using no alpha channel is a NONO. THe only mask thing that is looking really good is:
use transparency for the background (eg. in Photoshop or THe Gimp). Then clone the layer of your masked texture and move this layer under the actual texture layer. then set the clones transparency to about 2%. Then "blur more" the clone. Then (attention) export as DDS DXT5 (i think 5) Masked(!) texture, using the DDS export plugin (there are plugins, just look around).
Here's a fence using a 512*512 pixel masked DDS texture. As you can see, the outline was vectorized and is smoothed, contrary to masked BMP that would be extremly blocky (stairs).
Note also: no black borders, due to the blurred 2% clone .(Thanks to the one who gave me this hint, guess it was Fredborg, was it?)
use transparency for the background (eg. in Photoshop or THe Gimp). Then clone the layer of your masked texture and move this layer under the actual texture layer. then set the clones transparency to about 2%. Then "blur more" the clone. Then (attention) export as DDS DXT5 (i think 5) Masked(!) texture, using the DDS export plugin (there are plugins, just look around).
Here's a fence using a 512*512 pixel masked DDS texture. As you can see, the outline was vectorized and is smoothed, contrary to masked BMP that would be extremly blocky (stairs).
Note also: no black borders, due to the blurred 2% clone .(Thanks to the one who gave me this hint, guess it was Fredborg, was it?)