Sins Forums
Probably not going to mess with modding much, but I see people in other games decorating their planes/tanks/whatever...Kinda figured I would do the same with this game. 
What tool should I use to decorate my fleet/structures with my images?
Just wanted to be sure because when I did save, it had several options. I'm guessing they were quality options or something, and a couple other things. Yeah, probably because I didn't save it in DTX5, gonna try it again.
I guess the other thing I should point out on Dev, even though its listed as an Enabled Mod, the Enabled Mods Checksum (I think that's what its called) is still at 0. Is it really enabled or is that something else? >.>
Still nothing...T.T
EDIT: Alright how about this, tell me the basic steps I need to do when editing the file and inserting whatever image(s) onto the texture...I think I'm skipping some option or doing something wrong. Like, when I activate the Alpha Mask, it had a window with a few options pop up, and I just left it alone. And everything on the saving options and all that.
Nope--sure wasn't.
There are tutorials up for XSI texturing but it's a whole new ballgame there. Paint.net doesn't have a lot of info on the forums.
Thoumsin was pretty knowledgeable about some of these things but he's not about nowadays.
The screenshot you showed me is exactly what I see after applying the alpha mask. Do you have any other mods installed that work correctly to compare that yours is set up correctly?
EDIT: This page.
http://soase.x90x.net/?i=xsi/Texturing.html
"DXT5 ARGB 8 bpp | interpolated alpha
choose GENERATE MIP MAPS in the mip map generation
See Also: AMDs - The Compressonator for converting DDS files"
I also tried the Generate Mip Map option but it didn't do anything either, gah!
Trust me--if you have never done it before you will have messed something up. Keep plugging away at it and it will gradually come into focus.
I know, its why I'm here so you guys can help me, though I have been messing around the options myself...but like I said no luck. 
I'm pretty sure Geo will help me figure out the problem and I'll be finishing everything up with ease before I know it.
Yup, that looks right.
This is what the Texture folder looks like for a functioning mod. Your path at the top should match exactly except for the mod name.
Guess I'll try that then, the Dev mod folder didn't really have anything else in it...so I just made the Texture folder there...
EDIT: Ok now we're getting somewhere!....Er, kinda...now my ship (started with the Vasari's new capital ship, whatever its called) turned completely orange. 
Okay, I thought that might happen. Basically if you don't have an alpha channel the game treats it as being completely 255 (or white when represented as greyscale). The alpha channel is team color, with the 0-255 alpha value in each pixel indicating how much the team color should be merged with the texture. Since its all 255, its all team color and none of the original texture.
For quick tests, you could just make a new image, paint it totally black, copy it, go to the texture, and use alpha mask again. Check use from clipboard, and the image should go totally transparent (I.e. no team color at all). This should allow you to see your changes.
For the final product, you'll probably need to find the extract channel plugin (that might be part of a package), get the original alpha channel as its own image, copy that and apply it to the finished RGB texture.
...Man this is giving me a headache....lol
Anyways gonna try that out then.
I won't lie, there are times when photoshop really seems worth the money.
Yeah, don't have the money though...well, I do...but I'm saving up for something else.
Anyways trying to play around with this still, I'm getting closer to figuring everything out. I'm able to finally make out the edited image on my ship, but can barely see it. Any way to make it stand out some more. >.>
Well its getting late for me...guess I'll toy with it some more, but I've been trying all sorts of stuff trying to get it work and I either make it orange-like with my image barely visible (or just solid orange for whatever reason, lol) or some weird darker color...T.T
I'm running out of things to try here....no clue what I'm doing wrong. *sighs* :/
Like I said I've tried everything with very little changes in results...no clue what I'm doing wrong, but I always end up making the ships orange or dark. (can't even see my images I edit in the texture)
back in vanilla modding there needed to be one pixel of the alpha that was at full brightness otherwise the engine assumed the alpha was faulty and gave the alpha full brightness, and the bright pixel didnot need to be on the used part of the texture.
hope this helps
harpo
I did send you guys PMs about some questions, but I kinda said "screw this" with paint.net and got a free trial of Photoshop, lol. Also figured out how to make the images of mine stand out more...(turns out I need to edit the "da" files as well) But thanks for helping me get started and get a better understanding of all the files and this alpha thing.
Alright, new problem...I'm almost done with everything too, go figure.
Advent's Starbase, when I save it normally like all the other files...it turns orange...I also noticed that the original doesn't have an Alpha channel...and overwriting the modded file with the original doesn't do anything either.
EDIT: Bleh, never mind...found a way around it, go figure. lol
Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
