[Guide] Complete Advanced Retexturing

[RaZZal]

Very nice guide

[technode]

Hey Andrige I have been having some trouble getting Alpha's to work in game and I was wondering if when you get a chance could help me out.

Now weather I am doing a custom model with a custom texture or just a texture edit I can never get my Alphas to show (or in the case of alphas, not show). Instead where I have my alpha depending on the range or black/white or grey I get a weird white filmish look on the area the alpha should be. The darker the grey or pure black makes it apear to have this almost pure white film over it letting only a little of the color though. If its full white all the color will shows up like it normal would.

I have tryed doing alphas in both TGA and PNG and get the same results with both. Have you ever expericanced this problem?

After a few hours of fiddling around I though it might not be possible for wow to handel alphas that were grey alowing color to show up but making it translucent. But then I found a few weapons where this was actualy being used, AKA Warglaives. They use a grey alpha over the blade to give it that greenish floating glow to it.

Anyway if you know how to fix this problem I would very much apprecate any help I could get.

Thanks a ton.

[trollpaxton]

technode, I'm not 100% sure what you are saying but I think you are mistaken about the capabilities of the engine. You cannot make a model translucent by applying a texture with alpha to it (at least no models that I know of). The geometry of the model has to be specifically set up to allow such a thing. Examples are the fins of naga and the wings of harpies.

Additionally, that shiny effect you see on warglaives and some other weapons is what is known as an "environment map". Env maps are additional textures that the model is hardcoded to use. Unlike regular textures, which are bolted onto a model in a fixed way, environment map textures "move" around the model depending on how you look at it, which makes it look shiny.

The bottom line is that if you want to make a model transparent that isn't already so, or if you want to make one shiny that isn't already so, that requires some (rather advanced) model editing--it cannot be done with textures alone.

[aeonicx]

This is the BEST texturing Guide i have seen i hate seeing some many reposts of Texturing Guides , but this one is Legendary! +rep

[technode]

So is there no way to make something a custom model semi translucent? If so then I dont see how because I tryed and when I created an alpha it never made any part of the model fully or partially visible where the alpha was. It just kinda made it white where the darker the alpha was.

[lorentzio]

the pictures is not working

[Andrige]

Dayum, sorry fellas!
Forgot all about this thread, the bandwith should be up and running again on the 22:th of July for those who are curious.
And technode, I'll try and see if you can make something translucent or if it's something that's a part of the model. I'm actually guessing it should be possible to make it see-through with the alpha-trick and gray but maybe not on all models.
Also I'm not claiming to be an expert on the area with texturing, just that the guide is more advanced than perhaps a regular guide out there with just the basics.

UPDATE:
Two new additions in the "Tips and Tricks" section... *half-hearted yaaay*...
UPDATE:
Switched hosts on screenshots/GIFs, it's now working.