Semi-transparent textures

[nullsystems 0]

Sy,

That was the best tut ive seen so far for this. I really hope it helps people in the future.

I have actually managed to get a transparant .paa file!!!!

Thank you so much, days of annoying errors has finally been solved.

I couldnt be happier. Well done matey!

I have noticed tho, when I save the .tga file in texviewer to a .paa, the quality decreases so much, how can I stop this?

[Synide 0]

Tha sounds awfully strange... i would expect some loss in quality when saving a .tga file as a .paa due to compression - it's not a lossless protocol.

However, the difference should not be that noticeable.

You are quite sure you still don't have TexView lying around?

You are opening the .tga with TexView2, right? If you make use of the naming convention that BIS use the TexView2 etc. will make sure your outputed .paa is of the correct 'quality' - that is don't forget the _ca.tga in the file name...

If you have the file called 'fishtank_glass_ca.tga' then when saving the TexView2 tool will read it's 'TexConvert.cfg' file and find the entry for...

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">  class ColorAlphaMap

 {

   name = "*_ca.*";

   format = "DXT5";

   dynRange = 1;  

 };

and save it out as a DXT5 quality .paa... ok?

btw. I don't often physically save the .tga file out of TexView2 as a .paa... I just let the tools do that automatically for me... If you have a .tga referenced on a face in O2PE and you then happen to 'preview' the model in Buldozer - It checks to see if the .paa version exists and if not it converts it for you. If the .paa does already exist it checks to see if the .paa is older than the .tga. If it is it will update the .paa with a newly converted version for you.

It does all the same for any .tga's you have referenced in your material files as well.

If you don't happen to preview your model then BinPBO will take care of converting your .tga's when you make your .pbo...

[nullsystems 0]

Aye, I thought it wouldnt remove as much quality as it is.

As the .tga it looks perfect, I couldnt complain.

So, I open the .tga in TexViewer 2 ( absolutely sure its 2 ) and I can see the alpha channel ok, I then Save As .paa. This immediately converts it into about 256 colors ( looks like it ) and about a 1/4 of the file size.  It looks quite bad.

Im not using any other tools, since its just a texture im doing. Photoshop CS and TexViewer2.

PS: If I try and use the PAA Tool for photoshop :

.tga, file Save As .paa

Select RGB4444 ( or whatever it is ) or any other DXT thing, click Save...this then returns with an error in the modules.

Error: "File format module interface"

But I can re-save previously made .paa from other people, just not my own .tga.

If I could get that to save the .paa, not TexViewer that might fix it.

[nullsystems 0]

Solved, was not in a multiple of 4. Didnt know this was required.