Tagra without background

glad i could help

slightly hijacking this thread for a related Question 8-)

I take it .txm/.tga textures are the same? in regards to transparency?
currently in the process of adding new textures to the .txm’s is why i ask
and noticed the odd .dds in there and have seen .txm/.tga textures replaced with .dds ones previously… I ask 'cuz i like to know what the general consensus is in this field… better to leave as .tga?

depends on the purpose. generally, a *.txm from the vanilla game is not a texture but a UTF archive, just like a *.mat would be, too. the ending is just for the programer to have things easier (as he does different structures depending on the purpose). if you e.g. have txm’s containing effect textures, it sometimes makes sense to make those to be dds, as you can replace black pixels with transparent ones within the ALE’s anl. in most cases however, tga’s are used, as they have alpha channel support which is very important especially with effects. to make black pixels is in most cases not enough (you wouldn’t e.g. get semi-transparent areas).

just want to mention that dds supports transparency - you just have to select the proper compression mode and algorithm. The big advantage of dds. you get a smaller picture size as dds compressed picture than the tgas would be…

You can even use dds in txm files - even with transparency. I didnt experienced any problems so far in using dds with transparency. Nearly the same for me as i would use tgas.

As far as I know, the sole reason not to use DDS would be because your texture isn’t square, and even then I’d say you should try and fix that instead of using TGAs

Thanks for the info I thought that would be the case, as .dds works everywhere else in FL… just wasn’t 100% sure

Kinda having the same trouble, but mine won’t save as tga only dds, anyone wanna see if the can fix?

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n240/Alucard1_01/screenddstotgahelp.png

As a effect, it shows up as a white box in game. (the whole thing)

No one? Ok, I got it to save as tga, but only shows up as a white box ingame. Hmmmmm….

how many bits did you save it as?

32 bit. Here’s the targa if you like to see if you can get it to work in a txm file:

Wait, what did you manage to do here? To create a dds file without a “background”?
Oh, and one more thing: What is so special in txms? Aren’t they just like mats?

Easily fixed by alpha layers as Gisteron posted. Both TGA and DDS have this ability. Upload to any TXM, MAT, CMP using the applicable node type (MIP0 or MIPS).

Wasn’t it Transferecy channal?
I’m just new to Photoshop, can someone explain it please?
Thanks.

PolarBear wrote:
Wasn’t it Transferecy channal?
I’m just new to Photoshop, can someone explain it please?
Thanks.

Alpha Channel generally just makes images transparent. This is especially apparent if you try to erase the background of an image without adding an alpha channel first, as it just becomes white.

So to make the picture without background, what do I need to set the Alpha channal to?

imagine the alpha channel to be a channel like the red, green and blue channels. the darker an area is in the alpha map, the more transparent it appears in the end. a white alpha pixel would make the texture appear completely opacitive at that very pixel and black completely transparent. in photoshop the alpha map is called “mask”.

So what I need to do is to delete the background through the RGB? (I mean in every color layer)

no. what you need to do is to draw a mask over your image. the places on the mask, where you want your image to be more transparent, shall be darker. if i recall right there is an option to turn the resulting mask to a fourth channel, the alpha channel. somehow this way i was designing my first entirely custom front_freelancerlogo.tga as seen in the main menu.

I made the mask in a 4th channal, but it didn’t work. I downloaded those pictures you did and compared: your ones have no background displayed in Milkshape, but my has. What tool should I use to make it darker? The regular brush?