Bjoern
worst developer ever
Dangerousdave asked me about creating image transparencies in GIMP and I wrote down the most basic steps for him.
Since that information might be too important to be confined to a mere PM, here's the outlines procedure for everyone.
Layer masks basically add an alpha channel to an image or layer of an image. This saves you the tedious procedure of manually adding an alpha channel to an image with DXTBMP. Just add the masks and export the texture as 32 bit .bmp or DXT3 or DXT5 .dds and whatever you've just edited is FSX ready - straight from GIMP.
- Select transparent parts on texture
- "Layer" -> "Mask" -> "Add Layer Mask"
- Choose "Selection"
- In the window for the layers, right click on the layer with the mask and choose "Show Layer Mask"
- Edit the layer's color to control transparency (anything between black (transparent) and white (opaque))
- When done, right click the layer in the layer window again and untick "Edit Layer Mask" and "Show Layer Mask"
- If the transparency gets annoying when editing the texture, tick "Disable Layer Mask" (you can leave the mask disabled; the image will export properly)
- Export the texture in a suitable format (32 bit .bmp or, after horizontally flipping the image (CTRL+ALT+F) and with the DDS plugin installed, as .dds)
- If being asked to apply layer masks, click "yes". Only apply the mask upon exporting the image, not any sooner!
And that's it. Getting the most out of the layer masks is now up to you.
- Edit:
The .dds plugin I was talking about. Read its readme!
http://code.google.com/p/gimp-dds/downloads/detail?name=gimp-dds-win32-2.0.9.zip
Since that information might be too important to be confined to a mere PM, here's the outlines procedure for everyone.
Layer masks basically add an alpha channel to an image or layer of an image. This saves you the tedious procedure of manually adding an alpha channel to an image with DXTBMP. Just add the masks and export the texture as 32 bit .bmp or DXT3 or DXT5 .dds and whatever you've just edited is FSX ready - straight from GIMP.
- Select transparent parts on texture
- "Layer" -> "Mask" -> "Add Layer Mask"
- Choose "Selection"
- In the window for the layers, right click on the layer with the mask and choose "Show Layer Mask"
- Edit the layer's color to control transparency (anything between black (transparent) and white (opaque))
- When done, right click the layer in the layer window again and untick "Edit Layer Mask" and "Show Layer Mask"
- If the transparency gets annoying when editing the texture, tick "Disable Layer Mask" (you can leave the mask disabled; the image will export properly)
- Export the texture in a suitable format (32 bit .bmp or, after horizontally flipping the image (CTRL+ALT+F) and with the DDS plugin installed, as .dds)
- If being asked to apply layer masks, click "yes". Only apply the mask upon exporting the image, not any sooner!
And that's it. Getting the most out of the layer masks is now up to you.
- Edit:
The .dds plugin I was talking about. Read its readme!
http://code.google.com/p/gimp-dds/downloads/detail?name=gimp-dds-win32-2.0.9.zip