Problem making the icon appear.

[Watiggi]

I've made a test icon just to get it all up and running. Unfortunately I get an error when it shows the icon. Bascially it will also show the black, which I believe it shouldn't.

I'm using Gimp. I downloaded a dds pluggin for it and it shows an error (or a warning) when I go to save the psd file as a dds file. It says something about layers not being there or something (if it's important, I'll get a screeny of the error).

Any help would be really appreciative. Thanks. (I've also got Win 7 64 bit edition. I believe Gimp is 32 bit though).

 

[DasGuntLord01]

Yeah, buddy, this means your alpha channel isn't working. I was having the same issue with gimp when I made the icons for my australia mod.

I assume you're using the icon templates that come with the SDK? For some reason, the alpha channel refuses to behave, but we can fix this.

The alpha channel, if you don't know, defines what parts of the image is transparent. In this case, it means all the black bits. Thankfully, it's pretty easy to add an alpha channel. Here are the steps.

1) First, flatten the template, and copy the black and white template into a fresh GIMP project. That way you have a black background with white circles, unhampered by the templates photoshop baggage.

2) Add the logo to the first circle.

3) Click Layer -> Transparency -> Color to Alpha

4) Click on the white color selector, and select the blackest black. It gives you a little preview, and everything.

5) If you've done everything right, it should look like the example I've attached.

 

[Watiggi]

Oh wonderful! Thanks for that. I'll have to give that a go tomorrow.