Q3Ase isn't opening a .tga?

[Jusser]

Hi people!

I'm having a problem with Q3Ase and my new made targa..
It's just when I try to edit the texture source of a new shader, it can't load my targa.
If i put it in a folder where aren't any other textures, it's not even in the texture list. But if it's in a folder with other textures and select it, it doesn't show up in preview. If I try to load it, Q3Ase can't see it. It shows a white-black picture (texture not found).

The texture is of a blade of a circlesaw and got transparent parts.
The image is 512x512 pixels.
I made it by cutting out the blade with the magic wand tool from a jpeg. Then copy and paste it on a 512x512 transparent targa. If that is helpful for you...

Can someone help me fix this?

[$NulL]

What did you use to make the tga file?

Did you save it in 32bit RGBA format?

Isn't Q3ASE a bit strange and make you put your textures in a pk3 file before it allows you to use them? Maybe i have an old version.

[Jusser]

What did you use to make the tga file?

I used a program called 'PhotoFiltre Studio'. Shouldn't be a problem as I used it before for such textures.

Did you save it in 32bit RGBA format?

I'm not sure. PhotoFiltre Studio didn't really ask for it, can't find it anywhere else.
Here are some crappy properties of it.

Image name : circl.tga
Folder : D:\Quake 3\baseq3\textures\custom_trim\
Size : 512 x 512 pixels ==> 7,11 x 7,11 inches (72,00 dpi)
Color count : 4084
File size : 1,00 Mb
Date : 11-8-2009 20:47

Edit: I find out it's a RGB as normal. I'm not really sure what you mean with RGBA?

Isn't Q3ASE a bit strange and make you put your textures in a pk3 file before it allows you to use them? Maybe i have an old version.

Probably not! Other textures work fine, and even if I put it in a pk3 file, it doesn't see it.

[Mr dk]

The A in RGBA stands for alpha. Information Quake 3 uses about the transparency of areas is stored in the tga's alpha channel. Transparency in the image itself isnt whats required here. Think of the alpha channel information as a mask. The game sees the texture image has a shader script applied to it and then reads the black and white (although it can also be shades of grey, but lets not get complicated) alpha channel to decide which areas of the image are drawn or not.
You don't really need to use Q3Ase for shader creation, simple stuff like textures with holes in isnt that hard to do. That said I think your issue here is the tga. Assuming you have the normal set up in the shader, you need to save the areas of your texture that should be solid to the tga's alpha channel. Different art applications have different ways of doing this. As previously stated, the file must be saved as a 32bit tga (the extra 8 bits being the alpha channel).

[Jusser]

Errm, yea, after looking some more in photofiltre I found out I could save it as RGBA. And so I did.
After getting back the transparency in the texture, and some other changes, I wanted to let it rotate. Back to Q3Ase!
But now I seem to have a little problem though. It still doesn't show up in Q3Ase.
Can somebody help me getting it opened up in Q3Ase?

[obsidian]

Would you mind posting a link to the TGA file in question?

And you did add it to Q3Ase via File > Edit PakFiles?

[Jusser]

Allright.. here it is:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZIKKP85V

No need to add the folder to Q3Ase, I've added the whole baseq3 folder instead.

[obsidian]

Your file doesn't work for me either. It must be something wrong with your paint program. I opened up the file in Photoshop and re-saved the file as circl2.tga and it works fine, complete with alpha channels. In Windows file properties, it lists, "Attributes AN" on your file and "Attributes A" on mine, whatever that means.

Perhaps you can try GIMP, it's free, open source and can create a proper TGA file.

[maz0r]

While using Windows, Paint.NET ist another great and free graphics program. It also supports TGAs and comes as a lightweight 1,6 MB Download (but as the name suggests, needs the .NET Framework to be installed).

[Jusser]

Yes, I've used GIMP and seem to work fine.
Thanks to all!