Images with alpha-channel

abstract: The tutorial describes how you can enable image processing with alpha-channels in blender. In addition to that, we also show, how you can apply your own alpha-mask to your sculpt-map for protection and for labeling your work. Note that the first part of the tutorial also applies to the Domino Design scripts, while the secnd part refers to the JASS-distribution only.

High quality download: ImagesWithAlphaChannel.wmv

Transcription

Creating images with an alpha channel in blender is simple. But you need to enable alpha-processing beforehand. So lets modify the default settings and first clean-up.

Now navigate to the scene-buttons window and there locate the format-tab. You will probably see that format has been preset to RGB. But for processing images with alpha we need to Switch to RGBA. Lets go back to the edit-button window and save our settings as default settings.

Now let us see how we can create a sculptie with our own alpha-mask. Here i create a default sculptie sphere for demonstration-purposes. After some sculpting i will finally switch to object-mode.

In the UV-editor i open my favorite alpha-mask. This is a grey-scale image, where everything colored in black will end up fully transparent and everything colored in white will end up fully opaque. Grey-scale parts will end up half-opaque.

Still in object mode i open render -> bake second life sculpties. Here i ensure that map protection is enabled and “image” is selected as protection-map type. After clicking on the OK-button your sculptie will be generated with alpha.

Switch to edit-mode so that you actually can see your sculptie-map. If you can not see the alpha-transparency now you need to click on the button “draw image with alpha” at the right side of the UV-editor’s button-area.

Now you are ready to save your sculptie-map. Although you can use TGA as image format, i will show you here how to switch to PNG-format instead which is also supported by Second-Life. You just need to open the format-selector box and select, PNG. At the end just click on the save-image-button and you are done.

You always can check if your sculptie-map has been created as expected by loading the image to your image-editor.

This was my tutorial about images with alpha-channel. If this video was helpfull for you please consider to give me a small donation. (Gaia Clary in Second Life)

Have a nice day!

Gaiae JASS-dist

Joe Pritchard

March 2nd, 2010 at 12:52 pm · Reply

Hi Gaiai firstly many thank for a great set of video tutorials ,they’ve opened a whole new exciting world up,now to my problems lol,i cannot link to the blip tv video’s the links are broken …secndly i am using your latest version with primstar,the problem i have is i create a sculpty …then texture it.. when i save the targa file it makes any transparent parts white even when ive clicked the draw with alpha,so i loaded the finished texture into corel paint shop pro erased the white parts so they were transparent then saved it as a .png file ,when loaded into sl it makes the whole side im facing transparent ,almost as if it inside out ,i tried the inside out button of the sculpty map makes no difference.i load the original .tga texture and its fine except what should be transparent is white.hopefully you can help …once again many thanks to you and to Domino for giving everyone an easy way to create sculpty’s.I can send you a snapshot of the two sculpty’s side by side if you wish so you can see the problem.best wishes Joe

Shaden Sura

July 31st, 2009 at 3:50 am · Reply

Why your menu for pick a sculpt mesh look different?

Gaia

July 31st, 2009 at 6:52 am · Reply

We have created a derivative of the domino scripts named JASS. This includes an improved GUI. I have been working with Domino to also incorporate the new GUI (and even a better version) also into the Domino scripts. That will become available with Domino’s upcoming “primstar” distribution.

ana

June 28th, 2009 at 1:40 pm · Reply

hello, just a question about the version of Blender. I am on version 2.49 and the buttons and rendering items you are selecting are not working for me. When I hit bake second life sculptie, i get the simple box with fill holes etc. just the 3 choices. Where do i change the settings to allow the other options or is it just a simpler process in the updated version? Loved your tutorial and your descriptions were wonderful, just wish it worked for this version as easily as it did on the earlier version. any help would be appreciated!

Gaia

June 28th, 2009 at 9:05 pm · Reply

Please look at the very first chapter of this post. There i wrote, that the secnd part of the tutorial only applies to the JASS-scripts. This feature is not yet available in the original Domino Design scripts, hence you can not find it there. If you are interested in using it, please download the JASS-distribution.

Have Fun
Gaia

1 Question

June 5th, 2009 at 1:44 am · Reply

Broken link:

http://blip.tv/file/get/Machinimatrix-ImagesWithAlphachannel810.wmv?referrer=blip.tv&source=1 (Not Found)

Gaia

June 5th, 2009 at 8:15 am · Reply

I fixed that again.
Background: We have recreated the video this night with a better understandable voice
unfortunately blip.tv removes the old video as soon as the new video has been imported.
And so the link to the high resolution version gets invalidated. The link to the
flash version however remains constant… I will report that to blip.tv Maybe they
can do something here…