hi-res decal numbering?

[slick cowboy 142]

I'm making an attempt to come up with decals for the 806 NAS Diamond Aces for the Sea Hawk.

I used GIMP, and so far I wanted to figure out how to make decals for the numbering (see pics). 

Only when zooming in on the in the game you clearly see pixels, while comparing to those of a stock Hunter, they appear much smoother.

I tried with higher resolutions, but no luck..

 

Any ideas?  Maybe I'm missing something... I'm saved it from vector to transparent png in illustrator and then opened it in Gimp and made it into a tga file..

 

 

[Spinners 15,966]

What size are the tga's? 200 x 200 seems to work for RAF/RN serials.

Thinking about it, can't you just make them in GIMP?

[slick cowboy 142]

well i used the same dimensions i found in the existing decals of the seahawk, which are 128 x128

but if i go for i bigger i guess i'll change the scale in the decal.ini right?

[Spinners 15,966]

Make them 200 x 200 (from memory use a font size no larger than 48) and then scale them in the decals.ini

 

For RAF aircraft Scale=1.2 for the fuselage is a good start with at least double that for the underwing serials. RN aircraft usually have much smaller fuselage serials.

[slick cowboy 142]

200x200 is already much better, still some edges, but not like before

2,8 under wing serials

i'll experiment some more

up till today i had no idea how to even begin working on decals :-)

[Wrench 9,421]

looks like the alpha channel isn't "hard" enough on the transparent edges.

 

I build my decals from bmps, then do the tgas.

 

try painting the RGB layer(s) full black, and see if it hardens up. If you look at TK decals, you have the transparent sections in the alpha, and the RGB layer is full black

 

should be able to do it all in GIMP

[+russouk2004 6,951]

for wing codes I never go below 250x250 thats usually size I use for basics such as roundels.

obviously,higher the res the better. also check your save\output quality options.,

[SFP1Ace 33]

Slight OT: 200x200 decal uses the same video memory as 256x256 (textures need to have a power of  2 resolution) so why not use the latter for even better quality?

Edited August 25, 2013 by SFP1Ace

[Spinners 15,966]

Slight OT: 200x200 decal uses the same video memory as 256x256 (textures need to have a power of  2 resolution) so why not use the latter for even better quality?

If that's true (I'm not overly techie) that's a good tip!

[slick cowboy 142]

There's the ace of diamond, not 100% historical... the card should be bigger, but the model warps it at the bottom. So I had to make it a bit smaller.

Oh well... it works :-)