Help with Transparent TGA files for maps

(Demanufacturer) #1

I’ve been working with some transparent textures, i save them as 32bit TGA files in photoshop, however the transparency doesnt appear to work properly when the map is loaded. I’ve also noticed that some TGA’s from maps appear transparent in photoshop, but arent when looking through another TGA viewer, such as ACDSee - it sees parts of the TGA that photoshop doesnt.

Can anyone give me some advice on the best program to work with when making transparent TGA’s for maps, or how to see the entire content of a TGA in photoshop?

(carnage) #2

have you writen the shader file to go with your map?

(Ifurita) #3

More information, since we’re talking about the signage for Decerto. We’d like to make an alpha texture with only the text for Arena 1: Staging Area, for example. Here are 2 shaders we’ve used for alpha textures that do work:


textures/duel/mo_logo_alpha
{
	cull disable
	nomipmaps
	nopicmip
	surfaceparm nomarks
	surfaceparm alphashadow
	surfaceparm pointlight
	surfaceparm trans
	implicitMask -
}

and


textures/duel/moonks
{
	polygonOffset
//	nomipmaps
	nopicmip
	entityMergable
	{
		map textures/duel/moonks.tga
		blendFunc GL_SRC_ALPHA GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA
		rgbGen vertex
		alphaGen vertex
	}
}

I the case of the first texture, it was made using this technique: http://planetwolfenstein.com/4newbies/cmmarkers.htm then placed on a 1-unit thick piece of nodraw. It works as expected. However, when I try the same technique on text, I see the proper alpha mask in PaintshopPro, but I get the black background in-game.

(The Wanderer) #4

If you’re using photoshop 7 then make sure you have upgraded your tga plugin(i believe you can do that at the adobe site). The default plugin that comes with photoshop 7 has a bug in it where it doesn’t save the alpha channel on tga’s.

(Ifurita) #5

I’m using Paint Shop Pro 7 by Jasc. The thing I can’t figure out is that I’ve made other transparent TGAs, including all of my command map icons (probably 20-30 of them) just fine.

(Demanufacturer) #6

thanks a lot, i moved to photoshop CS and it worked perfectly