Virtual Textures For Dummies!

[Bob Hegwood]

Since we keep getting these questions about Virtual Textures from people who
are new to the forum, please take a look at my "Virtual Textures For Dummies"
Guide and Texture package. They are both located on the Guides Downloads
page at my website which is HERE. If you don't know what VT's are, and you'd
like to know how to install and use them, the Manual
and the package are a good place to start. Hope that helps.

Take care, Bob

[edit]
Unfortunately, Bob's Web site seems to have gone away. A copy of his Guide is available on the Celestia MotherLode site's documentation page:
http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/d ... ation.html

...s.
[/edit]

[Guest]

A dummie question:
What means 1k / 2k / 4k (and so on) regarding to VT's?
In other words: Kilo of what?

[selden]

Pixels wide.

4K image = 4096 x nnnn, usually 4096x2048.

[Adirondack]

Dear Bob,

I have downloaded your VT document (as you can imagine, I am going to translate it in German soon ).

Although I did not install any of the needed progs you mentioned, I think you should clarify the download procedure of Fridger's "virtualtex".

The section in your document only says:

1) Download Dr. Schrempp's script from the website listed below:
http://www.celestiaproject.net/~t00fri/virtualtex
2) Make certain that you don't save the file as a text file.
3) Once you have the script, simply place it in your “C:\Cygwin\usr\local\bin”
directory.

If a dummie klicks the link, he gets a script-text in his browser. And then? A dummie maybe do not know how to go on.

So I suggest, you should explain how to cut & paste the browser's contents.

2) Make certain that you don't save the file as a text file.

"As what else?" a dummie maybe wonder.

Nevertheless, your document is very helpful for beginners.
As every time, I appreciate your work very much. Thanks.

Adirondack

[Bob Hegwood]

Although I did not install any of the needed progs you mentioned, I think you should clarify the download procedure of Fridger's "virtualtex".

The section in your document only says:

1) Download Dr. Schrempp's script from the website listed below:
http://www.celestiaproject.net/~t00fri/virtualtex
2) Make certain that you don't save the file as a text file.
3) Once you have the script, simply place it in your “C:\Cygwin\usr\local\bin”
directory.

If a dummie klicks the link, he gets a script-text in his browser. And then? A dummie maybe do not know how to go on.

Good points, Ulrich...

I'll see what I can do this weekend. I only wanted to make certain that
the script file was saved as is, I'll try to explain it better.

Thanks a lot, Bob

[Bob Hegwood]

Okay an update from the Brain-Dead...

All I'm trying to say is that Dr. Schrempp's script needs to be saved - as is -
with *no* file extension(s) added. Don't save the file as "virtualtex.txt" - save
it as "virtualtex" -with NO extension added.

Better?

Take care, Bob

PS - I updated both the manual and the VT package to clear this up a bit.

[Austin]

I am a TOTAL n00b to this but i was wondering if there was a complete walkthrough for getting high-res textures cuz i dont even know where to start... plus, what do i do with .dds?

[Bob Hegwood]

I am a TOTAL n00b to this but i was wondering if there was a complete walkthrough for getting high-res textures cuz i dont even know where to start... plus, what do i do with .dds?

Depends on your machine and graphics capabilities, Austin...

The DDS format is strictly for NVIDIA graphics card users I believe. Someone
else can feel free to correct me if that's wrong. I can't even use DDS files
on my machine, because I don't have a graphics card.

Usually, if I see a DDS texture that I want to use, I simply convert it from
DDS to JPG using Irfanview.

Would help if you could tell the graphics geniuses around here what kind of
system you're using, and what kind - if any - graphics setup you have.

Also, you can find all kinds of high resolution textures (and guides) from
the Motherlode at

http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/index.html

Hope that helps.

Take care, Bob

[Austin]

i am getting the high-res textures working! xD...

Win-XP Pro SP: 2
512 DDR Ram
nVidia GForce FX 5200 128 mb ram


Now i need another favor... HOW DO I USE VTs?

[Austin]

2.0 ghz AMD Athlon XP 2400

[Bob Hegwood]

Now i need another favor... HOW DO I USE VTs?

Download the Virtual Textures for Dummies Guide from my web site, or from
the Motherlode. You haven't done that yet?

Is the best explanation that I can give you for how to use VT's. Also, you can
visit Selden Ball's web site for a more intelligent Guide to Virtual Textures.

He's at http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/

Hope that helps.

Take care, Bob

[Austin]

I got the mars dummie VT working, but i cant get any other ones to work, i see odd letters and numbers on the surface of my planet

[Guest]

My problem I'm trying to figure out is how to use NormalMaps..

Actually, I'm a total noob to this whole thing and I need step-by-step instructions the first time 'round for things.

I know I need to add the line (for example) in the solarsys.ssc file something like... NormalMap "EarthNormal.png" for the .png files I downloaded for the EarthNormal folder.

my question is...where do i have to stick the EarthNormal folder (containing the images)? do I need to create a .ctx file? where do I put that. I just need to know how the WHOLE process is done...I've only seen people list how do do part of the process but not the whole thing.

I have a really fast computer and I'd love to make full use of all the eye-candy I can get with this program.

I have a P4 3.8Ghz
2GB PC4200 RAM
Radeon 9800 256MB graphics card

I've been trying to find 32K textures for this rogram but have only been able to get one for Earth. It's hard to find high-res textures for this program

Thanks

[Guest]

I read the VT for dummies pdf, and I have a couple questions.


The original instructions on the pdf for installing NetPbm are a little vague. The original way doesn't see to work anymore. NetPbm can be installed as an executable, or through a zip file...no more downloading tar files. This brings up an issue when running cygwin and typing in
tar xzf netpbm-10.18-cygwin-1.3-bin.tar.gz

should the command be changed to
zip xzf netpbm-10.18.4-bin.zip ?

or....

exe xzf netpbm-10.18.4-bin.exe

or... what?

I tried just running the executable and just having it install into the cygwin directory, but when I run virtualtex, I get an error saying:
invallid parameter -80

[Bob Hegwood]

should the command be changed to
zip xzf netpbm-10.18.4-bin.zip ?

or....

exe xzf netpbm-10.18.4-bin.exe

or... what?

I tried just running the executable and just having it install into the cygwin directory, but when I run virtualtex, I get an error saying:
invallid parameter -80

Beats the hell outta me... Try asking someone who knows about the NetPBM
and Cygwin installations. Maybe an e-mail to Dr. Fridger Schrempp a.k.a.
t00fri here on the forum, would be a better resource for these questions.

Fridger's e-mail address is t00fri@mail.desy.de

Sorry, but I ain't up on all the varieties of non-windows systems.

However, it looks like you're trying to unzip the package from what I
read above. In that case, you'd want to unzip the package.

Okay, after a bit of investigation, it seems that you can now simply
download a Windows executable setup file to do the NetPBM installation
for you. The url is http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/gnuwin32/netpbm-10.18.4-bin.exe

Maybe this would be a better option?

Thanks, Bob

[Guest]

Yeah, I thought that too. It still didn't help though. I still get the error that
says: invalid parameter -80.

I eventually gave up this method and simply used photoshop to make the tiles. I was only doing a 2k texture so it was pretty quick.

[Bob Hegwood]

Okay,

Sorry, but the Virtual Textures for Dummies Guide definitely needs to be
updated and revised. Cygwin, Netpbm, Fridger's virtualtex script, and the
ImageMagick software have all changed since I wrote the Guide.

Will see if I can create a better tutorial for VT's as soon as I can get the
time.

Meanwhile, if you're trying to use the current guide, simply remember that
newer versions of all of these resources are now available, and
adjust your thinking accordingly. In other words, if the guide says you should
download version 1.3.8 of whatever package, but all you see is version 1.4.1,
then use THAT version for the installation.

EDIT: One other extremely important note here...
If you're a Windows XP user, your Cygwin installation is going
to be screwed up if your XP logon identity has any spaces in it. Found
this out the hard way. Since the Cygwin installation uses the user's
documents and settings path, and since Cygwin cannot use file/directory
names which include spaces, then after Cygwin creates its home
directory, you're already screwed if you have a logon id like mine,
which is "Bob Hegwood." I'm going to reformat my hard disk to remedy
this problem, and I'll be creating a new identity on my machine called
"BobHegwood" to avoid problems like this in the future.

Sorry, but there was never any mention of this problem when I first
installed Cygwin. <shrug>

Thanks, Bob

[maxim]

Guest,

you can't intermix a windows compiled netpbm package and a cygwin compiled package AFAIK. That may be the source of your problem. In the first case the package is compiled for native windows usage, in the latter case it is compiled for beeing used with the cygwin.dll - a unix adaption layer for windows. You may investigate here, if you want to solve your problem.

maxim

[pierre]

Thank you Bob , i downloaded dummies and it works great.


I'am new in Celestia and i first would like to say many thanks to the creators of this wonderfull program and to those who improve it.

I run Celestia on a Imac G3 and I can't use dds either.Is there anybody who knows about a converter, and how can i use Dr. Schrempp's"virtualtex"not having Cygwin??
by.
Pierre.

[selden]

Pierre,

Don't forget that MacOS X is Unix. It includes the zsh command interpreter, for example. I don't have a Mac, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Fridger's script worked fine once you installed the utilities that it uses.