Clothing problem

Okay I'm kinda new at making clothing so here it goes:

I have the basic making of the clothes down

I use one of the many clothing templates available, My problem is using the Alpha channel in photoshop, I know how to use it, I make the shirt and make the alpha channel so that it covers up the neckline etc. so that it is transparent, it works great within photoshop, the problem comes when I upload the file into second life, the tranparent part is always white when I put the shirt on, rather then seeing skin I see white as if there is a shirt underneath. The background in photoshop is not white.

I have been trying to fix this all night to no avail, can someone please help me out with this?

Hi

I think you need a quick response so here goes;

Do you save and upload your texture file as 32 bit Targa? JPEGs cannot handle alpha.

Also, check the sticky threads in the Design and Textures Forum. It's a wealth of information, with tutorials and oodles of goodies, that might help you get over your trouble and more.

/109/32/80851/1.html
/109/b5/83674/1.html

Wishing you luck!

Yes I save as targa, still get the problem, I can't figure out what i am doing wrong.

Thanks for the links to the other forum, I looked for a clothing forum earlier and could not find one, I've been up too long, need to go to sleep lol. Thanks again for the links I will check there

You can't just save as TGA, you have to save a 32-bit TGA, not 24-bit TGA.

Mike, there are two possible causes for your problem. The first is you could be saving as 24-bit where you should be saving as 32-bit. When you save as TGA, after you name the file and click OK, another dialog will pop up called "Targa Options". On it will be your choices for bit depth. If your image requires transparency, always select 32. If it does not have transparency, always select 24. For more info on this, see my transparency guide, stickied at the top of the texture forum.

The second possibility is that you're using Photoshop 7.0. That's the most common culpret for this sort of problem. 7.0 was a dismal failure by Adobe. It had a lot of problems, not the least of which was a severely flawed experiment with automating the alpha channel process, which most of us in the graphics community really wish they'd never tried. It confuses so many people. Version 7 works differently than all other versions.

The good news is it's really easy to fix. Not long after 7.0 was released, Adobe realized they had made some tremendous mistakes with it, and they released the free 7.0.1 patch, which corrects the problems. You can download it free from Adobe.com. If you're using 7.0, the patch is a must-have. You won't be able to use normal workflow or follow standard tutourials without it.

Good luck. Let us know how you make out.

moved from Building to Design and Textures where this more properly fits and could possibly offer better support as well.

It's also possible that you have more than one alpha channel; that results in exactly the behavior you describe, even when you are doing everything else right.

Take a look in the Channels Palette, and if you have more than four things in there (Red, Green, Blue and Alpha 1), eliminate the extras. (Temporary layer transparency "channels" don't count. They will have their names in italics, and won't cause a problem.)

What seems to happen is that the .tga exporter can only export one Alpha, and if there's more than one, it doesn't know which one you want. So it doesn't use any of them. (I think it still exports 32 bit, though, so you'll still have alpha sorting problems; just no transparency. I can't test it right now, though, because I'm on my laptop.)

Hope this helps!

or could you be confusing layer masks (the right-hand thumbnail in the layers palette) with alpha channels (which are completely seperate and in the channels palette)?
If not - just ignore my waffling