I still need help with alpha channels.

I read the instructions in this post:

http://www.wc3campaigns.com/forums/s...threadid=18757



I still need more help though. Basically, I'm wanting to know how to alpha out parts of a skin. I've seen skins, specifically of the HeroPalidan, where his book was alphaed out. However, when I pull up this skin in Photoshop 7.0 (with that targa plug-in added) and select channels>alpha1 all I see is the portions of his cape in black and everything else is white. It's to my understanding that anything you color "black" while in Alpha1 will make that portion of the skin transparent in the game. This can't be what I'm looking at. His cape is black in the Alpha channel, but his cape shows in the game.

Basically I know how to copy the skin, save it as a .tga, pull it up in Photoshop, and get to the alpha channel with it. But what in the hell do you do from there to alpha out various portions of the skin. Could someone please give me and in-depth answer because there's obviously a step missing.

Welll...
What is black in the TGA is transparent in-game IF there is not an team color planted in that location on the model.

So, the team colors are on the model, not on the skin.
If you make a skin transparent at the location of a team color the team color will show instead of the skin.

So, you can ONLY alpha out areas where no team colors excist.

Ok, that's a good start. You can't alpha out things were team color exist. Good. I did not know this. That helps me.

However, that doesn't answer my original question. How are they alpha'ing out the Paladin's book? That book doesn't even show on the alpha channel. Like I said, the only thing shows is the black area where the cape is and the rest of the channel is solid white.

Perhaps it would be easier if you were to give me an example. I could learn from that. Tell me how you would alpha out the book that the Palidan is carrying. Maybe from looking at that example I'll be able to figure out what I'm missing.

Sorry, no idea, when i load alpha channels and go to quick mask mode (photoshop) i just get the alpha channels painted red on the picture (red - black in my photoshop) and the rest of the TGA stays fully unmodified...

Unless the paladin is arthas, you cant alpha out his book. The reason is the skin for the pages of the book come from the back of the foot or something. For arthas, you just make the book cover and pages black in the alpha channel (it's best to lasso them first)

But Yoda on your skins page I saw where you made some Paladin cahracter from MTG that was based off the Paladin and wasn't carrying a book ???????

Was that just a completely edited model and not just a skin?


Also, could someone please just give me a run through example of how to alpha out that book so that I can apply that same concept to other things that I'd like to alpha out in the future?

They are all carrying books...