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FSXA Forgettful!

E

eppright

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Forgive me. A few years ago I was able to use alpha textures to develop signs with letters and no backgrounds to use as FBO Logos. I've forgotten something. I remember the necessary 256 colors and size divisable by 128 and BMP extension. When I use DXTBMP and select and apply a reversed image for an Alpha then background does not appropriately disappear. What am I forgetting?

Thanks
 
Hi,

The easiest way is to make an alpha channel. For FSX there is no requirement to use 8 bit textures. You add an extra channel to the image and make the parts you want transparent black and the rest white. After that you make a DDS (DXT5 (when you need partial transparency) or DXT1) using ImageTool.
 
Maybe Imagetool would work better for me than DXTBMP. Also the sign I am working on has blue letters on white background. Does that contaminate the process?

Thanks
Mike Eppright
 
I don't know dxtbmp that well. What you paint in the alpha channel is I dependent of the normal rgb channels, so there you can use any colour you want.
 
OK, I am using an inverted image (white letters on black background), applying that alpha image to the original image which is 1024 x 256 x 256 and saving as DXT1 then 3 then 5. Still I am not getting the desired effect of dark letters on transparent background. I know there is one tiny tiny detail that is stumping my toe on this one. Help is greatly appreciated. I am seriously trying to develop an image of letters without background. I did it a few years ago regularly. Is it a FSX vs FS9 issue or have I forgotten a GMAX texture detail?
 
To check that the texture is ok you can preview transparency in DXTBmp.

Black may well confuse the colourkey coding in DXT1, so you may end up with black being "black-alpha" depending on what you use to convert it.

Have you set up the FSX materials properly to be trasparent in Gmax. You need to use an FSX material, and use the Set default transparent button to set the Framebuffer Blending ... otherwise every material is opaque by default (regardless of what alpha is contained within the texture)
 
HCORNEA,

Over the tops thanks!!!!!!!!! That did it. My backgrounds are now transparent. I've struggled with this for months. It will re-energize my design work.

Thanks again
 
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