Cannot upload tga textures

I made and saved to disk a 512x512 32 bit tga texture in photoshop.

I try to upload inworld but all I see in the preview is an alpha texture screen and same thing when I pay to upload.

What is wrong ????

I thought maybe it is just lag so I try on different days/times/sims and still same result !!!

In Photoshop, check your channels pallette - if your Alpha Channel is completely black, it will cause your image to be completely transparent. if you did not intend for the texture to be transparent, either save the file as a 24bit tga or remove the erroneous alpha channel (or both).

Thank you, for some reason it happens when I save it as 32bit, 24bit works fine.
Channels were set to white.

Not sure why that is though... ??

Very strange. I've never had instance to upload a texture with a completely white alpha channel... i'll give it a try later when i get home. Perhaps the client is assuming that no variation on the alpha channel automatically means your want your texture to be completely transparent?

That's very odd behavior, imo. Does anyone know why this would be the case?

As for why 24bit fixes this, the extra information carried by the 32bit TGA is the alpha channel... so by saving a 24bit TGA, you are simply not providing SL with an alpha channel, from what I understand.

Jack, only save as 32-bit if you actually need transparency. Otherwise, ALWAYS save as 24-bit. It's a common misconception among those new to texturing that "more bits" must somehow be better than "less bits", so they end up trying to save everything as 32-bit. In reality, the extra 8 bits that make a 32-bit texture actually have 32 bits in it instead of 24 are the alpha channel. There are 8 bits per pixel in every channel. Three channels (RGB) times 8 bits equals 24. Four channels (RGBA) times 8 equals 32.

So, when you save a texture as 32-bit, you're telling Photoshop "include an alpha channel with this image". If you've already put an alpha channel in place, then it will use that one. If you haven't, it will create a new blank one. By default, "blank" in Photoshop means white, so your blank alpha will come out white.


As for why your white alpha is showing up as transparent, it sounds like you've got your channel mask options reversed. Double click on the thumbnail for the alpha channel, and then in the dialog that pops up, make sure the Color Indicates field is set to Masked Areas. This will ensure that white means opacity and black means transparency.

If Color Indicates is set to Selected Areas, then your alpha channel will work backwards from normal. Black will mean opacity and white will mean transparency. You don't want that. Make sure it's set for color to indicate masking.

Thank you for all the info and help to you both, would be nice to see this info in the texture size sticky.

Where I was originally trying to find out.

Actually, it is in there. Under the How To Calculate Texture Memory section, it mentions that RGB color images without transparency have 24 bits per pixel, and that those with transparency have 32. It then goes on to say "see the transparency guide for more this". I'd encourage you to read that guide next if you haven't already.

As for making sure your channel masking is set properly, that's a specific function of Photoshop. It's not a universally applicable concept. As such, it doesn't really have a place in anything so generalized as the texture size sticky.

It might make sense to put that info into the Photoshop tutorials in the Transparency Guide. However, since this seems to be the first time the subject has come up on this forum in at least the last 4 years, I don't know that it would be worth trying to define it as a frequently asked question. Most people don't even know that those mask options even exist, let alone how to change them. Mentioning it might confuse more people than it helps. I'll give it a little thought.

Thank you, I will try to read that guide also.

As an addendum, don't use completely invisible alphas in SL. Even if the picture looks the same as the 24bit (no alpha) version, on upload preview, and texturing.

The alpha channel will cause the viewer to use a completely different 'rendering path' for the prim it's used on.
Because the renderer thinks part of the texture is see through, all optimizations in the renderer based on 'culling' (removing) prims behind it or 'backface culling' (removing sides of the same prim which are hidden), are turned off.
Also they're rendered in the reverse z-order as other prims.

This has several negative effects:

1. They're a lot slower to render
2. They can cause the dreaded 'alpha bug', where two sides/prims are rendered in the wrong order, causing you to 'see through walls' or 'stuff disappearing', as SL doesn't know which one prim/side to put in front of the other.