Just a Little Question....

Hi Everyone,

It's my first post on the forums and I have a question about making textures and GIMP.

I really use Macromedia Fireworks to do everything. I'm familar with that and am comfortable with working with Fireworks. But it doesn't export .tga files. So, in poking around on this forum I found out about GIMP and the plugin GIMPshop. I've downloaded both.

Now for my stupid little question....All I really want to do in GIMP right now is use it for converting my .jpg files to .tga files. I've read a LOT on the forum about Alpha channels. But I think that has to do with transparencies for clothing? Or do I need to have an Alpha channel if I'm just making a regular texture...like a floor tile, for example?

Also, is there a better size (meaning image size -- 432x432 is my current size) and/or resolution for the texture to be? This is taking into consideration load times for other players, etc.

Thanks for any help you can give!

You only need alpha channels for transparency information. See through or translucent tiles would conceivably need it.

It's still worth using targas though, no lossey compression.

Powers of 2 sides (32, 256, 512, 1024) ideally - and really the size is a compromise between memory, detail etc. For most floor tiles I suspect 256X256 will do - and will load 4X faster than a 512X512 tile.

Thanks Eloise, I'm going to give it a go!!