DDS and making alpha channel Black

[Thundercraft]

I'm currently working on a mod for a game. And I'm trying to modify a .DDS "diffuse" texture. I found a tutorial on how to create or modify textures for the game. However, it was written under the assumption that the reader is using Photoshop.

I was able to modify the texture just fine. However, in-game, it looks very glossy. This is not intended as it is supposed to be a texture for clothes. Finding and reading the tutorial I mentioned explains that to make a texture appear glossy in-game, the alpha channel must be white. And to make a texture appear matte in-game (which is what I need), the alpha channel must be black.

 

Thing is, no matter how I select the options for saving in the .DDS format, it always appears glossy. And I do not find an option to change whether white or black is used as transparent for the alpha channel - either in the menu for saving in the .DDS format or anywhere else.

 

Am I missing something obvious? Is it even possible to use black for the alpha channel in Paint.Net? Is there a plugin to do this?

 

Edit: I got a reply from the author of the tutorial when I asked for clarification:

In PS, there's an option to show separate channel of RGBA. Each channel is in grayscale and I can manipulate each channel separately.

 

I still don't get it. But then, I haven't used PhotoShop in a long, long time.

Edited February 13, 2020 by Thundercraft
New information.

[Thundercraft]

Nevermind... The tutorial I mentioned was just very difficult to understand.

 

I think the author meant that one needed to set the alpha to transparent or near transparent for a texture to appear matte instead of reflective.