Ryzom

Just remove the alpha channel and you'll be able to see what you want :)

The alpha is used for specular.

Katriell,

It makes a little more sense if you open the corresponding armor model and investigate there:

1. Open W:\database\stuff\generique\agents\actors\male\GE_HOM_armor04.max
2. Open the Material Editor
3. Use the eyedropper (Pick Material From Object) to select the material.
4. You'll see that the material is a multi suboject type. One of them (Material #28 in this instance) is named cuissearr - click on that.
5. Now you are in the material editor, expand NeL Textures.
6. Listed here will be a diffuse map and a specular map. The diffuse map is GE_HOM_armor04_cuisse-arr.png - click on it to go to the bitmap definition.
7. Notice that premultiplied is checked and that the alpha source is None and not Image Alpha.

The engine uses the alpha for things like specular highlights. So when modelling you should ignore the alpha.

Thanks,
sfb
/s

kervala wrote:

Just remove the alpha channel and you'll be able to see what you want :)

The alpha is used for specular.

What he said.

It seems I'm failing to clearly communicate what I'm trying to do and what the problem is.

Disabling the alpha channel is precisely what I want to do, because while it's visible I can't edit the texture (because I can't see the pixels I would be editing). The problem is: I don't see how to disable the alpha channel.

This is what's going on in my mind:
http://imageshack.us/a/img856/3736/36272694.jpg
The screenshot on the left is of a Skyrim texture's channels list (just for example). The screenshot on the right is of the channels list of the texture from the Ryzom asset repository.

I tried Googling "how to remove alpha from png" but could not find any relevant information.

That's easy, you "decompose" RGBA channels so you'll get a layer for each component, next you recompose with RGB channels letting the A channel on another layer. Hide the A channel layer. Modify your RGB texture, then recompose with A channel.

kervala wrote:

That's easy, you "decompose" RGBA channels so you'll get a layer for each component, next you recompose with RGB channels letting the A channel on another layer. Hide the A channel layer. Modify your RGB texture, then recompose with A channel.

Unfortunately I don't think that's something you can do in Photoshop. These images were created in Photoshop 5, back when Photoshop still supported indexed PNG 8s. I see Katriell's problem. Kervala's suggestion works in GIMP, FWIW.

Edit: Apparently Adobe Fireworks handles this fine as this is still common practice for web developers:

http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/5888/why-cant-photoshop-properly-open-this-png

With further Googling I came to the same conclusion as sfb. Installing GIMP and hoping that if I use that to save the file as a TARGA Photoshop will understand the TARGA correctly. If that fails I'll try to rekindle my GIMP skills.

Thank you for the answers in any case. :) Thank you sfb especially, for the extra information in your last post--very interesting.

Sorry, I'm a GIMP user so I thought Photoshop has a "decompose" and "compose" options :(

Textures were in PSD for the artists and only exported to TGA whenever they needed to. Issues importing back from TGA or the PNG converted version are a Photoshop specific problem, and you should complain at Adobe. You can write software easily to decompose the files into seperate files for the rgb and alpha channels though.