Alpha Channel not working

[harvan75]

I going to build a colourless area to serve as a fiddle yard (ie no colour). So far the process I am using has been working fine but I have hit a problem with the Misc_Phone_Box by Tafweb.

The process I am following is -

1) cloning a number of objects
2) edit in Content Creator Plus to ensure it is up to date with 2006
3) edit in Explorer
a) opening the 'texture' file in TGAtool2 (eg red.texture), saving the file as a tga file (eg red.tga)
b) open the tga file in Photoshop elements, set image mode as greyscale, then reset as RGB colour and save
c) create the texture.txt file with the following contents

Primary=red.tga
Tile=st

The problem is that the alpha channel for the Phone Box isn't working properly and the windows aren't appearing. The problem is either occuring at step 3a or 3c, because if I skip step 3b the phone box turns up red, but without the windows. Reopening the phone box for editing confirms that the alpha channel in the TGA file exists using TGAtool2 but it simply isn't coming working in Surveyor.

Any ideas?

Andrew Harvey

 

[Euphod]

Split the file into two bmp files,(one containing the alpha), then make the changes to the texture.text file.

 

[StorkNest]

b) open the tga file in Photoshop elements, set image mode as greyscale, then reset as RGB colour and save

I'm genuinely confused on this step, I have never done this when converting .TEXTURE image files to .TGA and have had no problems except the typical ghosting of grays in the alpha. Why do this step?

 

[harvan75]

StorkNest - I want to create a scene in black and white (no colour except for the train). To do this I need to strip all the colour out of each object's textures. (It's Art ) What I'm going to do is to drive the train from the grey of the city through a tunnel into the colour of the countryside. Should be quite spectacular, particularly with the loco I'll be using (a Duchess class LMS loco in red livery).

Euphod - it turns out to be easier than your suggestion. Based on your advice I did another web search and found on Phil Campbell's World of Trainz the following, so all I needed to do was to add another two lines of code to the texture.txt file.

Primary=Chain.tga
Tile=st
Hint=Dynamic
Alpha=Chain.tga

Regards

Andrew

The following shows some of the objects I've created so far (including a before and after shot of the phone box.

 

[MichaelWhiteley]

Get rid of 'Hint=Dynamic', there is no need to use it for a phone box. It'll use up to many FPS. Even though it may not change the FPS much but it does really help not to have it on a detailed route.

Cheers,
Mike

 

[Euphod]

Euphod - it turns out to be easier than your suggestion.

Yeah; my suggestion was for the instance where you could NOT get the tga's to work.