Alpha Skinning = No Team color?

[Jo.O]

I was alpha skinning after Orc_Tamers tutorial and it worked fine when editing the skin as a JPG file, except that JPG files remove the alpha layers, and therefor, the team color.

Sooo, to keep the team color i edited the skin as a TGA file, but now it would still show the weapon that was supposed to be gone.

I have no idea how he managed to keep the team color even though he edited his skin as a JPG.

It's probably just me being stupid, but does anyone know how to keep the team color after you alpha skinned?

 

[Amfidamant]

Youre probably using Photoshop 7? (or 6.. dont remember wich one). They mess everything up. Try using GIMP - Its a free program you can alpha skin too.

 

[Jo.O]

I have photoshop CS2 actually... And I see no reason to get The GIMP.
I mean, It works with photoshop, I just don't know how.

 

[Jo.O]

Well, It's been a while so....

Bump

 

[SFilip]

every model consists out of more peaces - geosets. there is usually one geoset with teamcolor and one without.
now if you try to alpha the one without the team color you will remove the thing you skinned. however if you do that for the part that has it, you will simply make it use teamcolor instead.
the only way to remove something that is a part of the team color is to edit the model...its rather easy, rinpun wrote about it recently.
what are you trying to do anyway?

 

[Jo.O]

Well, the part i was trying to remove didn't have any teamcolor (The militia Weapon + Sheild).

And as you can see in orc_tamers tut he edited the skin as a .jpg file since the teamcolors alpha layer wasn't there. But if I edit a skin as a .jpg it will remove the teamcolor when i look at it in wc3viewer.

Any suggestions? +rep for good answers

 

[Jo.O]

-Bump-

+rep for good answers

 

[SFilip]

i could try to remove the militia weapon and shield from the model i guess...though if you're trying this for the sake of testing/learning you wont find this solution useful

 

[Jo.O]

That would be cool, but it wouldn't be very practicle if i had to ask everyone else to alpha skin for me when i need it.

And you think it could just be in wc3viewer? I haven't imported the skin yet... hmm, I'll test that later.

 

[SFilip]

i'm afraid the wc3 viewer was never wrong for me so far. it always displays the model exactly how it is in-game (unlike war 3 model editor for example).

 

[Jo.O]

Come on people?
Someone has to know how to keep the teamcolor when alpha-skinning?

+rep for answers

 

[Spoony]

It's been a while since I've done skinning for wc3, but from what I've read, what you've been doing looks like it should have worked. Unless you are trying to add team color where it had not been previously. If that is the case, then I have no idea.

However, I'll try to say what I think should work (to keep team color, not add it).

I am assuming that you know how to see and edit the alpha channels in photoshop.

Basically, if you are wanting to remove the weapon simply by editing the skin, you should just be able to find the part of the skin that is the weapon, and fill it in with alpha (so to speak). Just make sure that your brush is at 100% alpha as opposed to, say, 60%. Then save, convert, and import it.

From all that I know about photoshop and editing skins with alpha channels in them, that should work, and keep the team color as well.

 

[Jo.O]

Ok, here's exactly how I did.

First I found the skin in Wc3Viewer and exported it to my desktop as a .TGA file.

After that I opened the .TGA file in Photoshop CS2 and alpha edited out the shield + weapon (neither has any team color).

Saved the edited skin as a .TGA file, opened Wc3Viewer, converted it to .BLP and put the skin on it's model (militia).
Then I saw that the shield and weapon was still there.

I deleted all the files and started over again.

So, I found the skin in Wc3Viewer(again), exported it to my desktop as a .JPG this time, and opened the file in Photoshop CS2.

Alpha edit out the shield and weapon just as I had done with the .TGA file.

Saved it as a .JPG, converted it with Wc3Viewer so it became a .BLP.
Viewed the skin on it's model and now the weapon and shield where gone (good), but so was the teams color (bad).

I even tried changing "teamcolor color" inside Wc3Viewer, but nothing worked.

And here I am, asking for help.

 

[Monovertex]

Why don't you try with the Gimp, too?

 

[Spoony]

Are you sure that the first time you tried that you didn't have the wrong path?

Maybe you should make a big brightly colored splotch on the shield you are alpha-ing out, so that if you see the shield, but the splotch isn't there, then there is a problem. And if it works, then you won't see the splotch anyway, because the shield will be gone.

 

[Rinpun]

First off, are you saving it as a 32 bit/pixel tga? You'll dump that 8-bit alpha map if you don't. You need to keep the alpha map there with its black over the invisible and white over the shown and save it as a 32 bit/pixel tga and you should have a good blp.

 

[Jo.O]

Well, i saved it with 32mbits depth and it removed teamcolor, but not the sheild + sword :banghead:

Anyways, here's how it looks.

 

[Spoony]

Maybe it is because you have two different alpha channels. Try copying everything that you did in "Alpha 2" over to "Alpha 1", and then delete "Alpha 2"

If that doesn't work, then I am out of ideas.

 

[SFilip]

exactly...you can only have one alpha channel.
ignore the teamcolor parts on it. they only apply on the part of the model that actually uses teamcolor.

 

[Jo.O]

I love you guys <3

It took while, but now it's working, Thanks!