Newbie & textures, help please

[Malcolm]

Hi,
I've just downloaded and unziped DonEdwards volcanic moon,,
now what do I do with it,, please be gentle I'm new to this !

So far I have only played with the ordinary beginners features
of Celestia.
He says in his readme "You can place it anyware you like but
close to a gas giant is the best choice"
Err, how and where do I place it and how do I find a gas giant?
Sorry to be dumb an'all etc.
A 'hold my hand' type first steps guide to using textures would
be useful if someone would be kind enough,
thanks,
Malcolm.

[Malcolm]

Probably bad form for me to talk to myself ! but just to let y'all know how I'm getting on :--
I've been playing, with a little success :--
in his readme he mentioned ".ssc file" so I did a search
and I found extrasolar.ssc
So, in that at the start of the file, I found Ups. And.
I duplicated the "d" planet entry and renamed it "e"
That seemed to go ok, U.And now showed an extra planet
yippee!
So, I then rewrote its entry like this :
"e" "Upsilon And"
{
Texture "VA Moon.jpg"
NightTexture "VA brokencrust.jpg"
Mass 0
Radius 2233

Atmosphere {
Height 60
Lower [ 0.8 0.6 0.6 ]
Upper [ 0.7 0.3 0.3 ]
Sky [ 0.83 0.75 0.65 ]
CloudHeight 9
CloudSpeed 150
CloudMap "Thin Clouds.png"
}
# orbital data
EllipticalOrbit {
Period 3.48
SemiMajorAxis 2.50
Eccentricity 0.41
}

RotationPeriod 10.0
}

and how pleased I was to see some of the volcanicmoon effect there!!
The 'VAmoon' and the 'thinclouds' are there ok, very nice.
BUT I cant see any noticable effect of this bumpmap thing (what is that?)
and the 'brokencrust" does not seem to have taken effect on the nightside
either
What have I doen wrong?

Other than that, hey,, it is a brilliant texture, I like it v.much.

Malcolm
enjoying cuting&pasting in SW England

[Ortolan]

Hi Malcolm, congratulations on installing your first add-on planet! As for the problems you mentioned, bumpmaps only work when you have a bumpmap file specified in the ssc file (look at the Moon section in solarsys.ssc) and pixel shaders turned on (press CTRL P in celestia, using Mercury to see if it works). Make sure night-lights are enabled in celstia's options menu in order to see them.

[Malcolm]

Thanks lots Ortolan, ctrl-P and nightlights were indeed the missing magic ingredients
Ctrl-P turns the bumps on but it also turns off the nightlights (mutually exclusive?) is this to be expected or have I done something else stupid ?
Thanks for your help.

This is what I've got so far :
{
Texture "VA Moon.jpg"
NightTexture "VA brokencrust.jpg"
BumpMap "VA Moonbump.jpg"
BumpHeight 2.5
Mass 0
Radius 2233

Atmosphere {
Height 60
Lower [ 0.8 0.6 0.6 ]
Upper [ 0.7 0.3 0.3 ]
Sky [ 0.83 0.75 0.65 ]
CloudHeight 9
CloudSpeed 150
CloudMap "Thin Clouds.png"
}

Now I wonder what happens when I change these Lower and Upper thingies ,,,,,
This could seriously interupt my gardening and it aint arf slowed down my SETI@Home background task !