Flaming Pear - Alpha

I'm crying out for any help here please.

I'm trying to create the alpha texture for windows with the flaming pear. I point out now I'm not using photoshop, but PhotoPlus, which is more or less equivalent.

When I put the solidify filter on and upload the image, its not alpha. I save the image as tga as in the tutorial. but the filter colour is uploaded aswell.???

Steps are

1 window frame is on a transparent layer.

2. Duplicate the layer

3. apply the solidify filter to copied layer which is under the original.

4 Save as with tga,

OK, let's ignore the flaming pear for a moment.

Alpha is another channel all together, just like the color channels in a sense. You do not need a trasparent layer at all since you will be defining what is alpha usually by selection.

I do not know that software, but for Photoshop, select everything that is going to be alpha and then Selection > Save Selection As... and just take the defaults. Then, if you look at your Channels you will see Red, Blue, Green, RGB and Alpha.

Use the solidify filter. No need to duplicate any layers.
Select everything on the the alpha channel. Load selection or however you want.
Creat a layermask with the alpha channel selection.
Save as TGA

Oh, and not everyone makes it to the Resident Answers portion so you might want to ask in the Texturing Tips forum. There might be someone there who uses PhotoPlus and be able to give you a better answer.

Just mask the stuff and cut out then save as .png no need to fiddle around with alpha channels and tga

And some (like me) dont stray too far out of RA - for a gimp user, what's solidify and what is it used for?

That leaves the halo tho, which is the whole reason for using Flaming Pears solidify filters in the first place.

Yes this where I have the problem, I do not have a Save Selection As, and cannot get the alpha channel to appear on the tab.

But have started another thread under texture tips too thanks for the tip,

The easiest answer is it is a filter to get rid of those white halo edges on clothes with an a transparent section.

Here is Robin Wood's tutorial page about it.
http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/SL-Tuts/SLPages/WhiteHalo.html

The halo's come from mapping the textures on to the avatar mesh. Some pixels will be mapped on the edges and calculated to be part solid and part in the transparent area. When mapping from texture to mesh, the program looks not only at that point but everything around that point to guess what the right color to place on the screen would be. If there is nothing there it will use 255, 255, 255 as the default color - solid white - and add this with the color on the solid part of the texture. The solidify filter makes sure there is an appropriate color at that point even if it is in a transparent area.

See, with a TGA file and the alpha channel, the transparent area is defined by the alpha channel, not a special color value that will be transparent. "Solidify" takes the picture and smooshes the colors to fill in any void areas. This way, when the texture is mapped onto a mesh, all those edge bits that calculate to be on the edge will be drawn correctly.

[ETA]
Dang, Amara. I have not had enough coffee yet to be thinking this hard

What it does is locate the color of pixels at the edges of an alpha area, and slightly smears them outward. You usually do this to a copy of the layer that has transparency, placin that edge-smeared copy behind the original. This is one approach to eliminating the white halo that appears at the edge of transparency as the alpha channel tries to anti-alias the color of the pixels at the edge with the transparent pixels beside it.

Another approach is to put a black background layer behind the transparent stuff. Just a solid black fill. This allows the graphics software to antialias the edge to black, rather than transparent, which makes a less noticable edge glitch. If the color at the edge is consistently similar and rather light, or example an alpha mapped pic of a bird with bright yellow feathers, you can get the best edge by adding a background that is a similar shade of yellow. In either case, the alpha channel generally eliminates this added background, but having it allows the edge to not try to fuzz out to transparent and colorless.

I use flaming pear but with photoshop and here is what I do

Load actions "flaming pear"

Create your image .use magic eraser or similar to get clear background.When happy flatten layers.Use control to select image (dots go round image) although this is not a must do.
Then I go to actions and select make alpha with flaming pear.press start actions.You should see the process on screen .Save as tga.Note: It should automatically be 32 bit. and that's it.

Sometimes my program makes it 24 bit and this is no good so i redo until it changes to 32.

So if my photplus cannot create the alpha channel, What is the best Photoshop programme to get, is it all adobe and what version would you recommend.

Thanks Ceera and Rhonda- very clear answers

You're missing a few steps: you need to make the alpha channel first. Solidify only helps avoid the "white halo" one gets on images after creating your alpha channel.

These may help. They'e photoshop specific, however. Not sure if "PhotoPlus" can even make an alpha channel.

http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/SL-Tuts/SLPages/EasyAlphas.html

http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/SL-Tuts/SLPages/WhiteHalo.html

There's also an inworld book detailing this in the Texture Library in Livingtree.

Mari
(who notes that everyone got to this earlier than I!)