Alpha channel is clipmap?
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i downloaded some plants and they came with the respective alpha channels. a very basic question: are they the same as clipmaps? how are they to be used?
thanks.
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Edson, they are the same as a clipmap; it's simply that they are contained in the same image file, whereas a clipmap is usually a separate image. To use them in Kerkythea and such, you will need to select the alpha channel in Photoshop, then copy/paste the black and white image in that channel to a separate file and save it....jpg format will do. This separate file can then be specified as the clip map.
In programs that use separate clip maps, you don't then need the alpha channel info, so you can make the diffuse (normal colour) image much smaller by then deleting that channel and saving the image as a jpg. This will likely be quite a bit smaller than the original tiff or tga image that held the alpha channel.
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Just for a sidenote, in Kerkythea speifically, you can use the alpha channel as a clipmap. You put the png, tiff, whateve format with the alpha channel into the diffuse slot and at the clipmap slot there is a checkbox (aomething like) "use alpha mask as clipmas" you can check.
But other applications may not have this option so to create two files - a diffuse and a clip - may still be useful (not to speak about file sizes that Alan mentions).
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