Getting a updated skin to work...

[AMD 103]

Okay now, I decided to fix the GP7 Skin which didn't have proper cab side windows until now. (Don't laugh, I really do like the default paint scheme for it.)

And that's where it went all wrong. I placed the updated TGA files (Will convert to DDS when I work all of this out.) in the UserExtraContent folder, hoping they'd overwrite the default files. It didn't go too well. The game begin to panic, saying it wanted various files, including the imb and 3dp files.

At some point, I just gave up. So I need a little help.

How do I set the external skin files up so they overwrite the default skin, and not become another separate skin altogether?

I know for the default files to be overruled I need them as loose files and not packed into a PK4. Other than that part, I'm stuck at the moment.

Attached are the TGA files.

[Gumboots]

It shouldn't misbehave. I've dropped loose skin images into either UserExtraContent or PopTopExtraContent heaps of times. It shouldn't need anything else. However, I've only tried it with DDS. As far as I know TGA should work too, but I've never tried it.

Just to be sure: you only put the seven TGA images in there. Nothing else?

[AMD 103]

First off, I took the GP7 Double files out of the folder so I could fix the glowing problem it has. (I haven't, because it's gonna need more work than I thought.) I forgot to put it back in, which is why RT3 was complaining so much. Whups.

While I no longer have any errors, my fix does not work. The windows still look the same as they always do.

[Gumboots]

Could be because of the TGA format. RT3 is set up to preferentially use DDS, so if both are available DDS wins.

Glow isn't hard to fix. You just need to set a useful threshold value on the alpha channel. Check out this post.

[AMD 103]

Yep, putting DDS files instead of TGAs did it. Thanks for the tip. I have some glowlyness? to some textures, but that's a easy fix. I do actually want to make some parts glow, such as the number boards, but that's another day.

As to the GP7 Double issues, not only does it glow, but the A texture is 512x512 instead of the nicer size used on the default GP7 of 1024x1024.

[Gumboots]

So, get the default images and use those for a base. The glow is due to the TrainSkin tool shrinking the A skin without dealing with the alpha channel. It's total crap. I never use it for anything.

[AMD 103]

That's exactly what I did for this. Here's how I went about it.

1. Take A texture extracted from PK4, make modifications.
2. Take B through G textures from PK4, shrink A RGB layers to fit B through G, without modifying what was supposed to be a working alpha channel on any of the textures.
3. Export to DDS.

No Trainskin Tool needed nor desired.

And yet it still glows. More work is needed. I will update this later, along with fixing the GP7 Double after I fix the single.

[AMD 103]

Victory is mine!

Turns out I turned on the mipmaps, which was causing the fuzzy glow with the alpha. Gumboots mentioning that one shouldn't turn on the mipmaps tipped me off to that being a possible issue. Reexported everything without mipmaps, and no fuzzy glow to be seen.

Tried fixing the GP7 double, and it worked too. Now, to pack the GP7D files into a PK4 so they can, in theory, replace the glowing GP7. Maybe I'll come up with a skin to differentiate between the single and double GP7 of these days.

[Gumboots]

Cool. Have you seen Jim's GP7 Double? That has a custom skin already.

Thread is here: GP7 A+B unit (Final for real this time)

Zip is here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/gq6ccmliz ... _Twins.zip

Readme is here: http://hawkdawg.com/txt/rt3/xtras/J_I/G ... Readme.txt

[AMD 103]

Gumboots,

Yes, I have seen it, and while it's a excellent piece of work, I'm not the biggest fan of it.

1: I tend to like paint-jobs with high contrast. This of course, a matter of taste.

2: It's not what comes to mind when I think of a GP7B. There were factory-built EMD GP7Bs, and Jim's units don't quite look like those units, being based on a wreck rebuild.

This is a ATSF GP7B. The Poptop GP7 does not have the DB blister (The bump in the center with the fan on top), but what would be the cab sits higher and has a cute little porthole window.

I'll think of something one of these days. When I do come up with something, I'll start another thread.

P. S. - I do reskins for train simulators, this isn't all that different. I've even reskinned some locomotives to look like their RT3 counterparts.