alpha channels

iu driver · Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2003 11:04 am

can somone help please,not sure if in right category,but im giving a dirty look to a nsw 442 class,im using paint pro 7 and tried arcsoft photostudio,also using tga tool 2 to export.everything goes fine until i export the file to ace using tga tool2 and i use the option alpha but when i try it in the game i still get the white borders around the bogies so i lose my alpha channel.the only thing i can think of is it is because im putting a second layer over the original 1 so there is 2 layers.it worked ok when i repainted the engine in the ms paint.any help would be appreciated mark

iu driver · Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2003 9:15 pm

ONLY ME AGAIN,IM NOW USING PSP8 ,I CAN DIRTY THE ENGINE EVERYTHINGS OK I THEN SAVE IMAGE TO DESKTOP IN TRUEVISION TARGA,When i put it in tga2 all i get is a whole lot of blurry coloured lines and the alpha in black and white lines im just about 2 give up i have spent all day on this getting very frustrated help please

MikeS · Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2003 8:14 am

I have never had any problems producing an alpha channel in PSP7, however when I tried a Beta version of PSP8 I could not get it to work properly although now that the full version has been released, it may be OK now.

In PSP7 I usually proceed as follows:-

1. Produce your full colour version of your texture. In your case the bogies
2. Select Masks/New/Show All
Select Masks/View
Select Masks/Edit
3. Select the paint brush tool, and make the foreground and background colours Black and White
4. Paint in your mask, the areas which are masked will appear as red/pink squares
5. When finished, select Save to Alpha Channel
6. Save the picture as .tga - You will be told only one Alpha channel can be saved, click Yes.
7. Load your TGA picture in TgaTools2 and select Export with alpha making sure you have the correct version of Makeace selected in TgaTools.

As an alternative you can use the WinMakeace program which ships with MSTS and is in the Utils folder, this will also make an .ace file for you without having to use TGATools.

Mike.

Vulcan Foundry · Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2003 5:45 pm

Nope..they still haven't fixed it despite all the protests on the JASC forums. They carried this glaring flaw over from the Beta PSP8. It still can't save alpha channels in a 24 bit uncompressed targa file.

"To err is human. To blame somebody else for it shows managerial potential"

Vulcan Foundry · Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2003 10:57 am

Another thought.
Click on options and make sure that the default save in PSP8 is as an umcompressed file , not compressed and see if this makes a difference.

Cheers !

"To err is human. To blame somebody else for it shows managerial potential"