transparency issues

[wiked Anton]

what am i doing wrong? i have tried to make a texture with a transparent background, but everything i try doesnt seem to work. including saving as bmp,tga,tiff. all come out with a white background. i am using photoshop btw, and i start off with a transparent b/g, but when i upload it, the background is white. is it sl? is the a particular file that sl accepts for transparent b/g's? lil help?

[jackiedepakie Jansma]

Hi Anton,

from the files you mentioned only .TGA does support transparency, but only after you made a clipping mask in your alpha channel.

Maybey you should try .PNG , it converts an alpha channel automaticly and is easier to work with.

greetz,

Jackie.

[Suella Ember]

Yep, as Jackie says, I would recommend you save as .png. Simply save the file as a .png and upload it to SL and the background should be transparent. It's a lot easier to work with .png than playing around with alpha channels.

ETA: You know what. I should probably just ignore this but having just payed proper attention to Jackie's name I'm a little gobsmacked! I think you need to consider whether that is a suitable name Jackie before you get AR'd for it!

2nd ETA: And apolgies for further derailment but I felt I ought to add this having just checked something. It appears that Jackie may be Dutch and that 'depakie'  may be a legitimate Dutch name, so I apologise for making assumptions. It really doesn't translate too well though!

[Jennifur Vultee]

Tutorial for alpha channels.  If you don't do this most later versions of Photoshop fill in the background with white for .TGA files.

http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/SL-Tuts/SLPages/EasyAlphas.html

 

You'll also want the Free Plugins from Flaming Pear that she uses in the tutorial, specifically you'll want the Solidify filter.

http://www.flamingpear.com/download.html

[wiked Anton]

thanks to the big three who answered this. i did the png and and worked nicely and very easy. alpha channels? for goodness sake, i dont spend my life behind a computer and dont even know what that is. i never saved p[ng before because i never got the far down my list before getting frustrated. i saw one tut that told me i could save in bitmap and that bitmap had the option of making white backgrounds transparent, but i couldnt make that work either, but PNG is sure the way to got......once again, a big thanks for this has been bugging me for weeks

[wiked Anton]

hehehe...nice save on the name thing .BTw, but doesnt ETA mean estimated time of arrival?

[Suella Ember]

wiked Anton wrote:

hehehe...nice save on the name thing .BTw, but doesnt ETA mean estimated time of arrival?

ETA = Edited To Add :-)

But it highlights very nicely the problem of cultural differences in the use of language and words when it comes to something global like SL, which is why I fell into the trap of making a rash assumption about Jackie's name!

Anyway - glad you can now save transparencies as .png and have fun creating! :-)