Alpha channels - Suddenly they won't import.

[HeartDeco]

I don't know what happen, but I was working on texturing an object that had several clear recolors. I was able to do one of them by importing the alpha channel of the color I wanted, but then I no longer could get it to convert for the other three I needed. Then out of the blue I was able to convert a second color after umpteen tries, but still have two left that are being stubborn.

I thought it might be my video card, so I bought a new, faster one, but that did not resolve the issue. I even updated the DDS Utilities to the newer version that is out, but it still won't import an alpha. All I get is a solid color or all black.

What could I be doing that might be causing this to suddenly happen? - I wonder if it is SimPE? Though, I did reload it just to be sure, it wasn't a corruption.

Thanking you in advance - any help is appreciated,

Debra / HeartDeco

[IgnorantBliss]

You don't necessarily need to import an alpha channel separately. If you import your texture as a PNG, the transparency is automatically included. You just have to make sure the format is DXT3 and not DXT1, because the latter doesn't handle alpha channels.

[HeartDeco]

What I did was switch to a different paint program - GIMP - and make new color maps for the alphas. Then I rebuilt the texture with the DXT3 format for the transparencies and this seemed to fix the problem.

Thank you, Helena, for responding to my post.

Debra