painting train cars and other stuff

[Mantose]

What program do people use... and how do you get it to look the way it does...

Right now I am looking at the dairy car v2 ... and it looks like it was painted silver and then distorted somehow to give it a nice look. Its not solid silver it has many different shades of silver in some sort of gradiant style. Also looks like there is a hint of black in it to give it a shadowy look...

[Jancsika]

You will need a paint program that will handle DDS files. I am using Gimp with a DDS plugin. It is free and a pretty good program.
Jancsika

[wingsofphoenix]

I prefer Paint.NET most of the time to make the .dds files, using GiMP only to add an alpha channel or to make the NRML map

[Mantose]

I started using gimp ... I found the colorify option ... it works really really nice for what I am doing.

One thing I have noticed is ... some trains seems to come out very very bright in certain parts ... I am guesing it has something to do with lighting ...

Can I fix that somehow?
http://www.smrsimple.com/forums/viewtop ... 296#p48296

the second pic is an example of what I mean .. see the really bright part along the top of the car.

[Jancsika]

Now we are getting into a territory, that I am not an expert in. To the best of my knowledge there are 4 files that complete the picture.
You have one, which decides the basic color, the others decide the texture, shading, light etc.
Here is a list of the four files.
One thing to watch for. These files (because you can not change the name ) might affect the dairy cars if they are in this map.

dsc car rodea_spec.dds
dsc car rodea_nrml.dds
dsc car rodea_emsk.dds
dsc car rodea_diff.dds

This is a tutorial by Rodea about kfm files. You might want to study it.
http://www.smrsimple.com/forums/viewtop ... les#p36804
Jancsika

[Warll]

"dsc car rodea_spec.dds"　<- This is likely the one you want to edit, it defines how light bounces off the texture.

[Mantose]

nice .. I will try messing around with that one when I get some time. thanks
Normally I would just play around until I figure it out .. but I am doing so many things at once right now , I dont have the time for the small things...

In addition to setting up my goods and related things ... I have been going through all the player made maps .. looking for a train car with steel rods ... piled on it like a steel car. I would love to do it my self but I spent a day setting up blender (3dmax costs money) and I was in way over my head .. I couldnt even figure out how to make something in blender to export it to niff to see if it would work in the game

[wingsofphoenix]

the .spec and .emsk files should only contain bright colors if it should reflect light or glow by itself. if not it should usually be greytones

an easy tutorial about that can be found here

[Mantose]

awesome link .. thank you very much