Texture Painting - Game Character Development with Maya - page 567

1. Make sure KilaHair.tga is the active window in Photoshop. You need to work in
the Channel window, so open it up by going to Window > Channels. This shows
the different color channels that exist in the image: red, green, and blue.
2. Create a new channel. Just as in the Layers window, click the Create New Channel
button at the bottom of the window, directly to the left of the trashcan. This adds a
new channel, conveniently called Alpha 1 ( Figure 9.31 ) .
FIGURE 9.31 Create a new alpha channel.
3. Switch back to KilaHair_Alpha.tga or the .psd from which it was created. Select
the entire alpha layer you drew earlier (Ctrl+A/Cmd+A), and make a copy of it
(Ctrl+C/Cmd+C).
4. Select the Alpha 1 channel of KilaHair.tga and paste the alpha map into it (Ctrl+V/
Cmd+V).
5. Flatten the rest of the image, leaving you with the hair texture. Save it as a Targa
file, selecting 32 bits/pixel when prompted. The 32 bits/pixel option ensures that
the alpha map is embedded in the image file.
6. Move into Maya. Reload the textures and open up Hypershade.
7. Double-click the material called Kila_Hair, opening up its attributes.
8. Still in the Hypershade window, click the Textures tab to reveal all the texture files
associated with the scene.
9. With the middle mouse button, select and drag the hair texture over the Transpar-
ency attribute in the Attribute Editor. A box will appear around the Transparency
attribute, showing you that it's all right to drop the texture here.