Awwwww. You Guyyyysss..

.. Loves ya's

..
Henry! if it wasnt for you, i couldnt do this at all. Your advice on RW-Tools was smack on. its proven invaluable. I know you guys can do thi too and your just being kind

.. I'm not really good, just, obnoxiously persistent. There's maybe fourty layers in the psd file for that engine alone. Most of them are adjustment layers that have a smalll dot or line one pixel wide in them (sometimes two pixels wide ). Instead of using 3DS Max to create models, i use it to draft 2D designs that i render and save as jpg's. In max, i use the bump map from the engine i'm working on as the viewport background and simpply draft my design on top of that. I use that bump map in photoshop the same way. i just make it a transparent high conrast layer and paint on seperate layers over top of it. one layer for each seperate element.
I know you guys can do this. I see you all do things that leave me speechless on an almost daily basis. It's almost like anything i say will sound like some big ego trip, and i'm not really like that. I grew up chewin on straw and i'm still pretty much like that. Just a hay seed kid. I know you guys can do this :0 and i'd love to see what you can do. Just stop telling yourselves you cant. Dont start by making the Pieta. Start with something simple. before i even think about working on Voyager, i'm gonna be learning the easiest i can and going up from there..
Start with Dick Cowens Family Lines stuff from Britkits. All the basic units are free, so if you mess up, you havent lost an investment. and he's set his files up for people who are just learning. His UV mapping ( for creating paintkits ) is uniform across his models ( except for the corragated rail cars which are slightly different ), and he's really a very decent fellow to talk too. Dont try and start off with packaging a model for upload. Paint the default textures. They're black. They can use a good paint job, and thats what he intended. The F-3 and E-7s nose is the hardest thing in there. The texture is squished, but theres a trick you can use to get around that frustration ( and it can be frustrating. i just now realized what the trick is.. god i can be slow.. ).
Like I said.. Love you guys. I have the engines for the E-7 set up to upload, but I'm having prroblem with the rail cars, so Dick and i are exploring that and looking for a way to fix it, but its slow work.. In all honesty, i know more about the surface of pluto than i do xml programming. its just tht alien to me, but i'm trying, and i will succeed. Once i have all the textures and cars working correctly I'll upload them so you can have them too

.. I cant tell you how happy i am that you like my work. I consider it a real honor, and a super nice birthday present

..
Hugggsss::
Pam