Weapon-less Skinning

I was just looking a few skins in the files section. I noticed that some people were able to the skin away the weapons. I'm just wondering how. I use the erase button and I come out with the white plain model color. Was model editing involved or is it possible with adobe photoshop?

Yes, it's possible with photoshop. You just alpha out the region of the skin coresponding to the weapon. To alpha out, first get the targa plugin for photoshop (from the adobe site). Then open teh skin, and edit the alpha channel of the skin so the parts that you want removed are black. There ya go.

Though the nasty thing with this technique is that if you alpha out a heroe's weapon, the glow will still be there and so you'll end up with a glow with the shape of the weapon floating around.

Is the weapon the only part that goes invisible? One thing, I'm trying to edit the shaman, and I want to remove the flapping part of his coat and also the chain part and skin on some chain looking armor. Would that be possible w/o modeling or can only the weapon be erased?

Through this technique you can make any part of the model invisible, except team color.

The alpha channel can be used either to make invisible some parts, or to make them use the team color. It depends by the geoset (part of a model) you are skinning.

if you have wc3v, its easier because you can just remove that specific geoset...

sometimes.

Ya, after some experimenting. I think that some parts cannot be removed by alphaing it out, and that it will only make team color.

Except, sometimes I can make everything invisible, other times, I can't make anything invisible at times. Whenever I change the viewer to a stance, everything shows.

Could someone explain the process of using alpha? I can't understand the one in the tutorial. Doesn't seem specific enough.

Just pointing out the steps from the tutorial for Photoshop 7.
1) I have that plug-in, I'm not sure if its working though.
2) I go to the layer thing and choose the channel, this works.
3) Sometimes theres an alpha 1 there, but only does team coloring. Otherwise, am I suppose to make a new one and do the editing with that? Because some parts would get edited out (Mesh 2 in the Shaman is the only one disappearing), while others (the KotG), the First mesh thing disappears. I have no idea how to edit around parts to disappear.
4) How do you save it? Do you just do a normal save or what?

It's said that this can be used to make things invisible, but I can't even make the claw on the shaman disappear. I'm getting a headache from this. :(

By wc3v, do you mean Warcraft 3 viewer? How do you remove Geosets with it?

to remove geosets from wc3v you just uncheck one of the boxes... play around. youll get it.

it just turns the visibility off. not exactly removes it.

This because each geoset has his own material. And there is a material that ignore the alpha channel too, so that might be the reason why you can't alpha out some areas. You can change easly the materials in notepad btw. It's not difficult at all, but then you'll have to import a custom model to your map...

I'm assuming there is...BUT, is there a tutorial out there about changing it? I know how to import models, and I think I know how to import this certain skin.

And thank you everyone, so much.