You’ve seen the game pics so far. But i’d like to encorperate a soft circle shadow. Easily done, but I can only make it a Circle of black. Not something which takes away from the colour of what it beneath it.
I assume it’s impossible to do what i ask, I soft shadow like in final fantasy 10?
You can ADD which would be good if it was a White shadow, but There is no SUBTRACT, which would be really useful…
-Luke
-I use Gimp for textures.The procedure is:
1.Create a new image with transp.background
2.Add a layer where you design a black circle
3.Cut the rest of the image and made it 50% transparent
4. Add another layer with another black circle but smaller than the first one
5.Cut the rest and make it trans. 25%
6.Add another one with a smaller black circle without transp.
7.Flatten the image and save it as tga
i tired the same process in Photoshop exactly. but when i clicked Alpha, it basically worked like an Add. Like the file was using white on the outside as the solid, and the black center for transparent
-Luke
If you could make the texture i would be very greatful, and send it to - [email protected]
64 x 64 pixels please 
thanks
Yeah, using alpha is a little tricky. I don’t know photoshop, but I know it took me a while to get it working in paint shop pro. The best thing is you can use the one shadow texture for any kind of shadow you want, put it on a plane that you shape like the character, or even give the shadow some animation to make it look REALLY realistic. Shadows (even dorky fake ones) can add so much more to the look of a game.
if you want to know how to do it it psp (apparently he did, but someone else may not) make the file as a .psp with the appropaite transparency
merge the layers
go to (on the menus) Masks -> new -> from image
make it from source opacity
select Masks -> Save to alpha channel
save as a (truevision) targa
you know you can create a black halo in blender and render it is a rgba jpeg? That is what I have done
…
the gimp does alpha channels better in my opinion
I’ve never used photoshop.
Just another tip on alpha textures: Beware of using too many of them, because if they overlap in the view, they may be rendered out of order. Lets say you have a fence with an alpha texture for the holes in each picket, and in front of it you have a flower which is just a plane with an alpha texture. What could happen in this case, is blender might render the fence in FRONT of the flower, making things look very odd.
This might be fixed in 2.25, but I haven’t tested it yet.
Also, if you try and animated the colors of an object with an alpha texture, it disapears.
How I make shadows in gimp is this:
I made a custom gradient that blends from black to transparent. then I use the gradient tool to make a circular gradient in the image. Easy.
saluk: I’ve never had that problem, try using the obcolor button in the paint buttons, and make sure the object has a white material. I think that works.
I was going to post this the other day but my internet went down… If you are using Photoshop 7 the first thing you have to do is download the targa export patch from the Adobe site. When Adobe made version 7 they changed the way the program save TGAs and so no one could use them. After you install the patch start your new document. Create a new channel inthe channel panel like you would create a new layer. The new channel is actually the alpha channel. If you click on the new channel and start painting with white and black the white will be the opaque areas and the black will be the transparent parts. You can also copy and past imto this channel so I you have already painted your shadow on a layer you can copy and past it here. Next save your file as a targa, make sure you choose 32 bit when it ask or it won’t save the alpha with it.
TorQ