About textures

A texture is a bitmap image file which is mapped onto a polygonal surface. The way the texture is applied to a shape or object varies. Click on the shape's or object's help topic in the menu on the left to find out how... First of all, here is what you should know about textures:

The GroundMaker texture preview dialogs will show 24-bit, 8-bit and R8 files. If an 8-bit bitmap contains transparency info, colors will be faded accordingly.

 

Night and seasonal effects

If you want seasonal and night light effects, you must check any of the NIGHT, FALL, SPRING, WINTER or AUTUMN options in a shape's texture settings. Following shapes support these effects: POLY, TEXPOLY, LINE, TREE LINE and FOREST. FS will load another texture depending on the chosen season or time of day. The texture you select is the summer and day texture by default. Enabling the SPRING option for example, will force FS to load another texture in spring. The additional textures must be made available to FS and be named in a special way:

Effect File name
Summer (default) MyTEXTURE.BMP
Spring MyTEXTURE_SP.BMP
Winter MyTEXTURE_WI.BMP
Fall MyTEXTURE_FA.BMP
Night MyTEXTURE_LM.BMP

Note that a night texture's brightness will remain constant at night. In other words, bright pixels will seem to 'shine'. At dawn or dusk, the night texture will be blended with the current day texture.

Not all GroundMaker textures(GRM_xxxxxxxx.BMP) support the effects. Here is a list of the textures supporting them.

File name Supported effect(s)
grm_grass1.bmp Spring, Winter, Fall
grm_tree1.bmp Spring, Winter, Fall

 

Releasing textures with your scenery

When releasing your scenery, all needed textures must be copied to the scenery's TEXTURE directory. Don't forget seasonal or night textures when your scenery makes use of those. Read the EXPORT topic for more info...

To find out which textures are required to run your scenery, click the FILE\ LIST REQUIRED FILES FOR RELEASE... menu item.