Well,To late to edit my previous post. I converted the whole tower to double-sided, but after I converted to .bin, the rails still "disappear" when I view with model viewer or in-flight. I guess it's no big deal. I'm still interested in the transparency question though.Bye Folks,JimB

Palette '0' can be rendered completely transparent by placing black on your GIF where you want transparency, then renaming the GIF to "t_.GIF" Example: textr1.gif --> t_textr1.gifThen process through FixMip, remembering to select the transparency option there as well. Make sure no other pixels in your text1.gif use palette '0' (you can select all '0' pixels, then renumber them to '1', then paint required transparent areas in black). FixMip does allow you to use other colours - just let it know the palette index you want rendered transparent and it will convert them for you.The transparency effect that you get will depend on the type of graphics card that you are using, especially for night effects.RobD.

Thank you Rob,The texture is transparent properly thanks to you and your Fixmip tool. I also re-made it to give it a more "railing" look. I also modeled in a "lite thingy". Here's a Flt3 shot of it. Depending how I pan it's view(shift+O to the tower), frame rate reports 11.3 to 33.1.From way out flying to it frame rates are 8ish to 11. Which is good because I had "squished" the tower model into the house model a bit(flt3 usually doesn't like that I think) to further reflect the photos from the web site.Now to try and figure how to put a lite on it's "lite thingy" I'd modeled in. Or maybe not as the web site reports the lite tower is de-commisioned and with-out a light. A lite would be neat though. You know of any tool's out there to ease the job?Bye, JimB :-wave http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/118160.jpg

Hint #2741. Make the railing texture (only) double sided, all other textures should be single-sided. Then the railing will go right around the tower.Lights. Jon showed me a method. Try this (adapt to your model):x----------------snitch------------------------------xBEGIN "AThingwithaLight"COMMENT{// I have deleted most except the flashing light part.}MATERIALS{1,"Textr1",FLAT,Tmap "BH_trm1.mip",100,TRANSP 0;...9,"Special",FLAT,RGB 254,254,254,TRANSP 100; choice of colour doesn't matter}POINTS{(main model)...ENDBEGIN "@v02_boxlight"POINTS{-0.1,-0.1,16; this is a transparent box of side 0.1x0.1x0.1m, -0.1,0.1,16; located 16m above ground. Change to suit.0.1,0.1,16; Change @v02 to get different lights:0.1,-0.1,16; @v00, @v01, @v03 ... -0.1,-0.1,16.1; @h00, @h01, ....-0.1,0.1,16.1;0.1,0.1,16.1;0.1,-0.1,16.1;}PARTS{0,N,0,ff09,(4,0,1); this makes the box.0,N,1,ff09,(4,1,5); The '0' prefix says "don't use a texture."0,N,2,ff09,(5,1,2);0,N,3,ff09,(5,2,6);0,N,4,ff09,(6,2,3);0,N,5,ff09,(6,3,7);0,N,6,ff09,(7,3,0);0,N,7,ff09,(7,0,4);0,N,8,ff09,(1,0,3);0,N,9,ff09,(1,3,2);0,N,10,ff09,(4,5,6);0,N,11,ff09,(4,6,7);}ENDx----------------snitch------------------------------xBet it doesn't work first time.robd.