How you can make a alpha textur (cod2)

[Tally]

CoD2 uses two different kind of textures: iwi + material and @.tga files. Those @.tga files are leftovers from CoD1 can and should not be used as modding source. You should create a simple tga in Gimp and convert it to iwi + material file via the asset manager, as this will work in all cases.

COD2 uses ONE kind of texture - .IWI. The materials files are image parameter files. They inform the engine what parameters to use when drawing the shader types. As such, they aren't actually textures themselves.

COD2's materials files are paralleled in COD1 in the .STYPE files (found in the "shadertypes" folder). .STYPE is a file format used in early versions of 3D Studio Max, which is the 3D modelling program used in COD1 and United Offensive. As we know, COD2 used Maya 6.0 but Maya's materials files are not the same as COD2's materials files. So, the materials file format in COD2 is proprietary but it is based on Maya's one.

The .TGA files in COD2 are not left over from COD1. They are in fact the first prototype of materials files. The file extension is thus misleading - it is not a targa file at all. It is a materials file, with a strange file extension (i.e. .TGA). All the .TGA files in COD2 are in the materials folders. Not the image folder. Hence, this is a dead give-away that they are not in fact image files at all.

Very early in the development of COD2, when all the engine functions had not been finalized, Infinity Ward abandoned using this form of materials file, and developed the one we are most familiar with. This is why the game only has a few .TGA files in it. The .TGA materials files reference the .DDS files also found in the materials folder. Again these are not standard .DDS files. They are in fact prototype .IWI files, as the .IWI file header is included in COD2's .DDS file. You cannot open these .DDS files in standard image programs like Photoshop or GIMP. This is because of the proprietary header. Again, these files are from a very early build of COD2, before they finalised the .IWI format they would use up until the present.