How to: Alpha Texturing?

How do i use this? because when i try it in Max it works.. but in NL it just gets the difuse color...

please help

i dont think NL was designed to or has the power to do that
i also tried that a while back but to no avail

maybe try the magic pink method--usually less powerful things support that better

pm me if you dont know what that is...

Its not part of the rendering engine in NL.

Originally posted by DJ tommy

How do i use this? because when i try it in Max it works.. but in NL it just gets the difuse color...

please help

yea theres a buncha stuff NL can't do in regards to 3ds and their properties...*sigh*...

Its actually quite easy...My original TTD and the TTD2003 both feature it.

This is for Photoshop but I know it can be donw with Paint Shop Pro as well.

If its say, a fence, highlight all the area around the fence. Make sure you have a layer beneath that layer because when you delete all of this you want it so show through with transparency.


Delete everything but what you want to show.


Now, Invert the selection so you have your railing/fence selected. In the Layer panel on the side, click the Channels path.

Inside will be a R, G and B channel representing the 3 color channels required to make the picture. Click the little icon that looks like a new paper called "Create New Channel" and it will create a black and white Alpha channel. With your selection still on the screen, go to Edit > Fill and choose WHITE in the drop down menu.

What you should have is a white outline of your object.



Now save it as a Targa file with 32bit and you are all set.


Get into Max. Import the texture as a Bitmap. Apply to your polygon. Then make sure to apply a UVW Map Modifier (as you probably already do) and then save it!

Bring it into NL and voila! Alpha texturing. This is very, very handy for things like hand rails, fences, etc. Anything thats repeatable (or not) and would require alot of polygons but can be gotten away with by using a simple 2D plane (thats only 2 polygons) and looks like many more.

In photoshop, when you create a new document, select transparent.
There you have it, 90% there. Now draw a little squiggle leaving some transparent background showing. Save this as a .png or .tga.
Open your 3D program and apply the texture you#ve just created to a flat object. Save it as 3DS, import into NL and whoop whoop, you've just made a basic alpha channel texture!

and I've just noticed Real's reply lol

Im such a laymans kinda person LOL

^I found that you HAVE to have the Alpha Channel made. I was just doing this a week ago and I hadnt done it for awhile. I used that method you described and it would not work. I kept getting the white outline.

When I actually made the Alpha Channel it then worked.

I went back and looked at all my past stuff and this is what I did as well using the Alpha Channel in the Channel box.

Gosh, there is an option in Photoshop to get rid of that white line but I cant remember what it was called. The best thing I discovered is to create an image with the background colour set to black, I have no horrid white lines around my alpha's that way.

What I do is use png's; I just use the magic wand to delete unecesary area, and as for the alpha channel, I use the background eraser, or when I create the image, set it to translucent. I do get the issue of white outlines though, but even worse, anim8or neither supports tga nor png formats, only gif for translucency, and I don't know any free easy to use programs that can help me with that. One thing I can try is to use bi-turn to convert it to an ASE format, and since it's plain text, I can edit the texture reference, then convert it back to 3ds, but I'm not sure how well that would work, nor if bi-turn supports the png format.