Using TGA files turns material translucent in 3DC - a solution

[mrennie]

I saw a question from PapaXpress on the 3DC forum at Amabilis that asked: "What is happening is whenever I use a TGA for a texture the component turns translucent. I can see the all my edits to the file, but its all "see through", if I switch back to a BMP, its opaque again."

I found the answer to that myself some time ago:

When you use the material, in the Advanced Options, Primary Tex. Alpha Ch., instead of Standard, set it to Ignore. That way, it won’t be transparent, although if you’ve also used bump mapping, it might appear silvery.

Incidentally, the Advanced Options can’t be seen (or modified) in the Material Manager, so you have to set the ignore when you apply the material directly

[SMMDigital]

Another simple solution is when you convert from Photoshop (or whatever program you are using) to Targa, save it as a 24-bit file, and save the Ace as a 32-bit file. The 24-bit Targa does not show the Alpha channel, while the 32-bit Ace does. That way, you can still work with your model in 3DC without it becoming translucent, but your model will still have it's shine/transparency effects in TS.

[PapaXpress]

I ended up using BMPs in 3DC and TGAs for ACEs.

Thanks for the follow up though. I am sure this will help others who find the Crafter web site hard to navigate let alone get answers from.