paraleyes Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 So I have created new dragonbone armor that turned out awesome, but then I tried to open this glass curiass.dds and it has missing translucent spots all over it. Where is the rest of the file? I don't understand why it opens like this.?? See pictures.. No, I am not making purple armor.. I just did a random effect to see what would happen. I just can't locate the rest of the missing textures. :confused: PLEASE HELP! :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
throttlekitty Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Are you using GIMP? This curiass has some data in the alpha channel, and I believe it's gimps default behavior to apply that as transparency to an image.It doesn't fit very well, maybe left over from some previous state of production? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MShoap13 Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 A trick that game developers are known for is to map the section of a texture to multiple parts of the mesh. This increases the quality of the texture they can produce without increasing the file size. Do this a few hundred times and you've saved a significant portion of disk space. My guess is this is what you're running into here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perraine Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 If you use the colour picker (eye dropper) and open the colour info window you'll find that the there is no 'missing' parts to the texture, what your seeing is 'translucent' (partially see through) parts of the armor. This is incorporated into the 'Alpha' channel of the file so that the game knows to render that part of the texture partially transparent = Glass Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paraleyes Posted January 11, 2012 Author Share Posted January 11, 2012 (edited) Are you using GIMP? This curiass has some data in the alpha channel, and I believe it's gimps default behavior to apply that as transparency to an image.It doesn't fit very well, maybe left over from some previous state of production?Yes, I use paint.net to open the DDS and save it to format that I can edit within another editor. Then ran into this with the glass armor. A trick that game developers are known for is to map the section of a texture to multiple parts of the mesh. This increases the quality of the texture they can produce without increasing the file size. Do this a few hundred times and you've saved a significant portion of disk space. My guess is this is what you're running into here.Awwwh This make perfect sense now except that the translucent areas don't line up over the glass parts. Kinda odd. If you use the colour picker (eye dropper) and open the colour info window you'll find that the there is no 'missing' parts to the texture, what your seeing is 'translucent' (partially see through) parts of the armor. This is incorporated into the 'Alpha' channel of the file so that the game knows to render that part of the texture partially transparent = GlassYeah, I see what you mean there. I am still having difficulty figuring out how to save it or open it to allow for those parts to remain. Or it seems that I am losing the "alpha" info while converting to different format and then back to DDS when done editing in my editor? So, is there a way around this? Or with Photoshop as an option, does the nVidia plugin allow for retaining this alpha transparency. I always got annoyed with PhotoShop and quit using it. Maybe this is my best and/or only? option? And thanks for the replies guy! :) EDIT: And where/how do I look to edit the alpha information? Does this involve coding? My goal would be to play with different levels of transparencies. Edited January 11, 2012 by paraleyes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
throttlekitty Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 (edited) Wow. paint.net forum topics are awful, so installed it to see what i can see. Looks like anyone using it goes for something called TGATool to manage their alpha channels. But it doesn't look like there's any way to actually view/edit alpha information directly in paint.net. Edited January 11, 2012 by throttlekitty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perraine Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 It's normally not necessary to edit the alpha channel, particularly with Paint.net. If you use the DXT5 with interpolated alpha compression format to save the files, Paint.net automatically sets the transparent alpha flag on the texture so any areas you have 'deleted' or made 'transparent' will be invisible or 'opaque' in game, no need for editing the alpha. You can even use the 'Transparency' slider to adjust the 'opaqueness' of individual selections of the armor, good for glass armor for instance, use the magic wand or freehand select tool, select a section of the armor open the transparency slider, set it so say -75 and done. I use Paint.net for pretty much all texture editing and only use gimp for the normal map generation and adding the 'mask' layer for the lighting/reflective alpha stored in there. I'm not sure why you would need to convert the files to different formats though? It seems like an extra step for no real benefit, are you sung a program that only opens certain files or something? With a combination of Gimp and Paint.net (both of which support .dds files, and both of which have native formats that can save multiple layers, what other program do you need/use? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paraleyes Posted January 11, 2012 Author Share Posted January 11, 2012 Wow. paint.net forum topics are awful, so installed it to see what i can see. Looks like anyone using it goes for something called TGATool to manage their alpha channels. But it doesn't look like there's any way to actually view/edit alpha information directly in paint.net.I'll look into that, thanks. It's normally not necessary to edit the alpha channel, particularly with Paint.net. If you use the DXT5 with interpolated alpha compression format to save the files, Paint.net automatically sets the transparent alpha flag on the texture so any areas you have 'deleted' or made 'transparent' will be invisible or 'opaque' in game, no need for editing the alpha. You can even use the 'Transparency' slider to adjust the 'opaqueness' of individual selections of the armor, good for glass armor for instance, use the magic wand or freehand select tool, select a section of the armor open the transparency slider, set it so say -75 and done. I use Paint.net for pretty much all texture editing and only use gimp for the normal map generation and adding the 'mask' layer for the lighting/reflective alpha stored in there. I'm not sure why you would need to convert the files to different formats though? It seems like an extra step for no real benefit, are you sung a program that only opens certain files or something? With a combination of Gimp and Paint.net (both of which support .dds files, and both of which have native formats that can save multiple layers, what other program do you need/use?Great info here! Paint.net seems so limiting is all. I want to do more advanced stuff. Like with my Glass weapon mod. I added all the gold overlayment on the blades. There's no way I could do that with those free programs. Same with my Dragonbone set. Don't laugh at me, Yes I am using Microsoft PhotoDraw; discontinued in 2000 and no longer even supported by Microsoft. But so many wonderful features and fast to do stuff that looks really nice. I have Photoshop, but it annoys me! For whatever reason, I love Adobe Fireworks for all my web stuff, but always hated Photoshop. Of course that was 10 years + ago when I last tried it. I have a recent version. Sounds like I should really just invest the time to figure it out. I really appreciate the help guys. I see what is happening now and I just need to figure out where to go from here. THANKS! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
throttlekitty Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 If you have Photoshop, I'd at least use that to manage your alpha channels, rather than use a ton of workarounds and bad workflows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paraleyes Posted January 12, 2012 Author Share Posted January 12, 2012 ...and twice the files to save! haha Thanks! :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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