I noticed that these are tga,tgb files.How would I convert these to bmp's and install them in the game?Or not have to convert them?Thanks.
These are default skins, so they are installed as a mod (via JSGME or active MODS directory), instead of the regular PaintSchemes/Skins/.
As such, the format of these files is somewhat different. They are all 32-bit, non-RLE TGA files in four different sizes to provide rudimentary MIP mapping scheme:
skin1o.tgb = 1024x1024
skin1o.tga = 512x512
skin1p.tga = 128x128
skin1q.tga = 16x16
The TGB file is just a TGA file with a changed name. Besides the regular RGB colours for the skin, these skins also supply transparency channel for windows and damage in form of alpha channel.
To convert a skin to a regular file, you need to open the skin1o.tgb file of your choice (summer, winter, or desert) in an image editor that can be persuaded to do it; if you have problems, rename it as TGA and then open it normally.
Then you need to remove the alpha channel from the image; I usually do this in GIMP by selecting "Add layer mask", then pick the option "transfer layer's alpha channel". After that you can just disable or delete layer mask, which should leave only the RGB information on.
When you have the RGB skin, you'll need to convert it to a regular IL-2 skin format, which is 8 bits per pixel, indexed 256 colours. To do that in GIMP, pick Image -> Mode -> Indexed and in the dialogue that opens, make sure it's set to:
-Generate optimum palette, 256 colours
-Colour dithering: None
You will likely get a severe quality reduction; there will probably be quite a bit of banding, considering that these skins were designed as default skins with full 16 million colours, and reducing that to 256 colours will obviously eat away some quality. But this is the way you would do it if you wanted to make regular skins out of these.
Personally I don't understand why the regular skin system doesn't support full 24bit TGA's yet.
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Topic: Bf-109 E-4 summer, winter, and desert default skins (Read 8299 times)
