Wanna contribute

[pandacat]

I recently came back to BMS. Every time I saw those blocky looking aircraft and ships in my beloved SIM, it broke my heart. I want to help and contribute by starting small, like reskinning or painting those minor or non-essential objects such as B-52, those transport aircraft. But I have almost 0 knowledge in skinning. Can someone get me started on this? I am a quick learner. I learned Excel VBA from scratch just by watching the utube. I need know:

1. what tools to use (program/software)
2. Once I paint an object, how do I import that into BMS.

Any website, utube video or tutorial would help.

Thanks

[SnowSky]

Eeeo,
while I never did anything related to this,
in the KoreaObj folders are the textures for planes and landing strips etc.
Changing those textures (I use GIMP 2.8 with dds plugin) is simple and can be already very effective!
(As I said, I didn’t make textures or anything, but thats what you do when you install skins or HQ Tiles)

Regarding Objects for higher polygons, I guess you can use 3D Max or perhaps Blender.
I don’t know how you have to save the Mesh, but I think you will have to import with the LOD Editor.

My suggestion:
Check out the Pilot+Kneeboard mod,
He implemented the Pilot as a mesh, and added two textures. It explains also what you have to do in the LOD Editor.

[DrDetroit]

You need a template for the model in question, so you’re painting the skin in the correct uvmap coordinates, so everything aligns with the model properly. You can create a template for said model with 3DSmax, and similar programs, by uvmapping model, then unwrapping uvmap, which creates the template.

Some 3d models I’ve made and textured I’ve noticed can be problematic getting the mapping correct. Sometimes the u/v coords just don’t line up for some reason, without manually tweaking the coords.

NOTE - could never get the wing texture to align properly on this F4U model, even manually:

Good luck, it’s a bit complicated.

DrDetroit

[Arty]

Take a look at my hotlist and to the forum threads and sections regarding your requests.

[pandacat]

Alrite. Thanks. Let me get start. Gonna be slow, though.