[Solved] Adding alpha channel to a texture from another game?

[Jaccouille]

Hello,

I've been trying to convert the 3D models from the game Warhammer 40k - Dawn of War 2 to the mdx format, mostly for the lulz and because I wanted to see pretty space marine in WC3.

So far I managed to setup a "pipeline" using 3ds max, neo dex plugin & few script I wrote to fasten the import/export process, I got the meshes & the animations, kinda happy cause it looks ok-ish and doesn't take much time.

Last issue I encountered, is the diffuse texture not having any alpha channel/transparency for team color.
Dawn of War 2 do not have such thing as team color, units have predefined color which can be customized via an army painter.

I lack knowledge of 3D modelling & texturing to understand how they managed to achieve this feat, but anyway, my goal at this moment is add to team color on the exported models in order to get something that look like this, where the red part is the team color.

I found this post on sc2mapmaster showing how to edit the texture so it end up with team color, but I don't understand what this person has done, has he edited the diffuse texture through photoshop to add alpha channels? I would appreciate more details, I'd take my chance and tag him post author, @Taylor_Mouse.

I linked the mdx files with all its textures in DDS format, I didn't bother converting them to blp because Retera model studio handle them.

Thank you,

 

[Hermit]

You're right; It looks like this person edited the alpha channel to make transparent areas in the texture. Creating them with Photoshop is pretty simple; white in the alpha channel is opaque, and black is transparent.

Classic WC3 models have a material with two layers; the first layer is team color (aka Replaceable ID 1) and the second layer is a texture with dark areas in the alpha channel for the team color to show through, usually with the Blend filter mode.

 

[Jaccouille]

Hello,

After re-reading the link I shared, some research on internet & toying with photoshop I managed to get a result that satisfy me.
In the end, I had to open the diffuse file in photoshop, import the tem file over it, select the red & green channel from the tem file, select the part on the texture I wanted to use as team color and create an alpha channel, then hide the tem file layer & export the diffuse. If you have question I can give a bit more details.

I still need to recolor some part of the diffuse texture because it's all gray otherwise.