Gmax seasonal textures

[Guest]

Hi, is it possible to make gmax textures seasonal (maybe a texture naming switch?), I have searched the forum but found little info on this subject.Thanks, David

[arno 1]

If you look at the GMax tips section of my site (click on the banner to go there) you will find a section about seasonal textures. It is a bit of the old Fs98 style season textures, but right now I haven't got the BGLC switches to work correct.Arno

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[Guest]

Arno to the rescue again, thanks that works fine. I wonder what the correct procedure would be to do this directly in gmax, looking at the graphics for default trees, all seasons seem to be arranged in the same file.One other question, changing the code, can "hard winter" also be used.Thanks again, David

[arno 1]

I think the seasonal textures can not be done from within GMax. As far as I know the exporter (MakeMDL) simply doesn't support this feature.And about the hard winter textures, at this moment they are not supported. On the mesh scenery these appear when it is snowing and with the technique used now I don't think that can work (we can not check if it is snowing).Arno

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[Guest GerrishGray]

The season flags defined in bgldefs.inc are intended for use with the old TEXTURE2 (LoadBitmap) command, not the new FP command set. gMax and the FP DirectX command set have no built-in provision for seasonality as far as I know. The only solution is to 'hand code' it along the lines suggested by Arno, although the use of the old 'seasons' variable in FS is pretty unsatisfactory. TEXTURE2/LoadBitmap failed to react to the hard winter flag for the same reason - even though an appropriate flag had been provided.Probably better to use the day number - then one can include a 'hard winter' season as well - this is how my Trees Library has always worked. Wouldn't it be nice if MS gave us a new global variable in FS2004 that reported the value from seasons.bgl at the object location - COME ON MS (he shouts, hoping to attract attention), it would be easy enough to do as an extra method for the object that does this for the ground texturing system.CheersGerrish

[arno 1]

Hi Gerrish,Looking through the MASM include files I found some commands like TEXTURE_WINTER, TEXTURE_SPRING, etc. I assume these commands should work like the TEXTURE_BUILDING command for example. But the bad news is that I can't get these commands to work (yet).Also, I like the idea of using the day numbers. That gives you a better control about the texture/snow, this is especially helpfull in northern areas with a lot of snow or other regions that differ much from the "normal" 3 month period for a season.Arno

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