kohlenklau Posted June 28, 2014 Author Share Posted June 28, 2014 Yes, photoshop cs3. I have figured out how to make an alpha layer. I think. I just redid the roof damage alpha. Made it a lot bigger to reflect a fire wiped out most of the roof. Standby. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benpark Posted June 28, 2014 Share Posted June 28, 2014 In Photoshop, the "Channels" tab is nested in with the "Layers" tab (unless you have done some rearranging). You can go to "Window" and tick "Channels" if you don't see it. Open any of the "longwindow" files from the modular buildings. Any of these will have alpha information. I'm attaching a screenshot of where to find this window. I'm using the latest version of Photoshop, but it will be in the same place for any version. Click the "Channels" tab. Note the pure white ("255" RGB) and pure black areas ("0" RGB). Black conceals, white reveals what is seen in the other channels (the image itself). You can use any shade of grey to create differing opacity as well, but most often it will be all or nothing shown. You can click the "Alpha 1" channel and paint in with the pencil or brush tool with pure black or white, or do it by selections. If you don't know the selection method- "Rectangular Marquee", etc.. Go to the channels tab with your selection active (where you see the "marching ants" of the dotted lines outlining where you selected). Go to the bottom of the tab. Click on "Save Selection as Channel" (the icon is a rectangle with a circle in it). Once you click this, it automatically saves your selected area as an alpha layer- with the selected area white, and the unselected being black. You can always Select the inverse if you want the opposite. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benpark Posted June 28, 2014 Share Posted June 28, 2014 Once you have done the editing on the alpha channel, you can select the RGB tab and then save the .bmp file which should have the alpha channel "baked in" to it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kohlenklau Posted June 28, 2014 Author Share Posted June 28, 2014 maybe the saving is where I am screwing up. Here are some screenies to show you what I am doing. Looks like it is correct to me. Then I save as BMP and retain alpha channels. Then it asks what bits...shave and haircut, 2 bits is all I know. Doesn't even let me pick 8 bits... I then decided to look at advanced. I tried saving as 32 bit, A8, R8, G8, B8. I thought A maybe stood for alpha channel. But it was not there at all when I loaded game and did 3D preview. No image. I tried X8 option and it appears but as all black. Not sure what I am doing wrong. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kohlenklau Posted June 28, 2014 Author Share Posted June 28, 2014 Recap to myself. The indy building roof is like a sandwich. You got the metal or tile roof file on top. With no damaged applied, it is all you see. Apply some damage and an alpha channel file (building-damage-roof-alpha) gets activated. It creates transparencies on the metal roof to show where metal has been displaced, destroyed or burned away which thus allow you to see the underlaying roof structure (battens and decking and perlins and ridge beam). My edited version made the transparent area much larger. It isn't working yet. The last part of the sandwich is the roof-damage file. It has visual layer with art of the battens and decking and perlins and ridge beam. Some intact and some damaged. This file has its own alpha channel which allows it to be transparent and let you see down into the attic. My edited file also created a much larger opening but just shows up as all black. Taking a break. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benpark Posted June 28, 2014 Share Posted June 28, 2014 Just save as an 8 bit image, with the "Alpha Channels" option clicked. Get out of the advanced dialog. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kohlenklau Posted June 29, 2014 Author Share Posted June 29, 2014 I confirmed I AM working in 8 bits per channel mode. RGB at 8 per channel saves as 24 bits. Add in the alpha channel when needed and you must save as 32 bit total. I don't know enough to split hairs. Anyway, I pulled out all the modded files and started over to carefully take "baby steps". I only changed it slightly to test if my saving was an issue. The baby step changed version showed up fine in the game 3D preview, so if saving is not the issue, then what is? It gets angry and doesn't appear if I get radical and really try to take out the roof. The same with the underlaying structure image. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kohlenklau Posted June 29, 2014 Author Share Posted June 29, 2014 I tried to mod the wall damage 4 file suite. building-damage-a building-damage-a-alpha building-damage-b building-damage-b-alpha To no avail! Program got angry and just made everything transparent. I hope it is something simple and I can fix it and use the images. I have asked by PM for some assistance from someone who lives in a country known for breakfast pastry.... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juju Posted June 29, 2014 Share Posted June 29, 2014 Don't know if this will help, but many files do not like it when there are any anti-aliased pixels in their alpha layer. It may result in making everything transparent. Btw, I've been using alpha channels in many of the UI related files and have never had the need to play around with how many bits I save the files in. In fact, the one or two times I did try, the files ended up not working anymore. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benpark Posted June 29, 2014 Share Posted June 29, 2014 If you want to upload the files, I can take a look. Just post the link here. I'm not sure if you are add another alpha layer to the building-damage-a-alpha files, but this is one that is a discrete alpha file. It doesn't need a separate alpha channel like a standard .bmp would. This is because it is applied throughout all of the models as a damage template. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kohlenklau Posted June 29, 2014 Author Share Posted June 29, 2014 Juju, OK, thanks. I will look to see if I am doing that. ben, no. I did not add another alpha channel to that one. Out of that group of 4, only building-damage-b has its own alpha channel. Thanks fellas. I hope we get this solved soon. I have a scenario to finish. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kohlenklau Posted June 29, 2014 Author Share Posted June 29, 2014 Juju, I think you were right on the money! I had a few pixels in there that could not decide to be white or black. Gotta go cook steaks, but I think this was the break thru! Standby for cool stuff in a few hours... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kohlenklau Posted June 30, 2014 Author Share Posted June 30, 2014 This is mostly doable! Now it mostly comes down to how good an artist I am. I see that it could be used with most of the houses. Not the ones with gables. 3 of 16. And maybe not so appropriate if the house only shows as wooden style. Maybe 2 of those. So, almost a dozen houses could use this mod. Like I said before, I will focus my effort on the 1 story brick houses. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kohlenklau Posted June 30, 2014 Author Share Posted June 30, 2014 Need a photoshop tip: Besides scanning visually, is there a quick way to ascertain if you have anything but full black and white pixels in your image? I did come up with a way to fix the anti-aliasing. I am no photoshop trailblazer but this worked. Magic wand set to 0 tolerance. Click outside the black shape and then ctrl-shift-I to inverse the selection and encompass the black shape then shift-F5 to fill again with black and it covers those bad pixels. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benpark Posted June 30, 2014 Share Posted June 30, 2014 Besides scanning visually, is there a quick way to ascertain if you have anything but full black and white pixels in your image? Select/Color Range. Select a pixel of pure white or black (255 or 0 RGB, respectively) with the eye dropper. Set the "Fuzziness" slider to "0". Click "OK". The color range is now a selection. You can now "Fill" it, etc., or select the inverse and do the same in order to get rid of any pixels that aren't pure black or white for the purposes of the alpha layer or channel. There are more involved ways to do things like the above, but that method gets it done just as well for our purposes here. If you are drawing on the alpha mask and want to maintain a hard edge (all pure color to the pixel edge), use the "Pencil" tool, not the "Brush" tool. You probably know that by now, but it's critical. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
umlaut Posted July 1, 2014 Share Posted July 1, 2014 Need a photoshop tip: Besides scanning visually, is there a quick way to ascertain if you have anything but full black and white pixels in your image? I did come up with a way to fix the anti-aliasing. I am no photoshop trailblazer but this worked. Magic wand set to 0 tolerance. Click outside the black shape and then ctrl-shift-I to inverse the selection and encompass the black shape then shift-F5 to fill again with black and it covers those bad pixels. There is a much easier way - at least in my version of Photoshop (6, I think): Select the alpha channel layer, then go to Images, Adjustments, Threshold. In my version, PS will then automatically change all pixels to either black or white. Hope this helps 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kohlenklau Posted July 1, 2014 Author Share Posted July 1, 2014 I am having fun. How is she looking? Please fire away with any constructive criticisms. I may not do what you suggest or even be able to with my limited skills and abilities. But I would still love to hear any ideas from the peanut gallery. note to self: add a piece of burnt roofing to the Attic floor and main floor images. Maybe also a burnt door and other textures laying on the main floor? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benpark Posted July 1, 2014 Share Posted July 1, 2014 You could alpha out the attic floor by completely filling the alpha channel with black. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juju Posted July 1, 2014 Share Posted July 1, 2014 You could alpha out the attic floor by completely filling the alpha channel with black. Tried that once. The problem there is going to be that the game still considers the lower floor to be 'in-doors,' meaning the lighting won't change. It will still be as dark as in a normal building interior. Doesn't look good at all. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted July 1, 2014 Share Posted July 1, 2014 That is looking really good. Nice work. I agree the tilted sheet metal on the roof does not work because you cannot have its corner hanging over. To bad it would be a nice touch. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kohlenklau Posted July 2, 2014 Author Share Posted July 2, 2014 I actually saw an old abandoned metal roof house on the way home from work today. No fire occurred but it had some splits between the panels. If I redo or touch up the roof alpha I will try to make that happen. I can keep the tilted panel but just slide it down a bit to not have a severed edge. This is a lot of fun. I think some of the files are wacky. House 004 seems to draw upon roof interior (attic floor) file from building 002! Now, the 004 building has some screw ups on the holes for doors and windows. I do not think I injected this into the game. I guess I will go back and run the game with no mods and see what happens. The original 2 click damage hole is so large that maybe nobody noticed before... Ben and Juju: I must not get enough sleep or something. Today at work I suddenly realized that I could do the alpha channel for that attic floor. But I don't know enough to know about the lighting issue. Maybe we can play at night and avoid the issue? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kohlenklau Posted July 2, 2014 Author Share Posted July 2, 2014 I ran the game without my mod and the doorway issue wasn't there so I DID inject the issue somehow. I must have reversed an image when I did the signs. I will try to be more careful. I always get a zillion versions of the files in folders when I am doing this modding. I need to go and delete all the versions that were just in progress copies. But I am usually worried I will need to back track to an older version in case something gets screwy or ugly... tomorrow I have off so I will finish this and press forward with the actual scenario. note to self: I think burned stumps or logs would be a great mod to accompany this. Also, burned grass, burned fence section, etc. tag it all [scorched earth]? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juju Posted July 2, 2014 Share Posted July 2, 2014 But I am usually worried I will need to back track to an older version in case something gets screwy or ugly... Do like I do: make a complete (and fresh) backup after each day's work. Saved me a lot of time on a couple of occasions. I think burned stumps or logs would be a great mod to accompany this. Simple question of modding the flavor objects. Got some burnt stumps already if you need them. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kohlenklau Posted July 2, 2014 Author Share Posted July 2, 2014 Fast.CM.Mods@Juju.com Do you take paypal? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juju Posted July 2, 2014 Share Posted July 2, 2014 Fast.CM.Mods@Juju.com Do you take paypal? Heh heh. Actually I made those weeks ago as part of the "burnt down house and trees Mini Mod." I'll send them over in a minute. I could do fences for you, if you want. Due to texture repetition I'm afraid it might not look that good. It'd be an all or nothing deal, no sections possible. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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