Basic help: texture installation

[lordthistle]

I am sorry for this help request, but after reading many posts and some guides I am not able to get it right.

I have just installed Celestia on MacOs 10.5.4 by dragging Celestia.app in the /Applications folder and the CelestiaResources in ~/Library/Application Support (as written in the manual).

I have downloaded the texture:
Lat-Long Grid
containing:
Lat-Long_Grid.ssc
textures/medres/earthgrid.png

The ssc file contains:
AltSurface "Grid Overlay" "Sol/Earth"
{
Texture "earth.*"
OverlayTexture "earthgrid.png"
}

I put
Lat-Long_Grid.ssc in the folder ~/Library/Application Support/CelestiaResources/Data
and
earthgrid.png in the folder ~/Library/Application Support/CelestiaResources/texturs/medres

In the instructions they say to right-click on Earth and select "Alternative textures". There is no such item in the menu and I cannot find any item in Preferences to activate it.

What mistake did I make?

Thank you.
thistle

[BobHegwood]

I don't know beans about your operating system, but you might try placing the SSC file in your Celestia\extras folder so that it can be found.
Just a thought.

Thanks, Bob

[abramson]

Hi, Thistle. I am not familiar with Macs, but I doubt that Celestia works differently than in other OS's. Try the following.

Your Celestia folder contains a folder called "extras". By default it contains only minormoons.ssc. Celestia scans that folder and subfolders at launch time for additional catalogs. You should put your custom ssc files and their associated files inside the extras folder. You can have it organized in subfolders for categories of add-ons, or just drop everything at extras. Beware, that some files MUST go in special folders, for Celestia to find them. For example:

extras
minormoons.ssc
Lat-Long_Grid.ssc
textures
medres
earthgrid.png


OR:

extras
minormoons.ssc
Solar System
Moon
....
Earth
grids
Lat-Long_Grid.ssc
textures
medres
earthgrid.png
Blue Marble
....
Jupiter
....
Nebulae
...
Clusters
...
Spacecraft
Galileo
apollo.ssc
data
....xyz
models
....3ds
MER
...

You get the idea? In either way, you will find the Alternate Texture at the right click menu of the corresponding object.

It is still possible that in Macs this is all differnent (but I doubt it). In that case, you should wait until one of the Mac experts answers...

Guillermo

[ElChristou]

...I have just installed Celestia on MacOs 10.5.4 by dragging Celestia.app in the /Applications folder and the CelestiaResources in ~/Library/Application Support (as written in the manual)...

What manual? After years of use I still have both the app and the resources folder in the same "Celestia" folder on an external HD...

[lordthistle]

Thank you! Now it works. I missed the 'extras' folders, where these files must go.

I got the wrong folder after reading this on Celestia Motherlode site:
.cmod or .3ds or .cms > Place these in the models directory.
.jpg or .png or .dss or .bmp > Place these in the textures/medres directory.
.ssc or .stc or .dsc > Place these in the data directory.

It's clear that I need to read the document more carefully.

For ElChristou. In the manual they list several alternatives: besides using the same folder, you can use the Library.

thistle

[bh]

I'm on mac too... after downloading my Celestia folder resides in 'downloads'.