Photoshop: Creating Transparent Icons

Original howto by Crimsonff7 on the elderscrolls.com forums. 4/26/2006

After looking around, I couldn't find a good place to tell me how to make transparent weapon icons. After much trial and error, I finally tweaked it to get it working ingame.

Step 1: New image -Dimensions should be 64x64 pixels -RGB -To follow the "theme" of the icons, set the background to 230 206 164 RGB (#E6CEA4 in hex).

Step 2: Add Alpha Channel -In the Layers dialog, click the "channels" tab. Click the "add chanel" icon at the bottom to add an alpha channel. -This alpha channel is your mask. If there is no alpha channel, the game will assume the entire image needs to be drawn. If there is an alpha channel, the game assumes only white areas will be drawn.

Step 3: Paste your image -If you want to follow the Oblivion "theme" of giving your item an outside yellowish glow, Oblivion uses the color 239 231 173 RGB (#EFE7AD in hex). -Merge everything into the background.

Step 4: Edit the Mask -Select the background with the magic wand (with 0 tolerance) and hits shift+ctrl+I (select inverse). Now, without deselecting anything, go back to the alpha channel you created. The area will still be selected. Use the paint bucket tool to fill this area with white. -You may need to play around a bit using this method to get the mask just right.

Step 5: Save. Save as a PSD. DO NOT use the Nvidia DDS exporter, it seems like it can't handle this many alpha layers. If you use Gimp with dds plugin, just save as DXT3. You can skip step 6 and most of 7.

Step 6: Conversion Convert to a DDS with DDS Converter 2.

Step 7: Set icon in the construction set If you're this far, I'm assuming you know what to do. The construction set will balk about 7 mipmaps when there should be none. Ignore this, continue playing, save your mod, and load up the game. The texture appears as you told it to appear. Note: Greys on the alpha channel are acceptable. If you have a weapon that is partially transparent (for example, how glass should be) by all means, paint the transparent areas a shade of grey.