Need help to resolve black textures

Greetings all.

So, I am attempting to do a test paint of PMDG DC-6. As of now, I finally figured out how to get it to show in the sim, as well as not have just a white texture all over. The wings, and engines and VC textures show up like they are supposed to I have not edited them yet. The problem I am having is the fuselage is showing up black and shiny.

As a test I change the alpha from white to black and that did affect the shine as I thought it should have. I just don’t understand why my textures are black, or should I say, what I am doing wrong.

I don’t have photoshop due to not being able to afford the subscription but I do have the Affinity suit.
This is my process, I have put test text on the side of the aircraft using the 4k master file(s), then I flattened the image(s) and created the albed and comp section from the master file(s). And I am talking about fuselage 1,2,3 albedo and comp.

I then use the Nvidia DDS Standalone tool (I have also tried paint .net) and made sure that the files end in the .PNG.DDS format. The default format in the Nvidia tool is BC7 RGBA 8 Bpp. In paint .net I have tried BC3 (Linear, DXT 5) as well as BC7 (Linear, DX 11+).

I then run the automatic .json layout tool as outlined in the readme of master files for the paintkit from PMDG (that took me a while to figure out!) then make sure that the date matches the .json file for the respected image. Example PMDG_DC6A_FUSELAGE1_ALBEDO.PNG.DDS.json for the PMDG_DC6A_FUSELAGE1_ALBEDO.PNG.DDS file. I don’t know if the date is important or not so I do it.

I have edited the channels of the Comp file to try and make it bare metal as well as matt using the green and blue channels to reflect where I have the test text typed on the aircraft and where it is just metal within the albed file.

I don’t know if it is a problem with the comp, the albed file or the .json files [ I really don’t understand the .json file structure] or the alpha channel. I have done plenty of aircraft skins in P3D and I understand that just fine, but this new system has me confused.

I have tried to read the SDK but the problem is most of the stuff I read I don’t understand, but if it is demonstrated or I watch someone how to do it I can learn fast.

I hope someone can help me. the only thing stopping me is just this black texture thing once I get it figured out I’ll be good to go!

I know this was a lot of text, but I wanted to outline my process and what I am experiencing.

Thanks for any help.
Paul.

Hi Paul,

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Thank you!

You know when you realize something and then you feel like an idot?

Well, I figured what I was doing wrong. when I was exporting the image I was one digit off 4095x4096.
. . yea. . . one number! That was the problem. . . Occom’s Razor. . .

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