• Listen to a special audio message from Bill Roper to the Hive Workshop community (Bill is a former Vice President of Blizzard Entertainment, Producer, Designer, Musician, Voice Actor) 🔗Click here to hear his message!
  • Read Evilhog's interview with Gregory Alper, the original composer of the music for WarCraft: Orcs & Humans 🔗Click here to read the full interview.

Alpha Tile for Dummies

Level 13
Joined
Mar 6, 2008
Messages
852
Alpha Tile for Dummies
-by bhusta


Complexity: Low

Requirements:
  • Warcraft 3 Editor
  • An alpha tile texture

This tutorial explains what is an alpha tile, how one can create it and how one can use it.

First of all, why do people call it alpha tile?
  • It is a texture which only uses the alpha channel.
  • An alpha channel can be used for different things like team color or transparency. In this case it is the transparency.
  • Not all file types have an alpha channel. Look at the following example. The first file type of the picture is .png. The second one is .jpg

.png
178091-albums5176-picture57849.png

.jpg
attachment.php



This tutorial is divided into three parts.
  1. How to create an alpha tile?
  2. How to make it useable for the editor?
  3. How to use it?


Part 1 - How to create an alpha tile?
  • open a graphic modification software like gimp or photoshop.
  • create a new image.
  • The dimensions must be divisible by two like 2x2 or 256x256. The size doesn't matter.
  • The background color must be transparent.
  • After creating the image you already created the alpha tile.
  • Now you have to make it useable for warcraft 3.
  • Save it as a .bmp file because this file type has an alpha channel.
  • open Warcraft 3 Viewer link
  • Press the TGA -> BLP button
  • open your new created transparent image.
  • save it.
  • Now you should have something like yourFileName.blp


Part 2 - How to make it useable in the Warcraft 3 Editor?
  • Create a new map
  • this tutorial uses the Lordearon-Summer standard tile set
  • import your alpha tile texture with the file type .blp via Import-Manager

How can one use it?

The alpha tile is a texture which will replace an existing texture of a tile. We will replace the DirtGrass tile.

attachment.php


So, how do we do that?

We have to change the import path of the imported texture to the path of the tile we want to replace.

The paths of tiles have this scheme:

TerrainArt\Tileset_Name\Tile_Name.blp

As mentionened above the tileset name is Lordearon-Summer so the path is

Terrain Art\LordearonSummer\

and we want to replace the DirtGrass so the final path is

TerrainArt\LordearonSummer\Lords_DirtGrass.blp

You can find all TerrainArt paths under this link.


attachment.php

attachment.php



Now, save the map and restart the Editor.


Part 3 - How to use the alpha tile?
Basically, you can use it like any other tile. Just like this.

Pick
attachment.php

brush
attachment.php

Place units on it
attachment.php



Example 1 - The Bridge



attachment.php



attachment.php



attachment.php


Select the fire doodads and press "Ctrl + PgDn". This will lower the doodads so that the fire will be under the terrain. Now, you can place a unit on it and it lookds like a stone bridge.
attachment.php




Example 2 - The walkable Volcano


Place the volcano doodad somewhere.
attachment.php


Brush with the alpha tile and press G to see the grid.
attachment.php


Now raise the terrain so that you can see the grid on the volcano. You have to select the vocano first and press "Ctrl + PgDn or PgUp" so that the vocano doesn't change the height with the terrain.
attachment.php


A walkable volcano.
attachment.php


You can see the examples in the attached map.

Tile Overlapping

The last point is about overlapping of the terrain tiles. It has a significant effect on how the alpha tile looks in Warcraft 3. Overlapping simply defines which tile overlaps another tile.
This is how the overlapping is in the examples above:
attachment.php


Now we are going to change the overlapping order.
This is how one can change it:

Open the Edit Tileset window here:
Advanced -> Edit Tileset

This is the window you should see:
attachment.php


Now, move the alpha tile (DirtGrass) to the left and it is under the other tiles, move it to the right and it is on the other tiles.


At the bottom
attachment.php


Attention
  • Do not move the alpha tile to the very left like in this example!
  • If the alpha tile is the bottom tile, it looses its transparency
At the top
attachment.php


Limitations of the Alpha tile
  • it looses transparency in fog of war and black mask
attachment.php


  • It is white or black on the minimap
attachment.php

How to solve this problem can be found here.


  • it looses transparency if it is the bottom tile as mentioned in the overlapping part above.
attachment.php
 

Attachments

  • Bridge 1.jpg
    Bridge 1.jpg
    121.7 KB · Views: 4,025
  • Bridge 2.jpg
    Bridge 2.jpg
    117.7 KB · Views: 4,137
  • Bridge 3.jpg
    Bridge 3.jpg
    303.9 KB · Views: 4,174
  • Bridge 4.jpg
    Bridge 4.jpg
    135.2 KB · Views: 4,058
  • TileSet.jpg
    TileSet.jpg
    3.2 KB · Views: 3,877
  • Rename B.jpg
    Rename B.jpg
    17.1 KB · Views: 3,823
  • Rename A.jpg
    Rename A.jpg
    16 KB · Views: 3,900
  • Problem2.jpg
    Problem2.jpg
    8.2 KB · Views: 3,731
  • Problem.jpg
    Problem.jpg
    64 KB · Views: 3,766
  • Vocano 2.jpg
    Vocano 2.jpg
    120.4 KB · Views: 4,044
  • Vocano 1.jpg
    Vocano 1.jpg
    72.5 KB · Views: 4,120
  • Using 3.jpg
    Using 3.jpg
    66 KB · Views: 3,989
  • Using 2.jpg
    Using 2.jpg
    107 KB · Views: 3,918
  • Using 1.jpg
    Using 1.jpg
    130.6 KB · Views: 4,066
  • Vocano 3.jpg
    Vocano 3.jpg
    189 KB · Views: 4,164
  • Vocano 4.jpg
    Vocano 4.jpg
    136.9 KB · Views: 3,842
  • Vocano 5.jpg
    Vocano 5.jpg
    74.8 KB · Views: 609
  • user178091_pic57849_1336214445.jpg
    user178091_pic57849_1336214445.jpg
    14.5 KB · Views: 3,815
  • Alpha Tile Tutorial by bhusta.w3x
    27.6 KB · Views: 575
  • overlapping1.jpg
    overlapping1.jpg
    80.1 KB · Views: 6,173
  • overlapping2.jpg
    overlapping2.jpg
    35.2 KB · Views: 3,802
  • overlapping3.jpg
    overlapping3.jpg
    98.9 KB · Views: 5,755
  • overlapping4.jpg
    overlapping4.jpg
    110.2 KB · Views: 3,801
  • problem3.jpg
    problem3.jpg
    67.8 KB · Views: 3,758
Last edited:

fladdermasken

Off-Topic Moderator
Level 39
Joined
Dec 27, 2006
Messages
3,690
The shadow in front of the map boundary acts like the fog of war, if you mean that ^^
No I meant in the Edit Tileset window. If you shift the alpha tile to the far left side of the window it isn't transparent anymore when you place it.

Try it out, it converts to paper-white texture with no transparency. I acutally used it as ice once. :p
 

V

V

Level 7
Joined
Jan 13, 2019
Messages
284
The transparency issue can be solved with this configuration:

1. Alpha tile in second tile position
2. "Masked Areas Are Partially Visible" can be checked or unchecked (Map Properties)
3. In triggers add this
  • Player Group - Pick every player in (All players) and do (Actions)
    • Loop - Actions
      • Visibility - Create an initially Enabled visibility modifier for (Picked player) emitting Black mask across (Playable map area)
If you want to solve the minimap issue you can do this:

1. Select a dummy tile for coloring the minimap (snow in this time)
2. Travel across the map changing that tile with our alpha tile

See the attachment to make a test.

If you want to find the code of a tile:

place that tile in the center of the map (where the tree is) and use code findcode later change this value with dummy_tile_type variable value.

Commands
  • fogon
  • fogoff
  • blackon
  • blackoff
  • swap
  • findcode

I make a tutorial for that see this:

Alpha Tile Issues solving
 

Attachments

  • Alpha_tile.w3x
    28.1 KB · Views: 188
Last edited:
Not the answer you wanted, but if you change one of the ruined ground models to "none.mdl" and place it, it will appear invisible in game. You're limited to squares only, though.
Hello! Any way how to make an invisible tile in Reforged?

Greets
 
Top