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painting train cars and other stuff

Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 6:23 am
by 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...

Re: painting train cars and other stuff

Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 8:22 pm
by 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

Re: painting train cars and other stuff

Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2010 1:10 pm
by 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

Re: painting train cars and other stuff

Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2010 1:01 am
by 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.

Re: painting train cars and other stuff

Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2010 3:13 am
by 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

Re: painting train cars and other stuff

Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2010 4:45 am
by Warll
"dsc car rodea_spec.dds" <- This is likely the one you want to edit, it defines how light bounces off the texture.

Re: painting train cars and other stuff

Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2010 6:38 am
by 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

Re: painting train cars and other stuff

Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2010 8:39 am
by 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 :wink:

an easy tutorial about that can be found here

Re: painting train cars and other stuff

Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2010 8:45 am
by Mantose
awesome link .. thank you very much