Is it possible to make a .dds texture that is all transparent?, i tried to save a .dds in photo shop with a black alpha layer but it want save it like that. The alpha layer is removed, i have tried to save in both DXT3 and DXT5.

Is it even possible to make a totally transparent texture?, if so how??

What you need to do is to add an alpha property channel to your NiTriShape, in NifSkope. Under the NiTriShape on the NiAplhaProperty Block details you will see a flag that requires some numbers. Play with those numbers and you will start to get some interesting clear effects. 7309 is a light clear number.

OK, thanks

For transparent walls and floors I just use a Collision Marker and rotate it. It saves a lot of hassle

And you don't need a texture for that at all. Simply set the alpha value in the BSLightingShaderProperty to 0. You still need an alpha property though!

Doesn't having the whole alpha channel of the texture 100% black make it invisible?

Another thread for the favourites list. Thanks.

@ http://www.gamesas.com/user/602151-hlvr/

As i wrote, you can't save an .dds with the alpha 100% black...it removes the alpha.


@ http://www.gamesas.com/user/792503-fragginborn/ & http://www.gamesas.com/user/237180-phitt/

Well there is times when this will not work, it's OK for static objects and such.

Ah yes. What do you do then? Is there a format that it can be saved in that is also supported by the game engine?

I've seen for instance HUD texture mods that have "transparent textures" to remove HUD, without any other alteration. How did they do that?

Why? You can do what I described to any model, not just statics. If you can apply a texture and an alpha property then you can also apply no texture and an alpha property and change the LightingShaderProperty settings. It's faster, saves texture space and you have less unneeded clutter in your mod.

Anyway, if for some reason you can't do this (though I don't know why) then you could use a little trick to save your texture. I didn't know that a completely black alpha channel gets removed when you save the texture (tested it and it is indeed true), but when I made a single pixel with a RGB value of 1/1/1 it saved the alpha channel. That's nothing you would ever see in game and it's 99.9% transparent anyway.

What exactly is it that you are trying to do?
Are you trying to do torn flags/clothes, transparent glass armor, invisible wall?

What's that for a buggy program? If it'd be white, that could be stripped, yes. (Alpha is implicitly white in graphics hardware when not read from a texture-channel)

Photoshop CS2 with Nvidia plugin does that in my case (and I guess the plugin is to blame). Probably because a completely black alpha channel is under almost all circumstances just as useless as a completely white channel.

Well, if they make that assumption, couldn't they better refuse to save the texture at all (a fully transparent texture is no texture, ain't it)?
And white isn't useless, if you want to have shiny vinyl cat-suits it's the way to go ....

@ http://www.gamesas.com/user/237180-phitt/
Exactly and the newest dds plug-in from nVidia is adding a alpha layer on every texture you save, so that causes another problem instead