Smoke system

[fael097]

hey guys whats up?
i was wondering, how do i change the smoke system color? i mean, i copied the fx_smoke_w.fx, renamed it to fx_smoke_red.fx, opened it and edited the following lines

[ParticleAttributes.0]
Blend Mode=1
Texture=fx_smoke_red.bmp

created a new file inside the texture folder from a copy of the fx_smoke, and when i tried to edit it, i noticed that what looks like smoke is only the alpha channel, and i can't change it's color, so i tried to paint red the rgb channel, but it didn't work...

yes, i changed the [smoke_system] under the aircraft.cfg

i think i gotta edit that .bmp file someway...
anyone knows what to do?
thanks


Oh yea, i almost forgot, i'll open a repaint shop soon, if you want a custom painting to your f-18, i'll be making em for free, i just need to finish some stuff and find out how to change the smoke color... 

[chupaflier]

I'm sorry I can't help you with your problem since I've never experimented with those settings. But please let me know about your repaint shop 

[Voodoo]

What software tools are you using for your editing, fael?

The image file "fx-smoke.bmp" does, as you say, have an alpha channel, but that is only there to control transparency and thus the textured effect of the smoke. Alpha channels are only in greyscale, so you don't want to edit that channel. The rest of the image however is made up of the colour channels and they are editable for colour. The original image should simply appear as a white block of colour (which the alpha channel makes appear as a textured smoke trail). Using a colour fill in your editor on that white image will give you that colour of smoke, for sure.

Be aware also though that the smoke file (fx_smoke.bmp) is only used by "some" of the smoke textures on an aircraft. Foe example, that file will change the colour of the wingtip contrails, and the fuel dump contrails, but it doesn't control the colour of the smoke that the "I" key turns on and off. I think that may be some of the other smoke-type files that do that.

I'm away to have a poke around and see for myself, but let me know if that helps.

[Voodoo]

After having a look around it seems that the two files that determine the colour of the "I" key smoke are "fx_1.bmp" and "fx_smoke.bmp".

fx_1.bmp is used for near smoke, and fx_smoke.bmp comes into play as the trail becomes distant.

I also noticed a couple of things to be careful of:
1) The areas of the image you edit (and the colours you use) may also affect other aircraft smoke effects (like the starter engine smoke, for example). You can see there are several different smoke textures if you look at the Alpha channels of these two images.
2) There are quite a few .fx files that use these two .bmp files, so it's worth remembering that editing the .bmp's may alter other aircraft effects too. (I can see why it's designed this way for efficiency but it makes it a bit of trial and error when trying to make texture edits.)

Hope this helps too.

[fael097]

thanks for the help voodoo, i didnt realize that i had to edit the fx_1.bmp but now it's working just fine 

first i painted the fx_smoke.bmp and for some reason nothing happened. then i painted the fx_1.bmp and it was really funny cause all the smokes had turned into red, the engine starter effect, landing gear touching the runway, even the wierd smoke during afterburner stage 1 lol

then i painted em white again, cloned the fx_smoke_w.fx, renamed the copy to fx_smoke_red.fx, opened it on notepad, and changed the lines saying fx_1.bmp and fx_smoke.bmp to fx_red.bmp and fx_smokered.bmp, then i just saved new smoke files painted red with these names and changed the smoke system path under aircraft.cfg to fx_smoke_red and all the smokes are working properly now 

btw, im using photoshop cs3 with the nvidia dds plugin and DXTbmp

cheers