Air Canada Livery...some difficulties

[Aviationphoto]

I have worked on an Air Canada retro livery for the  747-8.  It looks good but I am having issues with a few things.  It's my first paint, so be gentle.

Back story... I use Affinity Photo (747-8 v2 paint file) but have downloaded Gimp because of the .dds support.  When saved as .png (in both apps), I get these anomalies but I have found a fix that minimized a few the "shiny metal" problems.

When I use Gimp and save as a .dds file, the model is intact properly but will not accept the custom paint. It comes out plain white. I prefer the .dds for this reason.  

So I finished it with a lot of struggle to get things aligned.  Then maybe fix it later.  So if there is an airplane paint guru lurking in the forums, I would love to hear suggestions before I put this into the "painters forum".

What would make "shiny metal" parts come out with a mosaic of what looks like other parts over lapping?

Why would one side of the airplane have the door properly aligned and not the other side?

How would some parts just be in the wrong place?

Is it the paint kit or me? I feel like I am so close!  If I can get it all fixed, I may release it into the wild.

(I posted a picture of the nose cheat lines because I think that turned out wonderful!)

[Ghona76]

When saving your .dds, are you "saving as" or "exporting as"? 

As for the shiny bits coming out with word textures, I'm assuming you're making use of a _NML file, which would lead me to suspect an issue with transparency vs shininess.

Without opening the file myself, that's unfortunately all i can tell you.

[Aviationphoto]

I export to dds. I will have to do some research on a _NML files. I will play around some more. 

[Ghona76]

4 hours ago, Aviationphoto said:

I will have to do some research on a _NML files. I will play around some more. 

This is the post where I finally wrapped my brain around it.