Question about smoother lines

A place where painters can discuss and share their work
new reply
n454mw
Staff Sergeant
Posts: 354
Joined: 01 Apr 2010, 23:17
Location: West Texas

Question about smoother lines

Post by n454mw »

Hi, I'm using Photoshop cs2 to paint. I'm wanting to do a repaint using the VH-DLL template that is in the paint kit, basically, just changing the n number and the colors but I'm having a problem. After finishing the paint and loading it up the edges of the new paint color are really jagged. I'm using the NVidia plugin to save as a dds file and I think that something isn't set correctly in the plugin but I may be wrong about that. Can some kind soul tell me what I might do to fix this?

Image
Thanks Mark

User avatar
Fulcrum
Airman
Posts: 34
Joined: 01 Apr 2014, 14:02
Location: Florida

Re: Question about smoother lines

Post by Fulcrum »

It's been a few years since I've touched CS2 (For age of the software reasons). From what I can tell here it looks like you might have used the magic wand tool in order to select the 'swoosh' and then proceeded to paint over it. If that is correct. I'd advise doing against it unless its for very tiny parts that won't be seen very often or just using the blur tool if you wanted to be doing a quick one off. When I want to make neater lines I grab the pen tool and go to town with that. I haven't quite mastered it yet and I'm no photoshop god but with a few hours of practice you can doodle your own shapes and then they'll come out nice and tidy looking..

Granted this is a CS5/CS6 version tutorial but the basics still apply.
Part 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVIUwnyivpg
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSdov7nVYdo
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb3Yn-OgZ0s


There are more on the guys channel however I think that should be enough to get you started. Call it death by fire hose learning. I wish these existed when I started to learn photoshop when I was back in high school.

Image
This is really the only paint scheme I've really done on A2A aircraft (Because lets face it, other developers have no idea on how to create an easy to use paintkit.) However, you can see that with a little practice you can do a lot. That Eagle on the tail is all pen tooled.

OH Before I forget, VERY VERY important. SAVE YOUR PATHS.

I look forward to seeing more of your work :)

Best Regards,

Fulcrum.

User avatar
taildraggin68
Senior Master Sergeant
Posts: 2411
Joined: 14 May 2014, 18:26
Location: Florida

Re: Question about smoother lines

Post by taildraggin68 »

n454mw wrote:Hi, I'm using Photoshop cs2 to paint. I'm wanting to do a repaint using the VH-DLL template that is in the paint kit, basically, just changing the n number and the colors but I'm having a problem. After finishing the paint and loading it up the edges of the new paint color are really jagged. I'm using the NVidia plugin to save as a dds file and I think that something isn't set correctly in the plugin but I may be wrong about that. Can some kind soul tell me what I might do to fix this?

Image

Disable mipmaps when you save as .dds 8)

User avatar
Fulcrum
Airman
Posts: 34
Joined: 01 Apr 2014, 14:02
Location: Florida

Re: Question about smoother lines

Post by Fulcrum »

taildraggin68 wrote:
n454mw wrote:Hi, I'm using Photoshop cs2 to paint. I'm wanting to do a repaint using the VH-DLL template that is in the paint kit, basically, just changing the n number and the colors but I'm having a problem. After finishing the paint and loading it up the edges of the new paint color are really jagged. I'm using the NVidia plugin to save as a dds file and I think that something isn't set correctly in the plugin but I may be wrong about that. Can some kind soul tell me what I might do to fix this?

Image

Disable mipmaps when you save as .dds 8)
I save mine with MipMaps, I have no issues here on my paint :\ Any reason as to why it would?

User avatar
taildraggin68
Senior Master Sergeant
Posts: 2411
Joined: 14 May 2014, 18:26
Location: Florida

Re: Question about smoother lines

Post by taildraggin68 »

Previous recommendations from Lewis and Gang, that to get rid of the blurries, save without mipmaps, just the way I have done it since starting this painting madness 8)

User avatar
ebo
Master Sergeant
Posts: 1382
Joined: 24 Nov 2014, 10:45
Location: Hillcrest, kwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Re: Question about smoother lines

Post by ebo »

Sorry for jumping in here: Disable mip maps.

Working with paths once you mastered them is the best way to go.

Gesendet von meinem GT-I9500 mit Tapatalk
Regards
Eberhard Haberkorn

Image

User avatar
bladerunner900
Senior Master Sergeant
Posts: 1991
Joined: 17 Aug 2008, 14:59
Location: South Wales

Re: Question about smoother lines

Post by bladerunner900 »

Fulcrum wrote:I save mine with MipMaps, I have no issues here on my paint :\ Any reason as to why it would?
Because every time you change a setting inside of FSX, the variable TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD in the FSX.cfg file, also gets reset to its default of 1024. So if your texture has mipmaps it will look like this.

C182 texture saved with mipmaps and TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD set at 1024.
Image

If the texture has no mipmaps, then it is forced to use the higher, single 4096 resolution.

C182 texture saved with no mipmaps and TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD still set at 1024
Image

I think you can see the potential problem. Of course, if you remember to reset the TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD back to 4096 in the FSX.cfg file, every time you make a change inside FSX, then there should be no reason not to use mipmaps. But I don't take a chance and never use them in my paints, regardless of what make the model is.

Hope that's clear. :wink:
Steve

Edit:
In case your interested. That is a re-coloured, standard A2A paint scheme that comes with the paint-kit. All I did was use "Color Overlay" on the relevant layers. :wink:
Last edited by bladerunner900 on 01 Jan 2020, 23:53, edited 3 times in total.

User avatar
Lewis - A2A
A2A Lieutenant Colonel
Posts: 33284
Joined: 06 Nov 2004, 23:22
Location: Norfolk UK
Contact:

Re: Question about smoother lines

Post by Lewis - A2A »

Hehe looks like a BA repaint with such a simple colour change :mrgreen:
A2A Facebook for news live to your social media newsfeed
A2A Youtube because a video can say a thousand screenshots,..
A2A Simulations Twitter for news live to your social media newsfeed
A2A Simulations Community Discord for voice/text chat

new reply

Return to “Repainters”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 9 guests