• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

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alpha channel

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I worked with train sim. for about a year, and found the vegetation was much better than fs2004. I also found a very good tutorial for making transparent textures.I would like to try and make trees And shrubs for fs2004. Anyone know if there is a good tutorial for transparent textures in fs2004. I have been trying to do it with fsds. not doing very well. Thanks. Sorry, found tthreads on this subject
 
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Creating transparencies for FS9 is the same as making the for train sim. In the case of your of making shrubs or trees. Using your favorite graphics app, create your initial texture, make a copy of the image, and place that image into a mask. Invert the image, show background is all black, and the tree or shrub is white. Apply the mask to the original image. Thats the quick and dirty way to create an image with an alpha mask for transparency.

An even faster way is to use this tool, fstransparency which can be found at the address below. The file is at the bottom of the page. You select the image you want to add the alpha mask to, load it into the fstransparency, click on generate and you have an inverted image mask. That simple.

http://www.simviation.com/fsdesign_utilities.htm

Hope this helps.

Dave
 
You may also consider DXTBmp from Martin Wright. http://www.mnwright.btinternet.co.uk/index.htm . It is quite straithforward.

Make shure you dld and install the latest dll set. Needed for most of Martin's apps.

Being there, maybe you could get TView that shows all Thumbnails of all sort of graphic files in one shot, while having the possibility to view anyone in its native size. Usefull to browse large graphic files like FS Texture folder.

Also Convim, a usefull tool to convert a bunch of graphic formats into an other one, in a single pass. Like multiple DXT file to 24 bit images for editing and back to DXT, though it won't convert them back to DTX + alpha as far as i know. For those you will need to convert them one by one using DXTbmp.

Hope it helps.

HugoA
 
Personally I prefer to use ImageTool. I have written a little article about how I make transparant textures with that:

http://www.scenerydesign.org/forum/showthread.php?t=57

In DXTBMP I was never able to figure out how it uses the alpha channel already in your image (if you save it in the proper format).
 
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