ANOTHER texmod question!

Hey again ^^, I'm making myself a 'perfect' personal mod for texmod by merging all kinds of mods that i rlly like myself. I was able to merge all my self-made mods and the wiki mods i wanted. No problems with that. But i noticed that my tormented shield icon wasn't blue, so thought i'd figure out how to do so myself, but this proved to be harder than expected.

The problem is that the edited file always seems to be wrong at some point. The original purple logging .bmp file has a black background, which will not be shown in gw.

I tried to change the purple color into a blue color, without even touching the background! Yet somehow the black background will be shown in-game...can anyone give me a hand with this please?

a strange remark: this does not happen with a black blind fold icon..which also has a black background.

thx in advance! Ollii

I think the issue is you're using BMP format. Thus a flat image. The textures in the game use a DDS format (giving an ALPHA layer). Try logging the image as DDS and working with it that way.

ok ty, I'll give a respond asap if it worked !
late response, but, yeah, it worked this time ;D thanks!

Yep, that's it. ALWAYS work in .dds for texmod. Otherwise you get results like this.

Alright, I'm adding onto this, if you don;t mind. When I extract armors in DDS format, they are almost completely transparent. I can't see what I'm working with, making them a pain to edit. How can I get around this? Thanks!

I'd say use search, but I'm sure the thread is pretty buried, so I'll get into it again:

First, understand how the alpha channel works in a normal image. In simpler image file types, such as .bmp, each pixel is represented by 3 numbers representing "how red," "how green," and "how blue" that pixel should be. In more advanced image types, like .png and .dds, there's a fourth value for each pixel that represents "how transparent" the pixel should be. This guy is named the alpha value. Decent image editing software, such as photoshop or GIMP has tools for editing the alpha channel in an image. Consult your program's instructions to learn how to use them.

Unfortunately, it gets even more complicated than that. GW has its own non-standard interpretations for the alpha channel. And to make matters worse, they are not consistent from object to object. For some objects, GW uses the standard alpha=transparency. For some other objects, they are always 100% opaque, and the alpha instead controls how shiny or dull they appear. (0 is dull to the point of being black, 255 is shiny to the point of being white.) And then there are some objects where the alpha controls both the transparency and the shininess. (How? Not quite sure. My conjecture is that the four high bits, multiplied by 16, control the transparency and the four low bits, multiplied by 16, control the shininess (or vice versa), but I haven't really tested that theory out.)

As a practical matter, if all you're doing is making minor changes to a texture. The easiest solution by far is to save out the alpha layer, edit the image as you like, then reapply the old alpha layer. Unless of course you want to change the transparency and/or shininess of things, in which case you actually have to learn what you're doing.

Hmm, gotcha. I've looked into Alpha layer stuff on GIMP's help files, but came up with squat. However, I did figure out my own convoluted way of doing it, haha.

# Capture the texture you want as a .dss, and save to your folder of choice.
# Capture the texture AGAIN, this time as a .bmp to another location.
# Open the .BMP in Microsoft Paint to remove the Alpha layer, then edit this file using whatever editing software you prefer.
# With the edited file open, select the entire image (control + A) and copy it (control + c)
# Open the .dds with GIMP
# Select the background layer in the layers palette. Above it, there will be a small checkbox that locks the Alpha layer. Make sure this is selected
# Select the brush tool, then in the brushes palette below, click the image of your texture. GIMP allows you to use images on the clipboard as a brush
# Carefully align the dotted outline of the brush over the image, and click once. If you see some of the semi- transparent pieces shift, then undo and try again
# Save the file, and package your Texmod

Clumsy, but it works for armors and things.

That's really not a good method...
Look at the manual for the Layer->Mask and Layer->Transparency menus.