Celestia Forums

i am working on an UFO model, loke the ones in home videos. im a beginer with 3D modeling, so:
1) it will take some time
or
2)it won't be so good.

if someone is interested in helping me, send me a PM.

i know that is not a very good idea. but now i need some help. i cant make the texture appear on the model. i put the model in celestia and i see it, but when i rotate it, his texture changes between, for example, earthnight and flare.jpg.
what can i do? how i put a texture on the model? how i make the texture appear on the model?

Did you use the Material menu in Anim8or? The "diffuse" material is the one that specifies the surface texture file. Anim8or's texture file browser menu is several levels down. Celestia will always look in the textures/medres directory for that texture image file.

i did everything but it doesn't work. i open materials. make a new object. put in diffuse the texture that i wanted. exported it to ufo.3ds. copy it to models and the texture to medres. open the celestia and it doesnt work.
here is the code that i used:
(i replace the sputnik model with my ufo, just to try it)

"Sputnik" "Sol/Earth"
{
Mesh "ufo.3ds"
Radius 0.00076
EllipticalOrbit {
Period 0.06678
SemiMajorAxis 6965.5
Eccentricity 0.0516115
Inclination 65.1
AscendingNode 83.8459
ArgOfPericenter 296.4901
MeanAnomaly 63.6005
}
Albedo 0.10
}

and i also try to add the line
texture "disco.jpg"


i didnt understand you when you wrote "Anim8or's texture file browser menu is several levels down." what did you mean?

I just meant that it's a little hard to find. You have to use the [...] button next to the Diffuse field to find the file for Anim8or.

Does the object's surface show the texture image while you're working on it in Anim8or and have "View Full" enabled? I'm sure it must, but I had to ask.

What size is the image file?
Celestia requires that it be a power of 2 on each side.
E.g. 512x256 or 4096x2048

my problem was that: the picture was not correctly sized. i found it before reading your replay, and then confirmed it. now it works.
i only have the problem with the orientation:
its orbitin the moon. i want it to show allways his "bottom face" to the moon, and also to rotate in his own axis.
this is the code that i used, can you correct it?

"ufo" "Sol/earth/moon"
{
Mesh "ufo.3ds"
Radius 0.76
RotationPeriod 0.5
Obliquity 150 #i dont know what to put here, i try
#some numbers but it still doesnt work
EllipticalOrbit {
Period 1
SemiMajorAxis 2000
Eccentricity 0
AscendingNode 83.8459
ArgOfPericenter 296.4901
MeanAnomaly 63.6005
}
}

this is the model:



and the rest of my pics here:
http://www.shatters.net/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=My-Universe

ElPelado,

Grant Hutchison wrote several postings carefully explaining how to position objects next to planets.
See http://63.224.48.65/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2128
and
http://63.224.48.65/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1991

and what do you think about my first model?

It looks quite alright to me!

thanks
i will still work on it to improve it, but i dont know what to add to it(i will make textures first of all)