paa -> jpg

[macguba]

I know this sounds stupid, and I know I've done it before ... but I can't remember how, nor can I find it already mentioned here.

How do you convert a .paa file into a .jpg?

No I don't have photoshop or paint shop pro ... although I do have a horrible feeling that is the answer.   Please tell me I'm wrong.

BIS's texview doesn't do it.  It apparantly does jpg -> paa, but not the other way around.

Many thanks

[Pilot]

Texview will save paa to tga.  Then, using any standard photo editor, convert the tga to jpg.

-Student Pilot

[Baddo]

If I recall correctly, you can save the image in targa format (.tga) from texview by writing .tga as file extension to the file name box in the save dialog.

Then you can use some general image editing program to save the image to whatever format you need.

I recommend GIMP for an image editor program. It is free and does the same job as photoshop. AND you get exactly the same interface also for Linux, if you happen to have a Linux OS installed.

[Pilot]

Yes, GIMP is an awesome program.  It's the only editor I have that edits alpha channels.  I also highly recommend it.

-Student Pilot

[macguba]

Brilliant chaps, thank you.     Done and dusted.

I'll solve this in a day or so.

[Raptorsaurus]

After editing the TGA file, how does one convert it back to .PAA?  If I save it as .JPG I lose the alpha channels and the part that was supossed to be clear becomes grey.

[Trapper]

Open the tga with Texview and save it as paa.

You have to change the file extension to .paa in the save as window to do so.

[Raptorsaurus]

TextView will not open the TGA that I save using GIMP.  Do I have to save it using a certain color depth, I think GIMP defaults to 32 bit, do I have to save it at 24 bit?  If so how? I am just barely learning GIMP.

[Baddo]

Dunno Raptorsaurus, but what does Texview readme say about it? Don't have it here right now but it lists the requirements...?

#EDIT:

Supported formats
=================

Input:

JPG
TGA (24 bit / 32 bit with alpha channel )
PAA
PAC

Important note: All input textures should have resolution 2^x / 2^y (e.g. 16 / 16, 32 / 32, 64 / 64, 256 /256)

Output:
TGA (32 bit with alpha channel)
PAA/PAC ( 12 bit RGB + 4 bit alpha channer / 8 bit grayscale + 8 bit alpha channel / 16 bit DTX DirectX compressed texture format with optional 1 bit alpha channel)

Does your image fulfill all those requirements?

BTW, I think images can also be like 128x256, 64x256 etc... not just 256x256 128x128 and so on.

[Raptorsaurus]

Yes it does.  It was a .paa, I used textview to convert it to .tga, then I edited it in GIMP and resaved the file (32 bit TGA with alpha channel).  Now textview will not open it.  Just to experiment to see if my editing had some effect I tried to just open the orginal tga file using textview and it would not open it.  But I think this is getting off the orginal topic so I will PM someone with some experience with GIMP.  I must be doing something wrong somewhere.

[Baddo]

You can open Texview's example targa image in GIMP and examine it there, what's different?

Then try to change it and open in Texview.

#EDIT 1:

There might be a bug in GIMP's tga plug-in which affects how alpha channel is marked to the saved tga file. Investigations continue...

#EDIT 2:

...and the solution for the problem is to uncheck the "RLE compression" checkbox when saving a TGA file in GIMP. Then Texview is able to open it.

#EDIT 3:

"RLE compression", not "RLE packing"...

 

#EDIT 4: If you are saving an old targa image with GIMP, use the "Save as..." instead of "Save" and you'll get the popup box where you can disable "RLE compression". With "Save" it doesn't appear if it's an old file.