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arno

Blue background in textures

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I've done a little scenery design in FS2002 using AFW and EOD. I like to include a few people around the Alaskan GA terminal I've created. At the moment I'm in the process of transferring all my FS2002 sceneries over to FS9 (on a different PC). Unfortunately, the 'people' textures now show with a blue background where before this was transparent.So I guess I have lost the alpha channel somewhere during the transfer into FS9. I've tried using BMP2000 to correct this but have had no joy. I've also tried adding alpha channels with Photoshop 7/Imagetool but again, no joy. I'm a novice at everything - I wonder if some kind person could talk me through a solution?Thanks!


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John

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This is a common problem with old textures (made with BMP2000). If you add a new alpha channel and save it as DXT1 afterwards it should work fine. I made a nice tutorial about this, but unfortunately my website is down at the moment, so I can not give you the link at the moment.


Arno

If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.

FSDeveloper.com | Former Microsoft FS MVP | Blog

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Thanks Arno, I have your tutorial in front of me. I've tried going through it many times but no joy so far. Problems:1. When I open my file in Photoshop I have only one channel - not three RGB as in your example - mine is called called Index. I can add an alpha channel and when I select it and the Index channel I get a reddish haze over everything. 2. You say, 'By switching to the alpha channel next it is very easy to fill a part of the alpha channel, that exactly matches the normal texture, with a certain colour'. I do not understand this. When I switch to the alpha channel the entire image is black. 3. You say, 'In this case I made everything in the alpha channel white, by simply inverting the selection and filling it with a white color'. Again, I do not understand this. I thought that transparency = black. And why would you want to invert everything?I'm really stuck with this - I have ten or so of these files! If you can help I would be grateful - I apologise for being slow or if I have missed something obvious! Thanks again.


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John

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Just for the sake of completeness, problem solved. I imported the .bmp file into DXTBMP, used the alpha channel template to create an alpha channel. Saved as DXT1. Easy, when you know how. Thanks to Martin Wright.


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John

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Although you have already solved it, I will still answer your questions, maybe that helps some other people :).>1. When I open my file in Photoshop I have only one channel ->not three RGB as in your example - mine is called called>Index. I can add an alpha channel and when I select it and>the Index channel I get a reddish haze over everything. That means you texture has only 256 colors and not 16 bit colors. DXT textures are 16 bit, so it is no longer needed to reduce them to 256.>2. You say, 'By switching to the alpha channel next it is very>easy to fill a part of the alpha channel, that exactly matches>the normal texture, with a certain colour'. I do not>understand this. When I switch to the alpha channel the>entire image is black. By default the entire alpha channel is indeed set to black. This would mean that the entire image is transparant then. The reddish glow you see is just a way to show you how the alpha channel influences the image (so you can blend it with the RGB channels). Your final image will never be that red.>3. You say, 'In this case I made everything in the alpha>channel white, by simply inverting the selection and filling>it with a white color'. Again, I do not understand this. I>thought that transparency = black. And why would you want to>invert everything?The parts of the texture you do not want to be transparant need to be white. So you need to select these parts and make sure that they are white in the alpha channel. Because it is easier to select just the color of the part I want to be transparant I inverted the selection before I added the white color to the alpha channel.


Arno

If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.

FSDeveloper.com | Former Microsoft FS MVP | Blog

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