Eye Texture Editing

[tipsyConfection]

Hello, I am new to editing textures.
I already successfully edited some simpler textures and had no issues, but eyes... turn out wrong.
I suspect that it might be related to Alpha channel problems, i've read something about it before on the forum, but that post was from YEARS ago and not entirely about what i needed.
Thing is, what is wrong is that eyes i edit look... hazier? Like they have a slightly thicker/whiter transparent layer over them, bleaching out the iris yet also slightly muddying the whites.
I do see that the Alpha channel in the .vtf file and in the .png i get are diffrent, but have no idea how to rectify this.

[R234]

It is indeed an alpha channel issue. You have to make sure to retain it, otherwise you'll end up with hazy eyes.

I don't know what you use to edit textures, but your mention of a .png file tells me you're probably converting the textures with VTFEdit. I personally prefer to edit them directly in GIMP (Photoshop works too) with a .vtf plugin. This makes it easier to make sure I don't screw up things like this.

[Healisoulus]

To add to what R234 said, if you're using Photoshop, the best way (from my point of view) is to export the texture as TGA with VTFEdit, edit it in Photoshop, and then save it again as TGA. This allows you to preserve alpha channel settings, thus when you import the updated TGA into VTFEdit, its alpha properties should be identical to the original.

[tipsyConfection]

Originally posted by R234:

It is indeed an alpha channel issue. You have to make sure to retain it, otherwise you'll end up with hazy eyes.

I don't know what you use to edit textures, but your mention of a .png file tells me you're probably converting the textures with VTFEdit. I personally prefer to edit them directly in GIMP (Photoshop works too) with a .vtf plugin. This makes it easier to make sure I don't screw up things like this.

THERE IS A VTF PLUGIN?!

[R234]

Originally posted by tipsyConfection:

THERE IS A VTF PLUGIN?!

More than one. Personally I use this one: https://www.tophattwaffle.com/downloads/gimp-vtf-plugin/

It's old but it does the job just fine. it's missing some of the more "esoteric" flags as the website puts it, such as point sampling or single axis clamping, but I seldom use those and if I have to, I just load them into VTFEdit afterwards.

[tipsyConfection]

Originally posted by R234:

More than one. Personally I use this one: https://www.tophattwaffle.com/downloads/gimp-vtf-plugin/

Bless you

[ViridianCrown]

Sorry for necroing a 2-year dead thread, but I found a way to fix it in paint net by setting the opacity to 5 then saving the file as a png before importing to VTFEdit. I did this for Left 4 Dead 2 but I did find an actual SFM tutorial that claims something similar.

I know everyone in this thread probably fixed this by now but I thought at least cataloging another method might help somebody else with similar problems if they bump into this thread.