Altering skin textures

**gummybear00** · October 01, 2007, 06:24 AM

Hi,

I have a problem when trying to alter some skin textures. I have the texture of the hoplite and I'm trying to change the shield so it's different. So I find a good-looking shield and paste it on top of the pre-existing shield. The alpha channel and everything looks fine... and the new shield is slightly smaller than the old shield.

So anyway, when I go into the game. The shield looks crooked (misaligned with black patch on one end) although I aligned it EXACTLY inside the original shield! This new shield is smaller than the old one, which works perfectly to all the edges but a new, and smaller shield, has a black spot??

So that's 1 issue that I'm hoping someone can help me with.

The other issue is when I change the brightness and contrast of the texture. I wanted more color in some of the textures so I turned up the contrast. I only used the RGB channels to do this, and left the Alpha channel untouched. But in the game, the round shield becomes a rectangular shield with black spots on the edges again!! The alpha channel 1 in the texture file has the edges of the shield painted black so it shouldn't appear in the game. But in the game, the alpha channel isn't working or something.

How do I deal with these black spot problems???

**Halie Satanus** · October 01, 2007, 06:32 AM

Put up a screen shot, it's much easier if we can see the problem.

**gummybear00** · October 02, 2007, 06:47 AM

Here I have KLA's immortal skin. I wanted to make their clothing brighter so I increased the contrast for the RGB channels of the texture file. The alpha 1 channel is there to mask part of the shield but in the game, it shows up as black.

The alpha channel itself is black, but it shows up as red for some reason when showed along with the RGB channels.

Also, are changes to texture/model files as well as changing the name of cas and texture files Save Game Compatible? For example if I switch from one model to another (with entirely new file names), would these be compatible with a previous saved game?

**Publius** · October 02, 2007, 12:21 PM

Firstly, do not show mipmaps when you open your texture file (those are the progressively smaller textures you see at right). They will regenerate automatically when you save.

Also make sure that your brush opacity is 100% when you paint in the alpha channel. Also make sure that when you save you are compressing to DXT5 and other appropriate boxes in the save box are checked (see the tutorials section for more details on that).

The alpha channel itself is black, but it shows up as red for some reason when showed along with the RGB channels.

Yup, that's normal.

Also, are changes to texture/model files as well as changing the name of cas and texture files Save Game Compatible? For example if I switch from one model to another (with entirely new file names), would these be compatible with a previous saved game?

They should be, yes. So long as the game is calling on files with the exact same name it shouldn't notice that you've changed the model/texture.

If the texture worked fine before and then you resaved and it didn't work, my best guess is that you saved it incorrectly. Try making sure all of the save settings are correct and see if that works.