Guess I'm trying Paint.net then, since Gimp won't let me open the files up. If you have anything else to say for me then lemme know, I can already tell this is going to be a pain in the butt. lol

Yeah I have no idea what I'm doing. T.T

I opened up one of the files that I think is it, and I don't see much, they're like, a couple of lines. :/

There's not an easier way to do this huh?

It would be easier in gimp. In paint.net you need a plugin to extract channels, in GIMP I guess you need a plugin to open the file.

Like I said, the editor is thinking the alpha channel is transparency. Its team colors The texture is the entire image, you just need to see only the RGB channels.

Finally found the thread I was looking for all this time, this should tell you how to get Gimp to deal with those pesky alpha channels.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/412235

What's the plugin for paint.net?  Looks easy there compared to some other things.  Alpha channels has been my big prob so far and I hate Gimp (which is ironically the program I started in graphics on waaaay back)..

Yup. Unless you want them to glow or light up or something.

There's not a lot you can do except experiment. Each ship's texture is set up different, and without the converted model files you really can't change where the game looks for the texture at each spot (I.e. the UV map). Fortunately, in the developer.exe, the game will reload textures as you change them, allowing you to quickly change it without needing to exit the game.

If you really can't find something, you can try either a texture of colored blocks or a two way gradient to try and get some idea how the UV map is set up. Here's one I did when I was trouble shooting a minecraft texture pack, from left to right I did a black to white gradient, while from top to bottom I have a blue to red gradient, giving each pixel a unique color. If you have a pixel color tool you can even find the exact RGB values (might be a bit off due to shaders) and get the exact spot.

Well photoshop is certainly the easiest and probably most effective thing to use. If you need something free (like me), I've found paint.net is usually the fastest and simplest thing to use, I use it almost exclusively for UI work, or for just looking at CL textures like in this case. I've only just started using GIMP, however it seems better for more complicated things, like if you need to a lot of texture building, selection work, or for say the DA textures, where you need to modify each channel independent of each other (I have an extract channel plug-in for paint.net that allows you to get just one channel, but its a pain to get the R, G, B, and A channels as separate images/layers and then recombine them, so GIMP wins on that despite the annoying process to get the alpha read correctly).

Also its best to be able to do basic things in both, as having them increases your filter library, which can be a big help.

Automatically, you don't even have to touch the commands. The files must be already located in the mod texture folder when the game starts though, it won't pick up additional files you add until you restart the game.

Well, you're going to be making a mod since you don't want to overwrite the main texture files. Just go to your mod folder, make a new folder, in that folder make a folder called "Textures", and place the texture files in there.

I hope I do all of this right...gonna start messing around with everything...

One last question, since I know it'll affect everything. How do I make it so only my ships have the skins/textures? Where the AI/other players will have the normal texture.

Okies, might do that later...still trying to learn to work with this paint. NET...since its being a pain sometimes. >.>

Anyways the Dev.exe isn't updating the changes I make with the ships. :/

But yeah its enabled and everything...what has to be in the folder again? Just the files I'm going to edit, or is there others that need to be in there?

Yeah my mod folder is in the right place and everything. Is there something I have to activate in-game with the debug menu? (or whatever its called)

Also, what about when saving the file in Pant.NET, do I need to do something before saving?