Xara for Second Life Clothing

[Gary Learned]

I'm thinking about trying Xara for clothing design for an online game, Second Life. I'm much more comfortable working in a vector based program for this than PhotoShop or Paintshop Pro.

The game in question requires images to be uploaded in TGA format, with the mask stored in the Alpha layer. I understand that Xara does not support TGA, however is there any reason I could not either store the mask in alpha as a PNG or as an external bitmap and then load it into either PS or PSP to create the TGA file?

Is anyone doing anything like this today?

Thanks for your patience,
Gary
a Xara Newbie

[MerryOtter]

I believe that SecondLife requires TGA because TGA can preserve layer information. PNG unfortunately does not SecondLife uses the mask layer specifically, it won't detect the transparency in the PNG properly.

[MerryOtter]

Gary,

I just double-checked and Xara Xtreme does seem to support Targa (.TGA) files. Have you tried to use these files in SecondLife yet?

Merry

[learned]

I just played with it, and it appears that it will only export transparancy as a PNG file, not as TGA. Also, even in the case of PNG it does not appear to be utilizing the alpha mode to create a mask in that after opening the png in both PSP and PS, I could find no alpha channel.

In theory, I think I could still create the clothing in Xara, export it as a flat image, and then create the mask once I'm in PSP or PS. My challenge there is that when I do bitmap exports, it appears to only want to export the element size, and not the actual drawing size so I may have matchup and alignment problems against the template since I would need to delete the template when flattening the image.

While I love the concept, it's looking more and more as if there is more work than benefit out of this process.

Thanks for your thoughts though
Gary

[MerryOtter]

(sigh) Yet another "glitch" in exports from Xara.

[John Rayner]

How about .xar => .ai => .tga Then you would have your alpha channel...

forum will not take a .tga upload... but you get the idea...

[Mike Bailey]

What you gotta do is export your image as PNG, in the PNG export bitmap options window, color depth = true color+alpha.

Open the file in photoshop, you will have layer#0 with transparency, CTRL+A to select all, CTRL+C to copy. switch from layer to channels and press the save selection as channel button to create alpha 1. Select the alpha channel, CTRL+V to paste the image into alpha 1. Thats it.

[learned]

That option shows some promise. I just did a quick test, and I can get the alpha channel, but once I do the paste, it appears offset for some reason from the layer. It's too late to start playing with it much now, but the PNG opened fine in PS, I brought the template back and everything is positioned correct, the problem is when I paste the alpha which appears to come in lower and to the right. I'll play with it more tomorrow

[Mike Bailey]

I don't know what kind of template your talking about. what I do to control the overall image and border size is in Xara I use a large rectangle with no fill or outline that totally surrounds the drawing, the rectangle exports with everything positioned inside of it. In Photoshop your just doing a copy and paste of the entire image, you shouldn't be getting any offset unless you have something funky going on. When you (ctrl+a) select all PS places a mask over the whole image, then you (ctrl+c) copy everything inside of the mask, switch to channels and create the alpha from the mask, since the mask is still on nothing has changed, right?
After you have created the alpha you can deselect if you choose. then paste the image into the alpha. no shifting should take place, the pixels are all identical, the only difference is the alpha is a grayscale image instead of RGB.