How to make an addon

[Rebel Man 431]

there are Tool name ODLOL Explorer Will Change the P3d From ODOL to MLOD, Put I Want the Oppesite.

[Sennacherib 0]

use binarize

[Rebel Man 431]

Thanks D@nte For This infromition.

[ferreirajl 0]

Hi all.

I've been trying to learn how to model in 3ds max for a while now, and I finally came to a point where I'm satsified with my models (nothing fancy, but for the time being it's ok)

So now I'm going for the next step which is Texturing. I have a basic understanding of how the whole process goes, I'm aware of the main tools used... but... somehow, I just can't get the results I want.

I start out with a nice looking .tga or .gif file and end up with a blurry mess in O2 Viewer.

I think the problem may be that I never learned how to use PAATool which I've read is the best converter tool out there. Every time I try it I get some error and my textures never get converted. So I use TexView... but, as I said, the result is terribly disapointing.

I ask you to please, Pleeeease, give me a hand here. I don't need a texturing tutorial... in general... I need a specific tutorial on the process of importing/converting a texture into OFP with the best results possible. How do you do it?

Any help would be appreciated, as I have taken a lot of time to learn 3ds max (which I thought would be the hard part) and now I'm stuck with something that looked so simple...

Sorry for the long rant... but frustration is really starting to get to me

[[aps]gnat 28]

I think the problem may be that I never learned how to use PAATool which I've read is the best converter tool out there. Every time I try it I get some error and my textures never get converted. So I use TexView... but, as I said, the result is terribly disapointing.

Think you need to do what took me MONTHS to get around to doing very recently;

- Paintshop Pro doesn't give you 32bit TGAs .... had to stop using.

- Downloaded GIMP and took the steep learning curve ..... (not too bad really)

- Found that if you "Add Layer" to a new image in GIMP you get a 32bit image that can be save as a (non-compressed) TGA.

- Used PAATool and found a <span style='font-size:19pt;line-height:100%'><span style='color:DarkRed'>HUGE</span></span> difference in quality compared to TexView.

... my 2c. Best of luck

[Sennacherib 0]

Quote[/b] ]I start out with a nice looking .tga or .gif file and end up with a blurry mess in O2 Viewer.

yeah, i know that, i tried all the stuff in paatool, and no change. even the photoshop colors are bad rendered. this is o2 which is outdated. it's sad, i spend 2 hours to create a nice texture; in 3dsmax= awesome; in o2=crap

post somewhere a pic of your texture. btw you need to add noise on your textures, always put some noise, that's help

[ferreirajl 0]

Thank you for your sugestions. I will download GIMP and give it a try.

D@nte my textures are crap, in the sense that they don't look realistic at all. But still, the quality loss from my starting texture to the final result in OFP was just too obvious .

This was the first model that I... "finished"...so to speak

It's a 1970s Fiat G91 R of the Portuguese Air Force. It saw action in Angola, Mozambique and Guine during the Colonial Wars.

The textures aren't accurately placed and the model itself is poor. Mostly I used this as a testing platform just to have an idea of what I need to do/learn in order to get a model in game.

[Sennacherib 0]

hey, not bad at all for your first attempt, keep it up

[BraTTy 0]

You can do transparant textures in Paintshop Pro just fine.

It does 24-bit then with the transparant selections it must be the rest of the bits, so to speak.

Tutorial many moons ago in these forum sections "O2 Doc"

Just wanted to point that out

[Rebel Man 431]

Does anyone have a paa Editor, "not paa tool" .

[Blackbuck 9]

what do you mean editor? to edit a paa file E.G. change colours etc.?

[Rebel Man 431]

what do you mean editor? to edit a paa file E.G. change colours etc.?

I mean like a Paint program, Paint edit & save bmp file, I want paa editor for edit & save paa or pac files.

[Chris Death 0]

Man, you want start a mod right now (at least i've read somewhere here) and you want a paa editing program.

Convert the paa/pac into tga and then you can edit with

e.g: photoshop.

~S~ CD

[Rebel Man 431]

Man, you want start a mod right now (at least i've read somewhere here) and you want a paa editing program.  

Convert the paa/pac into tga and then you can edit with

e.g: photoshop.  

~S~ CD

how to convert this.

[Blackbuck 9]

open the .paa or .pac with texview and click save as then save the file as a .tga the load it in photoshop simple sas

[Rebel Man 431]

My Texview, cannot Saveing As.. tga .

[Blackbuck 9]

is it still saying .paa/ .pac if it is change it to all files (i'm going to bed)

[Rebel Man 431]

good night

[JdB 151]

Just change the file extension when you save from Myfile.paa to Myfile.tga.

[Rebel Man 431]

yes it's work

[Rebel Man 431]

Please, if i Compleat my mod, how can i Upload them  

[Chris Death 0]

Please, if i finsh my mod, how can i Upload them  

~S~ CD

[Rebel Man 431]

Please

[Placebo 29]

This thread is for learning how to make an addon, how/where to upload that finished addon is really the sort of thing you should be able to sort out on your own. If you don't have your own webspace you can use somewhere like Filefront.com Rapidshare.de megaupload.com or one of the other 8 billion filehosting sites you can find with a google search.

[ferreirajl 0]

Ok, I'm still trying to get decent looking textures ingame and so far I'm failing miserably.

I'm going to post a step-by-step of what I do, and maybe you guys can tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Again, let me just say that, I'm not worried about getting a realistic texture at this point... I'm still focusing on getting a good result from the conversion to .paa/.pac. I have looked at other add-ons, such as Footmunch planes, but I still haven't figured out how does he come up with those nice textures in game.

So here's what I do, and I apologize in advance because I'm going to try to be as detailed as possible. I hope someone can help:

1st. I choose the part of the model I'm going to skin. In this case I've been chosing an entire side of my plane, as I saw in Footmunch's plane.

2- I go to Studio Max and make a 1024x1024 render of the side view of the plane just to get the basic shape right.

3- After saving and importing the rendered image into Photoshop, what I start with is a 1024x1024, 32 bit, .tga file.

4- Then I paint the basic color of the plane (olive green in this case), add lines for surface panels, add weathering marks, so on and so forth.

5- When I'm done, I save the file again as .tga

6- I then go to PAATool, select my .tga and... this is where it all starts to go wrong. I really don’t know what conversion  paramenters I should choose in PAATool (and there are several). I have experimented with almost all of them. Some have given me slightly better results than others… but none have given me the final result I was hoping for.

7- Click convert, save the .paa file in my plane folder

8- After converting the texture to .paa, I open my model in O2, select the side of the plane, apply the texture, and then click to view the result in O2 Viewer.

There you go. How far am I from getting this right?