Celestia Forums

How can I paste a custom texture to an asteroid already in the minormoons.ssc file ?

I don't want to change all asteroids, but only some of them. How ?

Also, how can I change the model ? I have some good asteroid models in .3ds format, but the minormoons.ssc file point to a mesh file like this :

Texture "asteroid.jpg"
Mesh "asteroid.cms"

I tried editing those lines, but it didn't worked.

In general, you would use SSC code that looks like


However:
In order to be able to use a "Texture" declaration within a SSC catalog, the 3DS model declared in the "Mesh" declaration must specify internally a texture filename of either "*" or "*.*". You may need to use a binary or hex editor to change the name within the model. I use Emacs.

If you use a 3DS model internally specifies a specific surface texture image filename, then you must provide a file with that name in the \medres\ folder.

Does this clarify things?

I think that's what I've tried. Didn't worked. More specifically, I have this beautifull ThebeV3 model with its texture (there was only two files in this addon, no read-me).

I placed the thebe.3ds file in a extra/thebe/models folder inside my extra folder. I placed the thebe3.jpg texture in the extras/thebe/texture/medres folder. I edited the minormoons.ssc file like this :

Texture "asteroid.jpg" ---> Texture "thebe3.jpg"
Mesh "asteroid.cms" ---> Mesh "thebe.3ds"

After loading Celestia, going to thebe gave me an empty "object" at the end of thebe's trajectory. Nothing, just a marker.

If I edit back those two lines, Celestia shows me a normal, dull, asteroid.

If you're editing minormoons.ssc, put the model in celestia\models and the texture in celestia\textures\medres.
I haven't tried the experiment, but I suspect Celestia isn't associating minormoons.ssc with the add-on models and textures when they're tucked into their own extras directory.

Grant

Yep, it works that way. I placed the thebe.3ds file in the standard models folder and the texture file in the texture/medres folder of Celestia and it's working fine. Thanks !

This is strange, however. It's a strong limitation of Celestia, apparently.

I want more comets ! Do you have a suggestion ?

granthutchison exactly pointed to the error:

the *.ssc file only deals with models and textures directly accessible from it's own current base folder.
In other words the minormoons.ssc EITHER has to be in extras/thebe OR the model and the texture has to be in extras/models resp. extras/textures/medres folders.

[Added later:] Of course you have to move all other models and textures that minormoon deals with also into /thebe when doing this with minormoons.ssc - or you put the thebe definiton off from minormoons into a separate *.ssc and put this into the /thebe subfolder.

[Added even later:] It seems that *.ssc files can handle models and textures further up in the folder hierarchy, but not further down, so you won't have to move all other models/textures too.

maxim

Thanks a lot for the explanation. It's pretty clear now.

Do you know where to find a file full of comets ?

There is a file from T.Guilpain (search the memberlist at top) containing 314 comet definitions.

maxim

Sorry. He's not member. Look at: http://members.fortunecity.com/guilpain/

maxim