Blender: working with Alpha Textures.

[Xjazz]

Hi

I don't know you, but to me the alpha texture creation have been a real PIA process so far.

1. Make a alpha texture in GIMP for the certain object texture.
2. Export your object to the AC3D format.
3. Convert the AC3D file in OE and close the OE
4. Delete the cache folder from OE folder.
5. Open the OE s-l-o-w-l-y again.
6. View first time how your object is appearing. Basically the LOD1 living shape only.

Not too nice.

So, I was studding  the Blender a bit more and figured out the alpha texture creation with 'Texture painting' feature is very easy task. Plus you can check the final result by rendering.

Testing


The Blender textures are in RGB format but it look like the automated converting to the indexe/gray-scale format is possible to do arrange.

[Xjazz]

Update

Like said,  current Blender version can only save images in 24-bit format. In future Blender may have a 8, 24 and 32-bit format options available.


Python Imaging Library (PIL). This can do a 24-bit to 8-bit conversion no time.
http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/

*_a.bmp file
So, the possible script could create the alpha texture image (24-bit) for the selected object in select resolution and name it as a (selected object texture name)_a.bmp with few clicks..

*_a.txt file
Also with PIL  it's also possible read the 16-bit format color palette for the alpha channel color index number data and create a (selected object texture name name)_a.txt file with few clicks.

Export
New export script  would  then take care from alpha texture image conversion if *_a.bmp files are founded and finally export  at once all OE required files(*.ac, *.bmp, *_a.bmp & *_a.txt) to given folder.

So far the *_a.bmp/txt file creation modules are in working stage.