Alpha Skinning

[Orc_Tamer]

How To Alpha Skin In Photoshop
By Orc_Tamer

Alpha skinning is a technique used in Warcraft 3 to remove unnecessary parts from a model ex. a weapon. I will be using the texture of the hero "Demon Hunter".

One thing I have to point out is that some models part cannot be alpha out because their team color gets in the way ex. Blademaster's Flag. Just check if it works for your model.


Open up your skin/texture and go to Window > Channels




A new window will appear and will have RGB, Red, Green, Blue




Go to the bottom of the window and look for the icon that says "Create New Channel". A new layer called "Alpha 1" will appear.



Now here comes the fun part.

Select all your layers and make them visible (click the box with the eye). You should have your image all red, don't worry about that just ignore that. Select your Alpha Layer and start to edit your skin.

Black = Remove
White = Add

When your finished with your skin you should have something like this.


After that just convert it into .blp and import it to your map and change the path to fit your character.



Here are my results:


Have fun Alpha Skinning!

- Orc_Tamer

 

[strongwill]

What tools are you using? Is this adobe photoshop?

 

[PurgeandFire]

He used photoshop for this tutorial. It is the same process in all versions of the tool (at least since CS3). If you need freeware, there is a similar tutorial for GIMP over on our affiliate site:
http://www.thehelper.net/threads/skins-alpha-skinning-in-gimp.22903/

But the link above is a bit outdated (the attachments are dead). GIMP has improved over the years, and it is a bit easier to mess around with the alpha channels. Here is a video tutorial in case you're interested:
http://www.penguintutorials.com/tutorials/gimp/understanding-alpha-channel

As for the other tools: to get the blp files, you can either use Warcraft 3 Viewer or Magos' Model Editor (or any MPQ editor, but those might not have the ability to preview textures). To convert from BLP to TGA and TGA back to BLP, you should use BLP Lab (check our tools section).