Skinning Question (of course)

Hey, I'm Roach. I'm new here, but I've been at other forums, like the Star Alliance, for some time.

If you want to see some examples of my work, head over to the Star Alliance skins section- I'm particularly pleased with the Fresian Tauren and Chieftain, and the Brimstone Jaina. Of course, these are my first skins, so they're nothing too spectacular.

Another skin I did was the Priestess of the Sun, with an orange tiger and generally "hotter" colours on the armour. I also attempted to change the moon on the cloak into a sun, but I ran into a problem. After removing the moon and pasting a sun over the top of it, I was left with just a black moon!

I was simply wondering if there was any way to edit the team colour area- which I understand is called the "Alpha Channel". I'm not interested in deleting it entirely, just editing it. Also, is there any way you can ADD extra to the alpha channel?

team color is related to the model (mdx) itself. To extend it, in "theory" you'll have to change the FilterMode of the differents Material (each Material, IMHO, is related to a Geoset ).
Some FilterMode values are None, Transparent and Blend.
Modifying team color is more related to mdl editing than skinning but if you just want to make existing team color parts differents (shaded for example) then you just have to use alpha channels ;)

Whoops, impaired communication on my part.

I didn't mean that I wanted to edit team colours, but rather, the areas on a unit where the team colours appear- and don't appear.

Anyway, soon after I posted this, I had a hunch, and acted on it. I'd like to answer my own question if I can.

I've heard many people say that after editing alpha channels, they ended up with really messed up models. Well, this is what I did to cover up an alpha channel with my little sun logo.

1st problem- removing the moon already there. Before, I just ended up with a black moon. What I did this time was, I "magic wanded" the moon already on the model. Then I went into alpha channel, and colour selected the black area- the area which gets replaced by a team colour- and filled the moon in. This created a solid team colour on the Priestess of the Sun's cape, with no golden moon!

2nd problem- inserting the sun logo. I pasted the logo into the skin, and adjusted it to fit. Then I selected the sun, and went to the alpha channel, without deselecting. I just filled with white, leaving a sun-shaped gap in the team colour. It worked perfectly.

Question: what were people trying to do to the Alpha channel when they ended up with messed up skins?

Black is either totally transparent if FilterMode is set to Transparent or team color if it is set to Blend for exemple.
White means solid (non transparent). You may use different grey tones to set shading on "team colored" part of the model.
IMHO, the main issue with alpha channel - messed up skin is due to the fact that team color is mdx info.
For your moon, set the moon's alpha channel to white instead of black. If I'm right, this should work ;)