Shininess Fixing Tutorial

[Lost-Lamb]

Ok... So we all now that when we modify the texture files they get way shiny. Why? Because of the way Alpha Layers are handled. How can we fix this? Well let me show you. The pictures, comands and keyboard shotcut may vary, these are the ones for Jasc PSP9

1. First we convert the texture we want to modify from dds to bmp

2. Open the bmp with a good paint program. I prefer Jasc PSP but This is doable with Photoshop and I imagine other programs will work too. We'll call this window A.


3. First select the areas you want to have shine, freehand>point to point is good for this. (Also a triangle of about 3x3 of the upper left corner if you arent taking it anyways, this helps imensly in aligning the pieces back)


4. Cut (Ctrl+x) the selection and paste it as a new picture (ctrl+v). This will be the B window


5. Go back to the A window and set the background layers visibility to 1% (transparency99%/opaque1%)


6. Go to the B window and select all (ctrl+a) then copy/cut (ctrl+c/ctrl+x) it and paste it into the A window and align it in EXACTLY the same place (this is where the corner trick comes handy since when its aligned you'll know that the whole thing is in the right place)

7. Promote the selection to a layer


8. Set the shining parts transparency to what you wish, I prefer something between 40-60%

9.Save as Interlaced png


10. Convert back to dds and your done

 

[Nairagorn]

Beeee-utiful. Thanks!

::edit:: Might not be a bad idea to sticky this.

 

[Lamaros]

I have been trying to work out the quick way to do this in photoshop and failing (which is really annoying, as it should be easy). Someone please cure my ignorance .

 

[Temujin]

this should be a sticky

 

[Anonymous]

this should be a sticky

My wiener is sticky.

 

[grud102]

Doing this in Photoshop is very easy. Go get this plugin.
Then you can load the .dds files directly into Photoshop, complete with alpha channels. You shouldn't need to modify the alpha this way, but if you do then you can do it quite easily just by selecting it from the channels tab. Please let me know if you need more help with this.
That plugin apparently will work with Jasc PSP, though I haven't tried it.

 

[KaosKiwi]

that plugin works like a charm - i found that saving it with the alpha settings set at interpolated alpha it works like a breeze