GRAPHICS CONVERTER 3 - ALPHA MAPPING
Starting to get into that Advanced stuff we talked about before. Alpha Mapping is applying an invisible Texture to a Model. Some applications would be dead space between chain links, area between strands of hair, yarn spacing on your new doilie subligar, etc, etc, you get the idea.
Rather than wasting processing memory during gameplay by adding Polygons to create dead space, Alpha Mapping provides a low-resource method of adding this much needed effect. Whereas a Texture will be very colorful, an Alpha Map will be only two colors. White and Black. The White space on an Alpha Map will show the Texture behind it. The Black space on an Alpha Map will turn the Texture behind it invisible. Got it? Sure ya do...
How to get an Alpha Map
There are two methods to obtaining an Alpha Map for your Texture. You can map out the White and Black areas on your own and then save as a .BMP, possibly overwriting any previous work, or you can follow my method below. Which, is much less time consuming and even gives you an overwrite failsafe.
- Open Graphics Converter 3.
- Open the .DDS file of the Texture you plan to work with. This must be done before you overwrite the .DDS with your changes or you won't get an Alpha Map. Already changed it? Use your backup files hi-speed...
- After the .DDS takes .00005ms opening, choose File and then Save As Alpha Channel.
- No encoding here. It saves your Alpha Map as a .BMP with the file name you specify. Easy way is to just add "_Alpha" to the end of the original file name.
- And that's it. You have yourself one brand new Alpha Map to use after butchering your Subligar Texture.
Applying an Alpha Map
