Beer glass scene creation
This course contains a little bit of everything with modeling, UVing, texturing and dynamics in Maya, as well as compositing multilayered EXR's in Photoshop.
# 1 22-02-2009 , 12:30 PM
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alpha channels for texture

I use layered textures sometimes and have to go into photoshop and make a alpha channel in my texture as you all know. I usually make a base layer of white then another layer with my texture merge it down, then I select the layer and inverse it so it picks only the the part that will be visble . Next I save the visible part once selected as a new alpha channel and make the alpha's opacity 100%, so when I use the texture as part of a layered texture It is ready because the alpha is already at 100% on the layered texture. My question is there an easier way to make your texture with a alpha channel in Photoshop than what I am doing? Also I save as a targa, I tried tif but it doesn't work and I wonder if targa is picking up all my color value.

# 2 22-02-2009 , 02:46 PM
honestdom's Avatar
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: London
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targa is 8bits per channel, they are fine for textures. your tifs wont work if you use LZW compression or any compression for that matter... i use tifs...

As for your other question i think a visual example would be good cos i cant work it out.

# 3 22-02-2009 , 10:37 PM
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taga can be anything up to 32 bit dude. For a texture you will get a good depth at 16 bit but it will only make a difference if you create it at that depth, so if you paint a texture in the PS default settings of 8 bit then it wont make a difference if you up the bit dpeth to 16 before saving.

I allways create alpha channels seperately, but im just used to working like that, you could allways use maya nodes to generate the alpha i guess, e.g. using the reverse node to negative your values and then pipe the result further down the network.


FX supervisor - double negative
# 4 23-02-2009 , 07:28 AM
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yeah i said 8 bits per channel, which is 32 user added image

# 5 23-02-2009 , 09:29 AM
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ah ha! oops


FX supervisor - double negative
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