I getting frustrated. Need a step by step, hold my hand & walk me through tutorial

I just don't get the alpha channel stuff. I've read the stickied alpha channel thread over and over. What is with me???? It's so frustrating!

I made fingernails, using robin's templates. I THOUGHT I used an alpha channel... NOT

I used a fingernail template I found that was a fingernail alpha. Painted the color polish I wanted, saved it as targa, (unclicked alpha layer when saving), saved as a 32 bit. Then uploaded to SL, by the way I've spent about 50L trying to upload a single set of fingernails and still haven't gotten them right. anyway, after uploading to sl, I went into change appearance, put on the gloves, and changed the texture to my newly uploaded fingernail texture.

What do I see? White gloves with colored tips at the end of the fingers!

Please, someone walk me through this, or point me in the right direction. I'd gladly pay for the step by step tutorial. Help end my frustration, please! lol

Thank you!

It sounds like you aren't making the rest of the template (the part that's not fingernails) transparent.

In the stickied alpha example, read how you make a bikini top by masking out everything that isn't the bikini itself. Everything in the alpha channel you want transparent has to be masked out. In your case, you just want to have the fingernails, everything else on the hand should be transparent.

When you are bringing it in with the texture upload, look at the image before you click OK (and spend L410) you shouldn't see the transparent areas, if they are white or black or gray, try again.

I just went completely through the alpha tutorial at robinwood.com, which was step by step, it was awesome. I created the alpha channel and see all black except the fingernails.

I then did a 'save as', named my file, saved as targa, (which unclicks the save targa box) and clicked save. i then clicked the next 32 bit box, uploaded to sl, previewed as upper body part, and saw white shirt with colored fingernails. So, I'm still doing something wrong.

I did create the alpha channel with ease, but what am I doing wrong, what am i missing here?

oops, i mean when i choose to save as a targa file, it unclicks the save alpha box...

as I stated in my first post... I read the alpha sticky. Some of the steps he said to do, I don't even have! I'm using CS2. And I'm sorry, I just don't find the info there, layed out step by step enough for me.

Which is why I posted this thread....

Anybody else willing to help out?

Nikki,

Without actually seeing what you ar doing, ot is a little difficult to tell, but you do need to make sure of a couple things before you save as .tga:

1) That there is only one alpha channel.
2) That the red, green, blue, and alpha channels all are visible (little eye icon on each one).
3) That the only layer that is visible is your fingernail layer.

I got it! It wasn't saving the alpha channel, so it wasn't transparent. Which I knew, that transparency was the issue, just couldn't figure out what to do about it.

If anyone else has this problem, read Amber Stonecutter's tutorial on tattoo's, cuz that's where the answer lies. or my answer did anyway.

/109/2b/76703/1.html

And if Amber Stonecutter still reads these threads... my message to you is.... YOU ROCK!!!! Now that's a perfect example of an easy to follow, step by step tutorial.

But, other tutorials here are great, too... I'm not saying they're not, just kinda' left me a bit in the dark, I'm just like a brick wall sometimes. I read where Robin Sojourner said sometimes we assume it's harder than it really is and we put on blinders. So true! To all the tutorial writers, you are awesome for being so willing to share your knowledge and experience with us, just remember that we may have those blinders on....

Thank you!