These files from Sygrod's RB3D Tech site give easy access to all 38 aircraft in the Red Baron Paint Shop. I've used them for more than 7 years myself , but it seems few know of them

AllPlanes.zip

Making Custom Schemes for MP Paint use

First, read "mpPaint.txt" in your RedBaron3D(or II) folder. Once you are totally confused by that wonderful doc:

Look for examples of parts from my MP Paint collection , UnOfficial Patches(UOPs), and replacement sets for UOPs for better bitmaps(.bmp) to modify than the stock parts. You'll find my original higher resolution wheel set , for instance, on my Graphics Resourses pages.

One exception: textures or derivitives from Kessler's Full Canvas Jacket are not permitted

I highly suggest Paint Shop Pro or other higher quality graphics editor than MS Paint. Photo Shop LE, PaintPlus5 and ImageForge are all free downloads.Most importantly, your painting program should be capable of loading 8-bit 256 color .pal files.See info below about Baron.pal and why it and palmap.exe both blow chunks<g>

Once you've done repainting the textures, simply place the textures in your "Paint" folder.

Proper renaming of your .bmp files is critical for use online with a large MP Paint set up and REQUIRED for inclusion in my collection. Use distinct names , descriptive of the plane type, part and a couple of characters unique to you or your squad. Remember that the name can be 8 characters maximum. Basicly , the game can "see" only one particular file name at a time , so if you are flying around with a "D7fus.bmp" or D7.cfg on one sq# , and someone else is flying on a different scheme but with parts named the same as yours, you will see your parts on his plane , he will see his parts on your plane , and others may see a mix on BOTH planes. Do not use existing texture names from ANY sourse. Stock '03######.bmp' names DO NOT WORK in the RB Paint Shop or MP Paint Folders , the game will pull the part from rb.vol.

Now, go to the RB Paint Shop with the plane type you are going to apply your custom textures to.'Import' each of your .bmp parts , 'Apply' each one , and when you can't scroll thru parts anymore , and have all your parts showing on the plane in the right side panel, you then 'Save' the paint scheme ,type in the name of the .cfg you want(Name distinctly). 'Save' creates the .cfg file in your 'Paint' folder.

On some parts , particularly spoked wheels , some rudders and elevators , you may get the dreaded "invisable" error. This is easily worked around by flood filling the black 0,0,0 RGB backround with some color distinct from the colors on your part , you can then 'Import' the part and 'Save' the scheme without error.Once finished , merely turn the color you filled in back to the 0,0,0 Black index 0 transparency. At this point , you can even 'Load' the paint scheme into the RB Paint Shop without further errors !Only do a scheme or 2 at a time in the RB Paint Shop, then move them out of Paint into your subfolder, this will keep the list of textures short.Also delete 'paintbmp.dat' regularly.It's an SP only file, created automaticly when you 'Save' schemes .. and it tends to mess-up new .cfg files when you creating several at a time. It has no affect on how the RB Paint Shop or MP paints work

Red Baron Aircraft-Object Texture Palettes

RedBaronII's basic palette is "hardwired" for different lighting and shading effects by index number in specially coded .spl files. # 0 index , at the top left, is the transparency color for virtually all textures in RBII/3D.


This is FlysRB2full.pal(6-98) and to the right Baron.pal, which is what you get on stock aircraft parts and from using palmap.exe. With FlysRB2full.pal , all colors work fine in DirectDraw(2d), however the *pink* RGB 255.0.255 does not turn black with this palette, Turn these areas (such as cockpits on stock bitmaps) to a low RGB value black, I use index #127. There are several problems with colors switching in Glide mode The palettes' pics above , are keyed to show the problem colors with a red tag in the upper left corner of those colors and the tag in the lower right of those boxes represents the color that actually displays when using the color in 3Dfx (Glide/3d).

Red Baron AC & Object Convert Palette v2

You can avoid using palmap.exe to convert aircraft and object textures by loading the proper 8-bit .pal file onto the bitmaps. A good .pal file for converting true color 24-bit bitmaps to RB aircraft , object and even '2d' terrain textures is FlysConvert.pal

This palette will also automaticly eliminates all "problem" colors including "glowing" and "night glow" colors from your texture.FlysRB2full.pal , FlysConvert.pal, Baron.pal(valid) and further information are available below in FlysConvertPal.zip

FlysConvertPal.zip

NEW ! .SPL.PAL Editor for editing non standard palettes and special palette control files by Capt. Darwin