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22 <center><big><big><strong>Tutorial: How to get paths for livery drawing in GIMP</strong></big></big></center>
25 <strong>Problem:</strong>
29 Most airplane constructors (for FlightGear, not the real ones!) provide a
30 so-called "paint kit" which provides the designer an already
31 effective way to draw his/her livery (in GIMP, of course). So if you want to
32 draw a livery for your favorite (real or fantasy) airplane, you still
33 encounter these ugly looking white stripes on the borders. They are being
34 added by GIMP in the process of removing the alpha channel from the image
35 (maybe Skyop asked you to do so? ;-) ). Now you need to get rid of them,
36 because they make your model (this also applies on building, towers, hangars
37 and all other "ground-level" constructions with textures) look
38 unprofessional and not good.
42 <strong>Steps to do:</strong>
46 I take skyop's CRJ1000 paintkit from git as an example. It is called
47 <strong>CRJ1000-paintkit.xcf</strong>. I do this tutorial slowy, so for
48 experienced GTK/GIMP/Linux/Computer-in-general users it might be a bit
49 boring. Just head on faster if you feel you already know that step.
53 First, startup GIMP. On my desktop it looks like in the picture below.<br />
54 <a href="tutorials/img/livery-paths/001.png" target="_blank"><img
55 src="tutorials/img/livery-paths/001-thumb.png" alt="GIMP has fully started"
56 width="320" height="256" title="GIMP has fully started"></a><br />
57 <em>Image #1: GIMP has fully started up on a FVWM-Crystal desktop</em>
61 Load the paint kit (it must be provided or else ask the airplane constructor
62 kindly to provide one for GIMP) into GIMP. Again where you saved that file,
63 I leave that completely up to you. :-) So look for it (btw.: noticed the
64 file selection boxes have a "bookmarking" feature called
65 "Places"? Just in case you want to shortcut a lot clicks into one
67 <a href="tutorials/img/livery-paths/002.png" target="_blank"><img
68 src="tutorials/img/livery-paths/002-thumb.png" width="320" height="256"
69 alt="GTK selection box with the paint kit file already marked"
70 title="GTK selection box with the paint kit file already marked"></a><br />
71 <em>Image #2: GTK selection box with the paint kit file already marked</em>
75 If you have done so, the image got loaded into your computer's RAM and
76 displayed as similar below (maybe you have a different solution so GIMP will
77 change the zoom factor to match the image into your screen so it may
78 <strong>NOT</strong> look exacly the same).<br />
79 <a href="tutorials/img/livery-paths/003.png" target="_blank"><img
80 src="tutorials/img/livery-paths/003-thumb.png" width="320" height="256"
81 alt="GIMP has loaded the CRJ1000-paintkit.xcf file and displayed it"
82 title="GIMP has loaded the CRJ1000-paintkit.xcf file and displayed it"></a><br />
83 <em>Image #3: GIMP has loaded the CRJ1000-paintkit.xcf file and displayed it</em>
87 Now make the layer called <strong>[DEL] UV map</strong> active by simply
88 clicking on it and click the little magic wand in the toolbox. Need a
89 screenshot? Just one more step please: Click in the large white area of
90 that image (maybe between the two fuselage halves?). The result of these
91 three steps is shown below.<br />
92 <a href="tutorials/img/livery-paths/004.png" target="_blank"><img
93 src="tutorials/img/livery-paths/004-thumb.png" width="320" height="256"
94 alt="Magically selected parts of the airplane"
95 title="Magically selected parts of the airplane"></a><br />
96 <em>Image #4: Magically selected parts of the airplane</em>
100 Next choose <strong><u>S</u>elect</strong> from the image window's menu
101 and click <strong><u>I</u>nvert/</strong> or hit CTRL+I. The (animated)
102 selection will now change slightly so I go to next step. Choose
103 <strong><u>S</u>elect</strong> again, but now <strong>S<u>h</u>rink</strong>.
104 You should get a similar box as show below. The invertion step is very
105 import so don't leave it out. If you miss it you will get a wrong path
106 as the final result.<br />
107 <a href="tutorials/img/livery-paths/005.png" target="_blank"><img
108 src="tutorials/img/livery-paths/005-thumb.png" width="320" height="256"
109 alt="Open Shrink Selection box and inverted selection"
110 title="Open Shrink Selection box and inverted selection"></a><br />
111 <em>Image #5: Open Shrink Selection box and inverted selection</em>
115 Now enter 3 to 5 or more as selection shrink value (you have find that out
116 for yourself because it depends on the image and alpha channel) and hit the
117 <strong>OK</strong> button. The selection is now shrinked and may look like
118 mine below. I choosed 3 as shrink value.<br />
119 <a href="tutorials/img/livery-paths/006.png" target="_blank"><img
120 src="tutorials/img/livery-paths/006-thumb.png" width="320" height="256"
121 alt="Shrinked selection with 3 as value"
122 title="Shrinked selection with 3 as value"></a><br />
123 <em>Image #6: Shrinked selection with 3 as value</em>
127 Now you <strong>could</strong> start drawing your livery into the layer by
128 adding a new transparent layer, <strong>but</strong> you should save your
129 selection (path! hint, hint!) for later usage (on the same paint kit, of
130 course). To do so, choose <strong><u>S</u>elect</strong> again and hit
131 <strong>To <u>P</u>ath</strong> (here it was the last entry in the menu).
132 GIMP now starts to convert the selection into a path, but after it is done,
133 nothing seems to happen to your image, right? Wrong! You added a path to
134 your image. To make that visible, just bring up the path dialog (which can
135 be accessed through <strong><u>W</u>indows</strong>,
136 <strong><u>D</u>ockable Dialogs</strong>. If you want to shortcut that, hit
137 the last menu entry <strong>Layers, Channels, Paths, Undo</strong> which
138 gives you a similar window like the one in lower right corner of my
139 screenshots. Now just hit that 3rd item in that window and you get a similar
140 view like following screenshot.<br />
141 <a href="tutorials/img/livery-paths/007.png" target="_blank"><img
142 src="tutorials/img/livery-paths/007-thumb.png" width="320" height="256"
143 alt="Paths dialog box selected with the previously generated path"
144 title="Paths dialog box selected with the previously generated path"></a><br />
145 <em>Image #7: Paths dialog box selected with the previously generated path</em>
149 Now you may wish to rename it and export it on your hard drive. To do the
150 first step, double-click the current name <em>Selection</em> and type what
151 ever you want to call it. You may want to choose <em>All airplane parts</em>
152 or something descriptive. After that, right click the path and hit
153 <strong>E<u>x</u>port Path ...</strong> (that one with the little disk).
154 Select the desired folder where you want to store it (preferable near the
155 <strong>CRJ1000-paintkit.xcf</strong> file) and e.g. name it
156 <strong>CRJ1000-paintkit-paths.svg</strong> so you can easily look it up for
157 later purposes. I leave this step out, screenshotting it, you will get a
158 similar selection box as above.
162 Now you can start drawing liveries for your favorite airplane and reuse (or
163 first create) your exported paths for easy drawing! If you have imported
164 your path, you need to convert it into a selection and keep it invisible.
165 I think you already know, where to do that or didn't you take a longer
166 look on the path's context menu, do you? :-)
170 <strong>Thank you for participating my tutorial!</strong> If you have
171 feedback to tell me, contact me at my email address, ICQ, Jabber or in IRC
176 <strong>By the way:</strong> I used a converted, as path exported selection
177 to blacken my personal things on my screenshots. The path <a rel="external"
178 href="pub/screenshot-anonymizer-fvwm-crystal_1280x1024.svg"
179 target="_blank">can be found here</a>.
183 <strong>Used software:</strong>
185 <li><a href="http://www.gimp.org" rel="external" target="_blank">GIMP</a> 2.6.11 - GNU Image Manipulation Program</li>
186 <li><a href="http://gna.org/projects/fvwm-crystal/" rel="external" target="_blank">FVWM-Crystal</a> 3.0.5 - A small, fast and robust desktop for Linux (default with ACPI)</li>
187 <li><a href="http://www.debian.org" rel="external" target="_blank">Debian</a> <a href="http://www.gnu.org" rel="external" target="_blank">GNU</a>/Linux Unstable AMD64</li>
188 <li><a href="http://www.flightgear.org" rel="external" target="_blank">FlighGear Flight Simulation</a> Latest GIT - Fly free!</li>
189 <li><a href="http://www.midnight-commander.org/" rel="external" target="_blank">GNU Midnight Commander</a> - My favorite editor</li>
190 <li><a href="http://moc.daper.net/" rel="external" target="_blank">Music On Console Player</a> - Background music :-)</li>
195 PS: My manually mirrored download archive for FlightGear can be found
196 <a href="pub/" target="_blank">here</a>. So take a look around. :)
201 Created: <strong>2011-06-11</strong> |
202 Last update: <strong>2013-02-22</strong> |
203 Author: <a href="mailto:roland_NOSPAM_@_REMOVE_THIS_mxchange_AND_THIS_.org">Roland Häder</a><br />
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