posted 09-29- 12:26 AM               

Hi guys i'm trying to give a texture some transparent parts with the alpha channel in paint shop pro 6 i know i can do it but i'm just not sure how.

Then I want to use that in max to have transparency in max.

Can anyone explain how to do this>? I'm not worried about getting that working in OPS and SDOE just yet. I first need to do it in max.

Thanks alot.

posted 09-29- 05:31 PM               

hmm, well someone out there has to use psp.

I think i got the psp part figured out but I still need more info on max.

Can someone point out a file i would have in SDOE that has an alpha channel so i can check it out.

posted 09-29- 05:39 PM               

Again, Thanks Dan, this was a massive help to me

(from Dan)
Fellas, teaching someone to texture in max is like pulling teeth...right JT? lol
first thing you want to do is get your tif files straight. take your model (aircraft or whatever) and break apart the pieces. then you want to align them in such a way that you can see each piece from the same view. what i mean by this you want a good side view of the fuselage, an top view of the fuselage, a top view of the wings and the tail section. then you can take a rendering of these parts and save it as a file. this allows you to make a proportional template for you skins. its a long process that cannot be described here. point is, make your template first.

when you get ready to texture make sure you can easily find your template. i ussually put them in the textures folder for the aircraft im working on.

you want to select the object to texture. then go into subobject mode and select face. then click on ignore back faces and show normals. lets say are texturing your wing. simply select each face for the top of the wing. you must hold down ctrl key while you do this. and it helps to be in wireframe mode. when you get all the faces selected for the top of the wing, click the material editor button. (this is max 2.5) then after i opens click on the first round ball. then click on the button under it (forgot the shape of it, but it says apply material or something like that - i beleive its a cube). go back and make sure go out of wireframe mode..so you can see the faces and colors of the wing..it should turn the color of the ball.

after that click on the button by diffuse. then under that a little ways you should see a load bitmap button..it should be empty. click it. at the dialoge click on bitmap. then navigate to your template and press ok. then look under the balls in the top (lol) and click on the checkerboard.

close this dialoge. then, at the modify tab, click on uvw map. if everthing is ok, you should the texture appear on the wing. it may be distorted, but thats ok. on the modify tab, go down and set the w value to 0 and click on bitmap fit or something. it should open up another dialoge and you should see your template file listed. click on it. what this does is resize the orange box around the wing to a 256 x 256 proportional square. then you click on the subobject button (should say gizmo). you use the xyz buttons to get the texture mapped to to the correct plane. the orange/yellow ( i forget) box will let you know which direction it needs to go. then you can just use your stretch, move and rotate tools to get the texture to fit right.

after this is done you click on the pizza boxes by the uvw map (in the subobject box on the right) when it opens select collapse all. a warning will come up. ignore it and select ok. your wing should now be tmapped.