rFactor Alpha Channel Tutorial

	Duration: 08:16 minutes Upload Time: 07-04-26 02:23:24 User: Keeper1st :::: Favorites
Description: After trying to explain this to people for the umpteenth time, I decided I would throw together a quick visual aid. I'm always surprised at how many "featured painters" on rFactorCentral have paint schemes that obviously have no Alpha, making the cars stupidly shiny. Even the painting tutorial on rFC (and others I have seen) completely ignores this most important part of creating an rFactor car skin. It's not just for making gold and silver foil effects as I do here. Just highlighting all your decals and making the Alpha of those areas darker will do wonders for your paint schemes. It's not hard to do, really! Most rFactor templates have their default Alpha channels much too bright, so the cars are too shiny even if you don't do anything to them -- even IF you managed to save the Alpha with your DDS in the first place. The Panoz GT2 template has a nice dark Alpha that gives the car a slight reflectivity, but nothing horribly unrealistic.
Comments
Broomo21 ::: Favorites yo keeper, thanks for the tutorial, one problem, i did everything, got the alpha channel that i want but when i go to save it, apparently im exporting too many channels? any ideas on why i cant save this? 07-08-14 13:13:21 _____________________________________________________
Keeper1st ::: Favorites I have the same problem. Just copy an existing DDS to start from. Right-click in your template, Select All, Copy Merged, then paste. Then switch to the alpha and Copy & Paste that as well. 07-08-14 23:27:13 _____________________________________________________
Broomo21 ::: Favorites awesome, that saves without a problem, another problem is that nothing happens for me, it seems all my helmets are matte and the skins seem to have limited shine. Should there be any graphic settings im not using or is my vid card just crap? lol 07-08-15 01:15:08 _____________________________________________________
Keeper1st ::: Favorites Sounds like you're in DX7. DX7 doesn't support alpha-based cube mapping. 07-08-15 04:17:04 _____________________________________________________
mexichoto ::: Favorites you must flatten layers before saving.. that´s the solution. if texture layer is named "layer x" will not work...you need the layer as "background" 07-08-15 10:29:08 _____________________________________________________
Broomo21 ::: Favorites how do i know if i am or not and how do i change it if i can? 07-08-15 12:58:47 _____________________________________________________
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Keeper1st ::: Favorites Run the rfconfig.exe 07-08-16 05:03:49 _____________________________________________________
skenehc ::: Favorites how do i increase the glossiness? like a full chrome body? 07-08-16 07:25:58 _____________________________________________________
rocketpunch12210 ::: Favorites great vid!! Now I need to rework my skins. ;) 07-08-16 12:45:06 _____________________________________________________
Keeper1st ::: Favorites As you can see in the examples, the brighter the Alpha, the glossier the paint. To make chrome, paint a dull bluish gray color in RGB with full white in the Alpha. Just be careful not cover up panel gaps -- keep those black in the Alpha or else the black panel lines will look like they're painted on rather than looking like actual gaps between body panels. 07-08-16 21:47:07 _____________________________________________________