Reflex Textures Help

[gary664]

Hey guys, ive recently started building a reflex for the first time and ive came across an issue...  Im using Photoshop Elements 11 and for some reason i cant make an alpha channel, which makes my track look super shiny and bright.  Anyone know anyway around this issue?
Thanks, Gary

[mcm2boys]

It is possible to edit some the textures in DE. Go the Terrain tab. You will see a list of the textures, select the one you want to edit. If DE can edit it a yellow pencil icon will appear enabled in the toolbar, click on it to open the image editor. The image editor is a little buggy, but gives realtime updates in the 3D view. So if you drag the image editor window to 1 side (or another monitor if you have a 2 monitor setup) then in the main DE window select the objects tab, then you can edit the textures and see the effect in the 3D view directly.

The editor is somewhat similar to Photoshop so you should find your way around reasonably easily..

Hope that helps..

[al167]

needs to be a 16 bit image. your probably on 32 bit. try  image - mode - select rgb and 16 bit.
also just save as a .psd. DE will read them fine!

[JamieT]

A vital part of Photoshop is being able to work with channels and layers.  If you look at the buttons across the top of the screen and click (Window > Channels), this will open up your channels window.  From here you can add new channels by clicking the small icons at the bottom of this new window.  An RGB image will have Red, Green and Blue channels by default.  Adding a new channel will then create an alpha channel.  I believe the icon for adding a new channel is a square with a corner peeled up.

Reflex textures actually only need to be 8-bit per channel, rather than 16-bit per channel.  Importing an image into DE which uses 16-bit per channel will be automatically converted into 8-bit.

[mcm2boys]

The problem with Photoshop elements is that as far as i know it doesn't support channels so making an alpha channel which is needed for some of the textures just isn't possible.

Could turn to GIMP or another low cost image editor, or lke i said use the tools in DE - though i know they are not popular with the hardcore track creators..   

[gary664]

Thanks for the reply guys, as for using the editor in DE, for some reason i cant get it to work. I can click on the pencil and the editor pops up but i cant edit anything from there.. Maybe i just dont know how to use it properly.  I have figured out through research that you can not create channels in Elements, which sucks..

[mcm2boys]

COuld you post a screen shot of the DE editor open? Not people ue it, maybe only me, you should see the Texture that was selected in the Terrain tab displayed in the popup editor though it will be all black for some of the default textures. Then just select a tool from the tool bar at the top of the DE image editor, the paint brush is a good place to start, maybe select a color and start painting..... Should be simple..

[al167]

DE paint doesn't work for me either and never has, gives lots of errors about not being able to write to C/ program files/ something something blah blah. lol

[mcm2boys]

Thnx Al
I remember you saying something about that now you mention it. Sounds like a problem with not running it in admin mode that would give those sorts of errors. Otherwise the namd of that file it cant write would be good to know. I have made some changes that might help in the last release have you tried it recently?

[al167]

I just tried running it as an administrator and it crashed once with no warnings, the second time I tried it, it didn't crash, but there wasn't anything in the 3d window. I already had an image loaded in de. id assume that image would be put into the 3d window of the image editor to then be modified. but  all the paint brushes where still  accessible and functional and you could change brush colours ect, but didn't seem to do anything in the "grey display" in 3d view.

laurie I personally don't feel anyone will use this feature.  the quality of tracks wouldn't be that great from something like this as it cant compete with the features of other popular apps. But if its something you want to do for the challenge of it or if making an image editing tool is something you have always wanted to do, don't listen to me and just keep going with it!!!

[mcm2boys]

Lol thnx for your encouravement. I have no dream about replacing adobe but because some people only need simple tools, and adobe seems to be moving towards a cloud based subscription (expensive) model and any number of other reasons i would  like de s image editor to at least perform its basic functions as intended. However it will probably have to wait until other more useful stuff is finished. But that doesnt stop me wanting to collect info to fix this when i get the chance.

Thnx 4 the info.