Help with alpha channels, transparancies

L

lusiphur

First time out of the vault
I'm having a hard time introducing alpha channels to armors that did nor previously have them. I was trying to mod the raiderarmor02 and it seems that it does not originally have an alpha map. I've had success editing other peoples clothing mods that already have alpha channels in them. I'm running PS CS3 currently. Could someone smarter than me please tell me how to successfully introduce an alpha map to that or any other armor for that matter? A step by step would be nice.
Thanks in advance.
 
First of all get nvidia's DDS plugin in case you haven't already. Then create a new alpha channel in the channel list. There are plenty of tutorials on the internet.
To store the alpha channel in the DDS you have to flatten the layers down to the background layer (Layer -> Flatten), then save as DDS in the DXT3 format for simple alpha channels, or in the DXT5 format for gradients and such (...) with mipmaps enabled at the highest level.

Storing layer transparency instead of real alpha channels apparently breaks the color information for pixels with 0 transparency - I've confirmed this in PS7, CS, CS2 and CS3 - which is why flattening is necessary IMO. Dunno if Obliv...Fallout 3 got the same issues but other game engines I worked with did.
 
The only thing I didn't do is flatten it! Didn't know you had to.
May the Great Space Potato bless you with his infinite starch.
 
DOH! It didn't work. I was collapsing them, I thought you meant collapse the channels. As I've said, I've had luck editing other's transparancies but not mine. I'm trying to expose the abs on the raiderarmor02. No matter what I do I can't effect it. Can someone more intelligent than I take a look and see if it's possible? I'm stumped.
 
Armor Alpha

Do not bother. Bethesda disabled the armor alphas for the texture files. They still work for all the others file types (displacement, specularity etc), but not for the armor texture itself. It took a few days of testing, but it looks like they are preventing it from being loaded via their .nif (mesh) files.

This must have really pi$$ed some of their texture people off, since many of the Vanilla files had Alphas. If you want to test, just make a striped alpha of white and black (100%). When you get into the game, it will be as if you had a perfectly white alpha.

I probably wasted about a day enhancing the stock Alphas and putting them into files where I assumed that they had forgotten them. Now I understand why they were missing from over half the armor files, and why the armor looks so bad compared to the other textures.

I hope someone fixes this soon (I am not a hex warrior). I am about 30% of the way to a total texture upgrade (going to release as a .bsa) and should be done by the end of next week. I would hate to release it without the same improvement to the armor that I am getting from the rest of the textures (their alphas work).
 
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