fenrian1

So I decided the last visible item on my screen that needed trimed in the chat box. After looking at it closely I decided that the title bar is abuot twice the size it should be and set out to modify the .tga file to fix it.

I have been beating my head against this in an unhealthy obsessive way so I'm asking for some help on how to fix this.

I opened the windows_pieces_01.tga file with gimp and then copy/pasted the whole image over itself, then using the draw tools, redrew the chat window border until I liked it, then cut out that area from the primary image and pasted the same area from the copied image, then deleted the original paste, leaving me with the same .tga file with just the chat window corners changed.

I got the result that is in the attached image. No problem I think, I've dealt with transparancy issues modding target rings, and set out to create a black back ground. Same result. I then spent far too long fooling arround with every thing I could think of and got the same result. So finnaly I decide to read the instructions since all else has failed. Basically the 2 methods of creating a mask in gimp are clumsy to say the least. The fuzzy slector is far too fuzzy, and when I make a black and white copy of the image so the fuzzy select will select accurately, I find there seems to be no way to move the mask from the back and white image to the alpha channel of the main image.

I was finnaly able to get the desired result by selecting arround the chat window border piece, creating a mask and applying it. The problem is that Gimps select tool is rather poor, you can't shrink an area that is selected to big, or if you missclick and select somethign less than 1 pixel, it erases everything you had already selected, so you have to work only a few pieces at a time, then apply,merge,duplicate,select,mask,apply,merg etc.

Needless to say, this get old really really fast.

I also looked at the raw .tga files with gimp, none of the window_pieces have an alpha channel, but if I open any of the dragitem images, they all have an alpha channel. So what gives? I had thought all these images needed an alpha channel to allow the edges to be transparent. Why doesn't just haveing an black underlay work fine just like it does with target rings? And Is there a faster way of creating a mask for the alpha channel than having to select the edge of every individual piece in the whole .tga file?

For whats its worth, I did try just redrawing the with out cut/paste just the title bar pieces and got same result, seems any mod to the image will cause the transparent edges to turn black

Thanks in advance
Fen

Attached Images

chatui.jpg (24.7 KB, 21 views)

shillingworth

You should download the direct x sdk, and pull the texture tool out of it. It gets a start menu shortcut if you install it all the way.

This will allow you to use all 255 levels of transparency in a tga file. Black is completely transparent, white is completely opaque, every color in between is a different level of translucency. Actually there are 16,581,375 levels of transparency, but only 255 of them are noticeable in the human eye.

Using this method you would create two images, one being your actual image, the other being a greyscale image containing your alpha mask. You open the image first in the direct x texture tool, then you Open Onto Alpha Layer the alpha mask image. I believe you can also open the final image into a preview with a background image of your choosing for visual testing. This method only allows for saving into a dds file, but those are the most efficient texture formats around for windows computers.

__________________