Matrix Games Forums

Greattings fellow members and Happy New Year to all of you who make this place so great;
I'm starting to deal with modding ships and due great assistance from Reg, Big B and others that gave me valuable hints and explanations how to mod aircrafts I really would be able to produce some acceptable content for a Mod I am working on right now;

Regarding ships I really need help;
Was able to create the sides but unfortunately cannot solve the transparences, all I get is a shape whith pink borders [&:]
iam using GIMP2 and tried the same techinique Reg described to me for aircrafts but without sucess..
Any help will be greatly appreciated![&o]


Cheers,

Vipersp

Hello Vipersp,

Creating a ship transparency is a simple copy-paste process using basic MS Paint.

As illustrated below -
1) Take a cell with your new ship on a blank background
2) Take a blank background filled with the proper shade of purple/magenta taken from an existing stock transparency.
3) In MS Paint, on the Select menu drop-down, select transparent selection; then copy the ship box in step 1, and paste it onto the purple background box in step 2
4) Using the same color as the purple background, use the Fill to eliminate the black border

There you have it!
(the example quality looks poor because this is a .jpg, not a .bmp)

B

EDIT: There is one extra step I recommend you do when creating a ship transparency. I did not do this in the example below, but I do on my ship transparencies.
Shading ---- shading is used, usually on the bow and Foc'sle to get smooth blends for bow rake on a sky background (ship side). In the example below you see a smooth rake on the blank...but on the transparency it shows some very light lines.... which should Not be there.
This looks poor IMO, so when creating a ship transparency I always go back and eliminate the lightest shading in these areas.
The result on a dark sea background looks much smoother....which is more appropriate.

Greetings B!

Wow really thanks for your clear explanation, just one last doubt;
The position of the ship in the side image must be exactly the same as the ship picture in the transparence?? since with aircraft top and alfas we create the second as a new layer but with ships seems I just need the ship image and place it over the purple background as you showed?

Cheers,

Vipersp

YES

ORIGINAL: Vipersp

Greetings B!

Wow really thanks for your clear explanation, just one last doubt;
The position of the ship in the side image must be exactly the same as the ship picture in the transparence??
Cheers,

Vipersp