Texture upload shows nothing

Very embarrassing question, but after following the instructions for creating and uploading clothing using the template, I made a simple piece of clothing in PS CS3, saved as a .tga at 32 and uploaded with lower body preview selection. However, when it uploads, it's essentially a transparency.

I know I'm missing something, but after hours of trying to track it down, I'm asking here in hopes someone may know what the heckfer I'm doing wrong!

Thanks in advance.

What does the alpha channel look like?

Sounds like you did a "select all" rather than a "Select Pixels" when preparing to make the alpha channel. Is the alpha channel solid white? it should be white where 100% transparent, black where 100% opaque, and shades of grey for translucency.

No alpha yet, and unless I really misread instructions, I didn't think it was necessary since I'm not dealing with transparency yet. Have I missed a huge step here? I'm a print artist trying to ride this learning curve, so I probably have missed a big chunk.

Sorry for the ignorance, and thanks for any insights.

Saving your tga as a 24 bit instead of 32 should solve the problem.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

As Sylvia already pointed out, saving a texture as 32-bit TGA when it has no transparency intended can, in some cases, cause your problem. The reason is that since no alpha channel was defined, it assumes a solid while channel there. (completely transparent).

If you don't intend for a texture to have any transparency to it at all, then save as 24-bit TGA before uploading. Only use 32-bit when an alpha channel is necessary.

Thanks to all. The 24 worked the first time. Then I adjusted and resaved, again in 24, and it's not showing, but rather reverts to the default texture in appearance.

I can't imagine there would be Mac issues with the client on upload, but stranger things have happened. I'll keep plugging away at it.

Thanks for the responses.

I use Mac all the time, as my primary system as a texture artist. Mac, by itself, isn't the problem.

Am I understanding correctly that your texture looks fine in the upload PREVIEW, but then looks transparent when you actually do the upload? If you're still having trouble even after saving as a 24-bit image, then maybe it's something really simple .... like, you're uploading new files but looking at old (crummy) ones in world. When you upload a new image with the same name as an old one, the newest one is listed first in your inventory. I can't count the number of times I have opened one version of a file while thinking that it was a different one. I tell myself to delete old, failed uploads but some always seem to linger on ......

I'm pretty compulsive about renaming, not so much about deleting. This time, to avoid confusion, I'm going to delete all versions and start from scratch tonight. Thanks.