You'll need to do the 'illumination' of the textures in the black and white i copy of the texture. If you look at all textures in SFC theres are always two textures with the same name but one has an i on the end, this is the lightmap. In Photoshop I normally have all the different elements on different layers, so the lights wouild have there own layer. I normally create the overall texture (so hull colour, details and reg etc) and save that out, then convert the whole image to Greyscale. Then hide all the layers you don;t want lit and keep the lights, impulse glows etc and up the brightness/contrast on em. Wack in a black background and you're nearly done. To get the spot light effect where the light is cast across the hull, I create a new layer, then use the eliptical marquee tool (click and hold on the dotted square on the tool bar to get the dotted circle) and create an oval in the rough area I want lit (you can unhide the original hull layers to get the right position). Then, before painting, I noramlly apply a couple of pixels of feathering to soften the edges of the mask of. Then change your colour to white and pick a large brush (for 512 textures anything like 65 or 100 depending on the size of mask but any with soft edges. Then paint a bit outside of the mask so that the soft edge of the brush bleads in and you get a kinda light fall off effect rather than just a solid blob. You can then hit ctrl-T to rotate, modify, move the light to get it into position and shape.
Hope that makes sense or is indeed what your after. I put it all a bit basic only because I'm not sure how experienced you are with photoshop, no offence meant
If you want I can mail you the original PSD's for the Windrunner to see if they're of any help (should still have em)
Thu11s
Topic: Hull registry illumination (Read 880 times)