TGA and transparent backgrounds

[DoddTheSlayer]

Hi everyone. I am new to these forums and have come up against a barrier in a mod that i am making for an old game (Wizardry 8) which uses tga graphic files for all its textures.
I don't seem to be able to make a file with both opaque and transparent texture in it.
Example would be a leaded window where i would like the window part fully opaque (i say leaded but actually it would be gold)
I know this is something to do with masks and the Alpha channel but i have not figured it out.
When i blank out the window part then the other colours in the image become semi-transparent and if i don't i get black window that i cannot see through.

Could someone tell me or point me to a thread that explains how you get a transparent background while pr0tecting the rest of the image from any kind of transparency ?

PS. I am using PSP 5, but also have Adobe photoshop

[ss-kalm]

As far as I am aware, tga files do not support transparency.

I'm sorry, but I have no idea what sort of workaround you will have to perform.

[DoddTheSlayer]

They certainly do support transparency or they could not exist in the game i am editing which they do.

[handrawn]

Hi welcome to TG

tga can have alpha channel [transparency] - photoshop supports this - not sure about psp5

if you post up an example to explain what you mean it might help

[ss-kalm]

Humble apologies!

[DoddTheSlayer]

Ok try this.

http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/4...eegreenou4.jpg

This is a tree that in the game there is no black background of course and the the tree part is entirely protected from any transparency and is completely opaque.

When you load the mask from the alpha channel in psp 5 the tree shows as black on a white background.
I tried working backwards by deleting the mask and then creating another one to re-produce the masked image, but i am missing something because it just does not work.
I either get the black background or no background with a semi-transparent tree which is no good to me.
This is ipg image was originally a tga file that i altered for imageshack.

I will be happy to know how to do this using any image editor.

[steve.ledger]

Never worked with TGA myself. Had a quick Google and found referrence to saving TGA without Alpha using layers.

I started out with PS7 on my current PC, and apparently that version had a feature where you didn't have to create alpha channels in order to save a targa with transparency - you just created your image, adjusted the transparency of the applicable layers, and saved it as a 32-bit targa.

It didn't go on though.

Maybe a clue?

[Soquili]

A tutorial about using Masks in PSP 5 is at
http://www.mardiweb.com/web/masks5/masks501.htm
Page two of the tutorial shows using a black and white mask to make the black background of a rose image transparent.

The mask you mentioned where the tree is black on a white background. I think that if you reverse (make a negative) of that mask you may have what you need.

[handrawn]

here is a 32bit tga of your tree ithas a transparent background - it was created in toon boom

when you open it in photoshop and look at channels you will see that the alpha channel is there

this confirms that you can get the tga to have alpha channel - still working on how to do it in photoshop - think I would be happier with gimp

[handrawn]

ok progress - screen shot from gimp - rough and ready as I only removed black rather than spend time making a mask - but gimp will open and save 32bit alpha tga without turning a hair

I think it must have been gimp I was thinking of in the first place [keith - I too make mistakes ] - gimp is free - if you want to go that way let me know