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The TPC texture format contains a floating point number in its header that we refer to as 'alpha blending'. It appears to be critical when used with DXT5 compression. This tutorial will try to help you use this feature properly. What is alpha blending? Alpha blending is not a direct 'opacity' or 'transparency' factor. It is only relevant for non-environment mapped textures that contain alpha-channel image-based transparency. For example, semi-transparent signage, mostly transparent windows, ghosts, etc. The best description I can give you for what alpha blending is: TLDR: alpha blending is not object opacity. It hides any mesh behind the textured object that has opacity less than tpc alpha blending number. Set it to 0.0 when using texture alpha channel as transparency. The meshes that will be hidden include any mesh that may be using alpha channel solely for environment mapping. Let's see how this plays out in practice with some visual aids. Each figure uses a TPC encoded version of the K1 Manaan Overhaul semi-transparent texture for the Sith Embassy signage. Transparency of the sign is right around 50%. Figure 1. TPC with alphaBlending set to 1.0 With alphaBlending set to 1.0 the only thing that shows through the sign is the skybox itself. This may be some kind of depth buffer test to make sure that something always blends through, which, in the 1.0 case, leaves just the most distant mesh, the skybox. Figure 2. TPC with alphaBlending set to 0.9 This seems to be the critical shot. With alphaBlending set to 0.9, lma_wall11 is showing, while lma_wall09 is hidden. lma_wall11 is 100% opaque, 0% transparent. lma_wall09 is 85% opaque, 15% transparent. So because lma_wall11 opacity > alphaBlending, it is shown, while, for lma_wall09, opacity < alphaBlending, so it is hidden. Figure 3. TPC with alphaBlending set to 0.5 In figure 3 we can see that both lma_wall09 and lma_wall11 are showing because their opacities are both greater than 50%. Figure 4. TPC with alphaBlending set to 0.0 This looks exactly the same as figure 3. Wait, isn't that weird though? Why can't we see the other sign through the first sign? It's opacity is 50%, which is greater than 0.0... Figure 5. TPC with alphaBlending set to 0.5, reverse viewing angle Just by looking through the sign in the opposite direction, the signs in the background now are blended through. This is showing a couple things. First, it seems that alphaBlending doesn't actually control instances where the same texture is behind itself. Instead, it appears that there is some kind of directionality at play. I haven't figured out what determines the direction of blending. I investigated whether it was the faces that appear earlier or later, but that didn't necessarily seem true. Using alpha blending The game's vanilla textures use all kinds of different values from 0.0 - 1.0 here. I do not fully understand why or how they have come up with a lot of their alpha blending values. In my testing, it seems like if you have a semi-transparent object, you set this to a low value, 0.0 or 0.1, and if you have a non-transparent object, you set this to 1.0. The important thing is that you do not think of alpha blending as the transparency or opacity of the object itself. If anyone comes up with better guidelines for setting this value through scientific testing, I will be happy to update this post to reflect the improved guidance.

I've noticed while extracting a good number of textures from the KOTOR 1 game files that the ones that are mostly black have no alpha on them(such as the ones with stars). Does the game have a special way of handling textures that makes them transparent with this or is this an issue with all of the tpc to tga converters for the game? If anybody has an explanation of this that would be great, i cant seem to find a way to easily and quickly remove the black from the images.

To our fine moderators: Just an open ended question... I have installed some area re-textures and have had some transparency issues. After taking a closer look, I realized that all of the textures w/ Alpha channels have no designated .TXI file that goes with them. Now, I've manually created txi's every time I realize that this is happening, which is a shotgun "fix" in that now the walls/doors/shiny stuff is no longer transparent. This raises a couple of notes: 1. To create the txi's, I basically just saved a bunch of text files as .txi's w/ CM_Baremetal. Not the most beautiful fix, but it "worked". 2. I really want to use the cubemap that the modder had intended to use initially as CM_baremetal is WAY too general and probably inappropriate to use with every texture. I have been unable to reach this modder via messaging on a couple of different mod sites. 3. If this IS a "fix", what are the rules against releasing "fixes" or download-packs to address this for other modders' work? - for example, if I have a folder full of txi's that I want to release for people to use (assuming I'm not the only one with this issue), and am unable to contact the original modder, am I allowed to release something like this? Excuse me if my post is not clear, I can go into all kinds of details if anybody has specific questions. And NO, this is NOT regarding the newer area re-textures released within the last 6 months, so Deadly Stream modders need not worry at this time. :-) Thanks for taking the time! LOVE this site!!!