[VonBarb.]

Hi

What format do I need to save my skins in ? I have tried various BMP variation (16,24 and 32bit) and some do not appear in the skin selection menu in game, others I can't even open in windows...

I'm looking for the format that'll give me the widest palette range. In the meantime I just copy my skin on top of a working one with a fairly similar palette to get it in game, but some colours get lost in the compression. Also, what is the benefit of converting the skin to an indexed palette ? RVB is just much easier to work with. Are there Il-2 compatible palettes that I need to use when skinning ?

Lately I've been toying with creating digital camouflage patterns with GIMP and Jesters-Ink P-51 template as learning projects. Mixing the two, I have come up with something fun that is not realistic at all but looks quite nice me thinks

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Nico

[VonBarb.]

Disregard that question, slecting 'Floyd thingy something' when going from RGB to Indexed sorted me out. I'd still be glad to hear any tips you might want to share.

Cheers

Nico

[prille65]

Do you use indexed colour.

[F22-Raptor-2006]

Well most people use this thing called "Bright" it converts your 3mb BMP files to 1mb without loosing any colour in any way. Bright can come in a folder where you just click a batch file that will automatically change the bmp files in the bright folder to 1mb standard which will work for il2. Personally I have it as a plugin on photoshop and just export skins already done to 1mb. I don't remember how many bit a 3mb file is but u just save it as that and then do the bright thing.

[VonBarb.]

I do. If I got this right, the skin files cannot exceed a certain size, and the more colours the bigger the pic (in Mbs) ?

Cheers

Nico

[VonBarb.]

So that's what the 'finished with bright' thing means... I always assumed it had to do with lights/shading on the skin itself.

Here's two shots of my very first Il-2 skin, at the risk of upsetting the realism purists :





Inspired by a Moldavian Mig-29 and those very nice looking Jordanian F-16s.

Cheers

Nico

[Vpmedia]

*

I'm using the 'save for web' function of Photoshop. I know the name is quite missleading, but its actually about saving the best optimized/looking/sized files for websites or for anything else. Maybe best 256 color conversion algorithm at present, imho. As you can see on the screenshot I got more control over the appearance of my images than in Bright or in the Image/Mode/Indexed color... menu.

*of course PNG isnt the final format, I need to open it and resave as bmp then it will be 1Mb