Square effect's textures/ sprites?

[Jangalomph]

Hello, I Am making new explosion textures, and what not. I got a spark texture that works fairly well. But any ways..

Textures are square, and look like horrible. absolute shit.. in game..
So.. here are examples. I got the "general idea" but.. i'm not exactly sure how to make them.. work.







Help?

[Zipfinator]

I've had this happen before. I think it's just your alpha map isn't made right so there is still some color on the parts that should be completely invisible on some of them. the ones not like that you just have your sparks on the edge of the texture which means it's going to be cut off in those ugly straight lines. If that's not the problem, then I don't know how to fix it :/

[Jangalomph]

I've had this happen before. I think it's just your alpha map isn't made right so there is still some color on the parts that should be completely invisible on some of them. the ones not like that you just have your sparks on the edge of the texture which means it's going to be cut off in those ugly straight lines. If that's not the problem, then I don't know how to fix it :/

Alllll rightty.. So, how exactly do i make an alpha map. =/
I checked eight bit alpha format. So.. i guess that's right, I found some ones custom fire_cloud1.vtf file, and looked at what they did, found my picture, cropped it.. and then did the same setting's they did. Should be Volumetric, environmental, or animated though?

[Zipfinator]

I've never made a sprite in game before, but it looks like you messed up your alpha map from those pictures. Did you use the "Transparent" background in your picture instead of making a new alpha channel? I don't think that works in Source.

[Jangalomph]

Nope, I simply just got an explosion off of google images, cropped it to a nice fire ball look, then painted the rest black, and then just imported to VTF Edit. I'm fixing to try something.. but like i said, Animated, volumetric, or environmental?

[Zipfinator]

I don't know about the Animated/Volumetric/Environmental stuff, I've never put a sprite in game before. But you didn't make an alpha channel in your image editor, you just painted the background black? If you did that that's probably the problem.

[Jangalomph]

I don't know about the Animated/Volumetric/Environmental stuff, I've never put a sprite in game before. But you didn't make an alpha channel in your image editor, you just painted the background black? If you did that that's probably the problem.

So what should i do?

[Zipfinator]

Here's a link to a tutorial

http://www.interlopers.net/tutorials/2132

You can skip down until he's done making the metal texture.

You just want to select the part you want to be seen with whatever selection tool you want, go to the Channels tab, select new channel (Alpha Channel should automatically pop up), and then fill in the selection with white. The part that will show in game is white and the transparent part is black. Once you're done with your alpha map just select the RBG color channels and unselect the Alpha Channel. Then save as TGA and convert to .vtf. The part on what to put in the .vmt is in that tutorial I linked.

[Jangalomph]

Here's a link to a tutorial

http://www.interlopers.net/tutorials/2132

You can skip down until he's done making the metal texture.

You just want to select the part you want to be seen with whatever selection tool you want, go to the Channels tab, select new channel (Alpha Channel should automatically pop up), and then fill in the selection with white. The part that will show in game is white and the transparent part is black. Once you're done with your alpha map just select the RBG color channels and unselect the Alpha Channel. Then save as TGA and convert to .vtf. The part on what to put in the .vmt is in that tutorial I linked.

Alright. Thank's i will play around in gimp and vtf edit, and hopefully come up with something.

[dissonance]

On a sidenote, if this is happening to all sprites, not just ones you made, your graphics card is dying.

[CorporalAris]

Or his graphics card doesn't support the shader model he's using. But it should be that they are made incorrectly. They look hella nice, regardless.

[dissonance]

Yeah, the first screenshot actually looks good. It has some odd stylization that I can't quite pinpoint, but if someone can figure out what that theme is, fucking run with it: it will look amazing.

[Jangalomph]

Or his graphics card doesn't support the shader model he's using. But it should be that they are made incorrectly. They look hella nice, regardless.

I have a Radeon HD 3600 Graphics card.. so it is top quality, and it only happens to ones i made. Now.. i Fixed the problem some what, and drew squiggly black paint around the sides.
Still look's a tad like shit, but i've noticed the quality from the original image totally died, and looks like a complete fuzzed out shit ball.




As for that fire, it is A real smoke texture i got off google from an atomic bomb, with some kick ass looking smoke. That's why it looks good. But i also fixed that some what too..

So, in an almost conclusion, how do i keep the quality of the image from VTF edit, to ingame? here is what it looks like before ingame.

[vcool]

Use a soft brush. GIMP has a brush editor as well, but you should be fine with the preset brushes. It's the one with the fuzzy edges.

Alright, I just realised that's a JPEG. JPEGs don't store transparency so I hope to god you used a TGA or a PNG in game and this JPEG is just to show us.

Actually, looking at the tut Zips gave you, I think it's fairly useless. A quick tut on doing this from your neighbourhood vcool. I am gonna use this reference (since I couldn't find yours ). Here goes:

This is my set up. Notice I am using a 512 512 texture.



I did some clone stamping to get rid of the annoying iStockpoto logo. Looks worse than before but I am a fairly crappy texture artist. I know the process but I can't actualy make good textures...

Now select the layer in the layer menu (Ctrl + L by default), right click/Add Layer Mask And simply click Add. It will add a white mask by default.



What layer masks do in layman terms is it gives them a transparency. In a sense it is similar to taking a sheet of copper (our primary colour layer), placing a aluminium sheet on top (the layer mask) and shooting bullets through. When you take off the aluminium sheet you'll see "transparency" where you shot the bullets at. (I know this is a horrible simile, you wouldn't need a layer mask to shoot through metal sheets.) The way you shoot them bullets in GIMP is you paint with black brushes with the layer mask enabled. The white areas of the mask are your colour, the black areas are the see through parts. So go ahead, select the fuzzy brush and paint with the black colour using the regular brush.


(note that in the Layers menu I don't have the right image selected. That was done by mistake so you really should be seeing something like in the next shot except that the small image beside our small colour image in the Layers Menu is fully white.)

Now paint that layer mask bitch over. You should end up looking at something like this:



Now right click on the layer again, and select Apply Layer mask. Save as TGA or you could also use PNG if you are using VTFEdit. I usually uncheck RLE compression when saving with TGA but some people leave it compressed. I dunno, uncompressed always works for me. Ignore the warning that may come up with TGA saving, simply fight through and keep on clicking OK.

Now you should try making it a sprite. Note that I don't know how to make them, never made spr files before.

Disclaimer: in the case that you did everything what I said here, then forgive me. I'll shut up now.

[Jangalomph]

That REALLY WORKED! Vcool, you are my new best friend, and awesome tut man! Thank's for taking the time to do it! And here are some wip/ almost final pictures, and Some of that new smoke my peeps !






And a new re-skin!



Once again, THANK YOU!