Hey guys here's what I want to do, but don't know if its possible.For about the last 6 months I have gotten into using SBuilderX to create photo textures for areas unavailable for purchase from outside vendors. The day textures look great and I am really happy with them. The trouble is that editing the day textures for night use for large areas is proving to be just too much for me to handle. I don't have the time, patience, or skills to make really good looking night textures.So what I would like to do, even though it is kind of hokie, is make the default or in my case for FSX the GEX textures come into play as night fall arrives, thus eliminating the need for me to do night textures for my day tiles.Is this possible? And if so what would I have to do?Thanks in advance,Sean

Sorry, Sean, it cannot be done. It is one or the other, custom ground or default ground. Custom textures will always prevent the display of default textures, and when you cover an area with custom textures, you cannot force the display of the underlying default ground in other seasons or at nighttime.The difficulties that you mention concerning creation of night textures are precisely the reason why almost no scenery packages, including commercial scenery, have seasonal or night variations. Too much work and trouble.Best regards.Luis

Night textures don't necessarily take a lot of time to do. I use Paint Shop Pro XI to do mine. The way I do them is to take my daytime photo and use it as a bottom layer, then add a second layer with 95% darkness. I take the visibility of the night layer down to 50% so I can see the day layer to make the placement easier. Then I add a brightness/contrast layer for the top layer. It doesn't really do anything except to let me select an area that will be my typical street light. I'll select an area, usually 80 x 80 pixels, then copy and paste (ctrl E) it. The pasted square becomes a floating selection. Turn off the visibility of the floating selection, then it makes a nice square to drag for each light location. Select the night layer as the active layer. If you create a light pattern that works for your street lights, then it's just a matter of dragging the square to each location and turning on the light. I use the ` key as a hot key.I doesn't long at all. Drag, press ', hit enter...lather, rinse, repeat. When the lights are all in place, I turn the night layer back up to 100% visibility and merge the layers.

Thanks Luis and KJB. I had a feeling that I wouldn't be able to do that but thought it would be worth asking.KJB, your idea sounds good, except that I don't have Paint Shop Pro and from what I understand it is fairly expensive. I have been using Infranview and GIMP to do the ones I have created in the past. Without having a lot of graphic editing experience I have a hard time figuring out how to use or add layers as a template. Plus like Luis mentioned doing very large areas is so time consuming.Thanks guys I really appreciate the quick responses.Regards

Hi I just usually use PSP7 to cut the contrast -50 and the brightness -100PSP 7 Brightness / Contrast scale is +255 to -255I then put the image into Micrografx Picture Publisher and use one of the tools there that magically brightens lights etc

Hi I just usually use PSP7 to cut the contrast -50 and the brightness -100PSP 7 Brightness / Contrast scale is +255 to -255I then put the image into Micrografx Picture Publisher and use one of the tools there that magically brightens lights etc

How do you save your files and how do you render the different textures? I am very new to this and I can not find any tutorials on this subject . also is there a special name the texture has to be saved in ?