[zwaps]

What I am trying to do is to retexture several vesseles, namely the Herc and the Fenris.

Here is what I did.
I extracted the textures from the textures Media VP, opened the DDS files fighter06_bla_a.dds in Photoshop (it was the biggest texture there) and edited it to my liking.

Next I copied it as  fighter06_a2.dds into the data/maps folder, went into FRED_open and put fighter06_a2 into the texture replacement box.
Now, Fred starts to compain that the texture isn't there, so I tried it again as PCX, but no luck.
When I saved the mission anyway, the corresponding ship had no texture.

I went ahead and tried to replace the base texture by putting my edited file in the data\maps folder with the name of the normal herc texture.
In game, nothing changed.


Now, there is no information whatsoever out there on how to use this FRED feature or just how to retexture a ship in Freespace 2.
 I am just guessing here,  but maybe I used the wrong texture or put it in the wrong folder.
So please help.

[Colonol Dekker]

Sizing and image depth is correct right?
Sorry man i canthink of anything else, the SCP allows so much more flexibility, im just harking back to issues that used to catch me out with vanilla modding..

[Mefustae]

The name of the texture file replacement you're using can effect whether or not it works, it would seem. For instance, I tried forever to get my custom Orion nameplate to work, so out of desperation I tried just chaging the of the file to a name I knew worked, such as the nameplate name used in Ransom's 'Transcend' campaign - "sageplate" - and it mysteriously worked, just like that. Beyond that, you've got me.

[zwaps]

Ok what settings do I need to use to make it work, preferably in the Photoshop DDS Plugin, but any info will do.


In addition, it should not be a naming issue, because I used the exact same name, basicly I overwrote the file in the VP, by placing my edited file with the SAME NAME in the data\maps directory.
The way I grasp all those modding systems is that this one has priority - I changed something in ships.tbl and that worked, but the new textures don't show up.

Now obviously this is hard to backtrack from were you sit, so what I ask for is a tutorial on how to retexture a ship AND/OR how to add a new ship with a different texture. The only thing I want to change here is the texture and I figured FRED_Open could do that. However, it is impossible to figure everything out yourself.
Someone here has had to program that feature in FRED, so I wonder if that person might actually care to write some kind of documentation on how it works.
The Wiki doesn't really tell you anything specific...

This famous FAQ just tells me "Retexturing is the easiest thing to do", but that's it.
This is somewhat frustrating, considering I already added many ships to my install iwthout hassle and changed their tables and hardpoints, but I can't get this retexturing to work.

Edit: Okay scratch that.
I managed to change the texture, but instead of my changes I now see stuff like camouflage.
I bet it has something to do with faulty compression or something?
Please help me with the settings.

[karajorma]

Do you have the mediavps in a folder called mediavps? If that is the case you should try puttng your texture in mediavps\Data\Maps instead of Data\Maps.

If you don't do this files in the media VPs will override anything in the standard Data folder. That's why you saw no change when you used the same names. I am somewhat mystifed as to why you saw no change using the texture replacement system though unless a texture with that name already exists in the media VPs too you should have seen it then.