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Jinne Ling
Registered User
Join date: 23 Jun 2007
Posts: 24
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10-18-2009 20:03
Hi. I bought a texture that shows a transparent background in SL. Problem is, when i downloaded the texture to my image editor to make some adjustments, the transparent background changed to an opaque color. I need to keep the transparent background! Any idea why or how this change happens? And is there anything I can do to prevent it from happening?
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Rolig Loon
Not as dumb as I look
Join date: 22 Mar 2007
Posts: 2,482
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10-18-2009 20:17
Did you look at the alpha channel? Under normal circumstances, the images on each of your layers should include all sorts of things that will be masked out and show as transparent in the uploaded 32-bit TGA. Open the channels palette and click the eye icon next to the alpha channel. You'll be able to see all the masked areas highlighted in red when you switch back to the layer palette.
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Chosen Few
Alpha Channel Slave
Join date: 16 Jan 2004
Posts: 7,496
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10-18-2009 20:22
That's how it's supposed to work. The image contains an alpha channel, which serves as a transparency map. By default, most image editors will not display the alpha map as transparency, because alphas are used for all sorts of other things besides just transparency. Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, and other image editors are smart enough not to make guesses about what you might want any particular alpha channel to be for. They wait for you to tell them what to do with the information before they do anything at all besides just store it.
What program are you using? Instructions to get the transparency to display are generally quite simple, but they do vary a little from program to program.
Really, though, you shouldn't need to see the transparency visually. It's actually very important to be able to see the color data in every pixel, without having the transparency hide it from you. This is one of the many, many, many good reasons why the alpha map exists as a separate channel, rather than being embedded directly into the color channels. It may seem counter-intuitive now, but as you get more experience with graphics and texturing, you'll discover why it all works the way it does, and you'll be glad for it.
Read the transparency guide at the top of the forum for more information. If there's anything you don't understand, ask away.
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