

Solid_2_Difuse = (name of the diffuse texture)
Solid_2_Specular = (name of the specular texture)
Solid_2_Glow =
Solid_2_CustomMatCall =
Solid_2_CustomRefMaterial =

Solid_3_Difuse = (name of the diffuse texture)
Solid_3_Specular = (name of the specular texture)
Solid_3_Glow =
Solid_3_CustomMatCall =
Solid_3_CustomRefMaterial =

And your model must have applied three materials named as mat_Solid1, mat_Solid2 and mat_Solid3