I'm having some trouble trying to make a masked texture (barbed wire). What color does the textures background need to be for Unreal Ed to mask it? I use GIMP.
2D Art Masked Textures
- Thread starter Quietus
- Start date
It should just be transparent, at least that's how it is in ps. Unless you've already made it and are just now trying to import it, feel free to use the barbed wire texture from gorlitz.
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Lol! Your Gorlitz razorwire static mesh looked so great that's what prompted me to consider making my own because I didn't feel right asking if I could use your custom staticmesh & texture. I've already finished the texture though, hehe. Ok so just have the background transparent (now to figure out how to do that in GIMP) and it should work then, thanks a bunch.
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Ok I'll try that. But what color should the background be? Black? White? I don't know. I can't get the background transparent. I'm good with normal textures but trying to figure out masked textures is driving me nuts (especially since this texture is the one (and only) masked texture I'm going to do). Right now I have the texture in 2 versions one black background & one white (neither work). I thought black background was considered 100% transparent in Unreal Ed.
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The backround in the image itself doesn't matter, in the alpha channel black is the part of the image which will be transparent. White is the part which will be seen.
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Yeah - I have been bugged by this for ages: alpha textures work fine (when there is an alpha channel, of course) but masked just does not work for me. I get the entire texture showing up, even 'masked' bits. 
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I'll preface this with: Don't confused MASKED textures, and Textures with Alpha Channels. They are not the same.
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When using Masked textures, it's super helpful to think of it as a .gif file (if you've ever worked with those..)
The Transparent color (the Masked color) will be whatever the color is at Index 0. The shade/color/hue is irrelevent. You could have 2 RGB 0/0/0's.. one at index 0, which will be your masked texture.. and another at index 128.. which is just a color.
Masked textures are not DXT compressed. I think they will import at P8 textures.
Masked Textures have a max of 256 colors, and don't expect any Alpha-Goodness.
I've find it's helpful to save them out as a PCX file, then import them into UEd. You perserve the 256 color limit that way.
You gotta set the Masked flag in the texture.
um.. I think that's it for my old rules on Masked Textures.. I'm a bit rusty on the editor, so forgive me if I missed something.
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Alpha Channeled textures have to be saved at DXT3 or DXT5, have an alpha channel (as Nestor said ;]) (Note: This is NOT the same as 'erasing the background'... at least in GIMP.. and PSP8/9/X it's simply a PITA.. i don't know/care about how PS does it..) and of course be flagged as an alpha texture in the editor.
Frankly I used to use PSP9 for most of my texture work, then import it into Gimp to do the alpha channel (that's how bad it was to do Alpha's in PSP9).. Now I just use Gimp for everything and I'm a happier man for it.
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When using Masked textures, it's super helpful to think of it as a .gif file (if you've ever worked with those..)
The Transparent color (the Masked color) will be whatever the color is at Index 0. The shade/color/hue is irrelevent. You could have 2 RGB 0/0/0's.. one at index 0, which will be your masked texture.. and another at index 128.. which is just a color.
Masked textures are not DXT compressed. I think they will import at P8 textures.
Masked Textures have a max of 256 colors, and don't expect any Alpha-Goodness.
I've find it's helpful to save them out as a PCX file, then import them into UEd. You perserve the 256 color limit that way.
You gotta set the Masked flag in the texture.
um.. I think that's it for my old rules on Masked Textures.. I'm a bit rusty on the editor, so forgive me if I missed something.
------
Alpha Channeled textures have to be saved at DXT3 or DXT5, have an alpha channel (as Nestor said ;]) (Note: This is NOT the same as 'erasing the background'... at least in GIMP.. and PSP8/9/X it's simply a PITA.. i don't know/care about how PS does it..) and of course be flagged as an alpha texture in the editor.
Frankly I used to use PSP9 for most of my texture work, then import it into Gimp to do the alpha channel (that's how bad it was to do Alpha's in PSP9).. Now I just use Gimp for everything and I'm a happier man for it.
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Thanks alot for all those tips & info UncleDrax. I'm taking a breather right now so I'll try them out in a couple of days. One thing though: I don't know what this "0 index" color is in GIMP or how to set it. I'm very good with GIMP for regular textures but I haven't delved into all this layers/alpha channels etc. Right now the texture is a BMP (bitmap) which is 1 layer I believe. Can I just set the "0 index" color to say, black (the current backgound color) and save it as a PCX? I sure got myself into way more hassle than I wanted with this last texture, Aye!
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As with most things. it's partially what I call it, and partially what it really is..
(booting up Gimp to find the way it's done in GIMP.. most of my history with 2d is in PSP...).
...loading....
...loading....
Oook.. in GIMP, I believe it's called the ColorMap.
( Dialogs > Color Map)
I recommend you Reduce your image to indexed / 256 color prior do doing this.. Dithering will bork it up othewise..
Then the rest should make more sense and be easily transferrable into GIMPese.
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