How should I set the Photoshop to create .tga textures?
 

Hi all,

I'm totally noob on Photoshop and just followed what it has been stated by others.

So, I've set the color mode to RGB color (8-bit) with transparent background and the size was 64x64.

However, when I apply this on a frame, it also draws all the empty spots with white color.
(Please refer to the attachment!)

Am I missing any point?

Also, if possible, could anyone please help (or teach/guide) me with making a metallic border like the attachment?

I've been through tutorials on google, but could've not found a one that is close to this :(

When it comes to PS and TGAs, you have to create alpha masks manually. There's multiple how-tos on YT.

But if your texture is quite tricky, e.g., it has half-transparent areas that are a mix of white-grey-black colours, the most PITA-less solution is to save your image as a PNG file and then convert it to TGA later.

I still dunno why Adobe devs haven't opted for auto-alpha-masking.

Majority of my art files I create I save as png and then use BLP2PNG to convert it to blp.

You drag your file directly onto the exe/program and as long as it meets the proper graphical dimensions it will convert it.

Hi lightspark and Tim,

Thanks for the tip!

Will give it a shot and see how I go with it :banana:

-- EDIT #1

Sweet! Worked like a charm :D

I still don't get the huge differences between PNG, BLP and TGA in WoW :confused:

Would there be any noticeable differences?

Not any visible difference, yet WoW only supports .blp (Blizzard's propriety format) and .tga graphic files. .png is just an intermediate step useful for people designing graphics.

Personally, I always use .tga because of Windows' file structure. While there are extensions to preview .blp in Windows, .tga and .png are displayed by default. This allows me to skip the whole .png step and GIMP/PS don't support .blp so there's that too.

There's plugins for PS to add BLP support, however, there's an issue w/ artefacts >_>

Since when? o_O win10 CU doesn't have TGA preview feature, nor it can open TGA files in any of its default apps.

PNG is lossless, but isn't supported by the client, BLPs (lossless?) may suffer from artefacts in certain scenarios, TGA is lossless.

Oh god.......................................

Creating and applying an art is way more complicated than writing a code with complex logic or algorithm :(

I've been playing around with backdrop for ages and still don't get how I should use it to make my textures (especially border, edge) work properly with it :confused:

With Gimp you can create an image, set the background to transparent (advanced options when creating).

When you save (export) as .tga , use the defaults (compression etc.)

It's pretty painless.

I use Xara, Gimp, even Aialis Icon Workshop mostly for creating images, save as .png and convert to .blp using blpingconverter.

I am no artist.

ps. Paint can save as .png :)

I'm not sure if this is because I'm, at least, more used to Photoshop, but I personally find Gimp more complex :confused:

I know Gimp is a great tool tho...

I was saying use what works and experiment with packages. These I did in about two minutes with Icon Workshop, saved as .png and converted to .blp with BlpingConverter and .tga with Gimp using the default settings.

Feel free to use if they suit the purpose.

Attachment 8995

Just for the lulz, I decided to sloppily recreate your texture just by using a rounded rectangle and blending options.



Basically, it consists of these things:

1. Bevel & Emboss: smooth inner bevel with 1% depth, no size or soften, highlight opacity at 75% and shadows at 35%
2. Stroke: 1 px dark gray on the outside
3. Satin: 25% opacity with 11 px distance and 16 px size, AA'd and inverted linear contour
4. Gradient overlay: reflected style, 100% opacity, gradient spans from white to medium dark gray, at a 130-140 degree angle
5. Drop shadow: 40% opacity, 3 px distance, 0% spread, 5 px size

I'm uploading the PSD so you can download the file and check out how the blending options on the layer come together to create the final piece.

Oops, my error. I honestly thought the built-in Paint/Paint 3D or Photos did open TGA files. I must have been thinking of when I had GIMP installed.

Sorry for any confusion!

Thank you so, so, so and so much to everyone for replies, especially to Fizzlemizz and MunkDev for providing me examples!

This will be a huge stepping stone for me to improve my art skills :banana:

So, for last two days, I've been playing around with GIMP and tried to re-produce MunkDev's fancy example with it + its Script-Fu plugin, 'Layer Effects', which I was unsuccessful.

'Layer Effects' seems to have most of blending options that Photoshop owns.

However, apart from Stroke, Satin and (probably) Shadow, I wasn't able to recreate Bevel & Emboss and Gradient Overlay effects :(

Any ideas, please?

Thank you!


-- EDIT #1

The reason that I have moved to GIMP is because of the alpha masking that lightspark has mentioned.

You could manually apply an alpha channel to it, but it wasn't that accurate when the texture is a combined with lots of white, black, gray and shadows.

I could just save it as PNG and convert it into TGA or BLP (as lightspark said), but I don't know :p