Alpha blood?

I can't test it in world at the moment cause my SL client is being too laggy to upload...

But am I correct in the assumption that if I make a texture with blood on it, and then alpha the blood part with gray, and the rest with black it will make the blood semi-transparent? Or should I just make the normal alpha black, and just make the texture transparent in-world?

Why add an Alpha Channel if you are going to make it transparent in world?
that would be a waist of resources, as the texture with the Alpha Channel is a 32 Bit File and the other to make it transparent in world would only have to be 24bit file.

Depending on how you want to use your Texture and what effect you are looking to get, it may not need to have Transparency at all. If you are thinking of creating a texture and only parts of it require transparency then yes you would need to design that outside of SL, but if you want the whole texture to be semi transparent as in what your post describes then upload the texture as a 24 bit and use the transparency option from the edit menu.

If you want only parts of that to be semi transparent then that is another question.

Consider also the way this texture will be applied to prims, if you use a 32 bit texture with transperency/alpha channel and apply that to prims that are overlapping are positioned close to each other you may end up losing the effect altogether due to the "Alpha Sorting Glitch".

Its a blood spatter, not a square so it needs the alpha at least on the outside. What I meant was if iw ant the blood itself to be semi-transparent, would in-world be fine for that, or would I do more alpha, with the blood as a partial transparent?

So as I understand it, you want to take a prim apply a blood splatter texture to that prim to make it look like a pool of blood with blood drops and splatters here and there.
You will need to make the whole texture first in your PS package or whatever program you use and it will need transparency as in a Alpha Channel.
It is very difficult to explain this in detail as this really depends on your level of skills when it comes to deisgning this type of texture and what I might picture in my head could be totally different to what you have.

I can only give you advice on doing this CS2/CS3 as that is my preferred software.

If you are using that software then I do not mind giving you the advice on how to design that texture with your semi transparency parts, full transparency and so on all in the one texture.

Well.. I know how to do alphas and all that, I can do that fine.. (PS Elements 3.0 btw..)what I'm asking is if I need to make the blood transparent in the texture, or if the in-world is sufficient for it.

The way you are describing it you, it would need to be made outside then uploaded.
Remember in world with the transparency option your texture starts as a solid, as you apply the transparency the whole texture will be effected so I am sure you will lose the effect you are looking for.

Okies... so making it a solid blood splatter with transparent outsides, then making it in-world transparent won't work?

If you need only one or several blood stains to apply on a prim, I'd suggest you avoid the 50 alpha - make it alpha only at the borders, where there is no blood. You can make the prim transparent afterwards.
BIT
If you have a texture of bricks and want to put the blood on it, it is better to make the alpha transparent so that you can see the bricks through - it is more realistic

No, let me explain, your texture has transparency/alpha channel for the edge effect, and the inner part is a solid colour regardless of the deisgn, it is a solid.
When you upload it and apply it to the prim, then use the transparency option from the edit menu, this will make the solid part of your texture semi to full transparent depending on your input values. The transparency in your texture will remain transparent but the solid part will all change together, there is no way to determine in SL what part of your texture should or should not be transparent or semi transparent.

The easisest thing to remember, it is not your texture that becomes transparent in SL when using the edit menu, it is the prim and this is a solid and therefore if you change the transparency to 25%, then either a prim face or whole prim will be 25% transparent.

Okies yeah, thats what I thought... for the most accurate way I can't just use in-world.... thanks a bunch ^^

However, its enough for what I'm doing, so at the moment I don't need to learn the more accurate way(s) of doing it... Maybe eventually, but for what I'm doing, you won't be able to tell...

Thanks a bunch ^^

The other part in your question about making the alpha Channel gray would give you a semi transparent effect. Remembering the closer you get to white the more solid this would be.

As far as I understand you can do this in Elements as well but again this depends on your level of skill when working with layers and a Alpha Channels.

yeah ^^ White is opaque, black is clear... sads between make it somewhere in between (Not randomly, I know, based on the darkness)

Correct, experiment with it, it will be dificult to start with because you might want some parts to be 25% transparent or 50% transparent but it can be done.

You will need to work with a lot of layers as well to get your effects, be careful with your image size, depending on your PC Specs, this could slow if you do have a large image with lots of layers.