VTF plug-in alpha channel

[Phraggah]

I just upgraded to CS6 and installed Nem's VTF plugin. The plugin is working fine so far, but every time I save my texture, it exports my alpha channel as all white.

I am using a VTF template with an alpha channel (Uncompressed with Alpha) but no matter what I do it always saves my alpha channel as all white.

Anyone have any guesses?


Addendum: Wasn't there a vmt shader property that let you use a bitmap as an alpha channel for yonks long past? Something like $alphamask or something.

Thanks in advance!

[Habboi]

I use CS5 and this has always happened to me. In order to bypass it I re-open the VTF itself into PS and then paste the alpha in and hit CTRL-S and enter.

It seems whenever I save a PSD as a VTF it doesn't work. It's not so bad so maybe try that?

[Gambini]

What if you do your texture then delete the background layer and save it as DTX5 (or any other format with alpha)? That does work for me. The transparency of all visible layers is what determines the alpha channel.

[Phraggah]

I use CS5 and this has always happened to me. In order to bypass it I re-open the VTF itself into PS and then paste the alpha in and hit CTRL-S and enter.

It seems whenever I save a PSD as a VTF it doesn't work. It's not so bad so maybe try that?

This seems to work sometimes, but not all the time.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on? D:

[Gambini]

Any vtf file saved with alpha bit will have an alpha channel when loaded. So you can either do what i previously said, or simply save the file as vtf DTX5 (or any other format with alpha bit) and then loading it again.

If you, for example, would want to have an alpha channel as long as you work in your image, then load any VTF DTX5 and use it as a template, delete everything, resize it to your needs and save it as psd.

[nub]

Did your texture have layers in Photoshop before you saved it to VTF? I think you have to collapse the image before you save it as VTF in order for the alpha channel to export properly. I've run in to this issue plenty of times with CS5, but I'm pretty sure it went away completely when I started collapsing before saving.

Habboi's method works for me as well, though I don't know if it does every single time.

I honestly think a new VTF plugin is in order. One that can export to a more recent version of VTF, and has better options and whatnot. The current one is good and all, but an update couldn't hurt.