Applying Textures in ActiveWorlds

Textures can be extremely tricky to get to work in ActiveWorlds. The best tutorial that explains how textures work in RenderWare is available on the links page and can also be accessed here.

There are also a few helpful tools that people have created to make the texturing process a little less tedious. Here the ones that I use the most and their appropriate instructions:

Texture Mapper by Magine

This program is similar to Texture Changer except it gives you a little more freedom with how you want the texture mapped. The only catch is that you need to go into the renderware code and assign a texture. So if you are wary of dealing with the renderware file in plain text then use TextureChanger. I could not seem to find the original site where I downloaded this from so you can download it from the link above.
Here's the nitty-gritty with this one:

1. Open the program by double clicking the .exe file.
2. The first text field is where the file name of the desired object goes. Click on the Filename Button and select a file using the window.
   • ***VERY IMPORTANT*** When using this program always make a copy of the object to be textured before selecting it with Texture Mapper. This is because the program will alter the original file, NOT create a copy of it and then apply the texture. So it is best if you name the original file and your copy of it differently (like orig.rwx and textured.rwx) so that you can keep track of which is which.
3. The New Action Button only has one action in it, "No Boundary," so leave that alone.
4. Choose the direction of mapping. EX. If you want the texture upside down click the "Bottom to Top" radio button.
5. If you would like to mirror or flip the texture you can do so by checking the appropriate box.
6. Now select which setting or settings you would like to use regaurding the UV's. If you are modifying an old object you may want to discard the old UV's.
7. Now you can choose your minimum and maximum UV values. This simply means that if you would like the texture to appear once like this:
   
   Then you would set the maximum UV values to 1. But if you wanted it to appear like this:
   
   Then you would set the max values to 2 and so on. On a side note if you wanted only half of the texture to be mapped then put .5 into the max values.
8. Click on the GO Button. If all worked correctly the text bottom at the bottom should read "Done."

****NOTE****
Texture Mapper does not assign the texture to the object, all it does is assign the appropriate UV values so that you don't have to do all the math. If you want to assign a texture:

1. Open the renderware file in Notepad or Wordpad.
2. Go to the section that usually contains the surface and color attributes and add the following tag:
   texture texturename
   replacing the "texturename" with the appropriate name of the texture.

Texture Changer copywrite HolyDiver 9-6-1998

This program is great if you don't want to get involved with the math that is needed to texture by hand. However, THIS PROGRAM ONLY WORKS ON OBJECTS THAT ALREADY HAVE A TEXTURE. I searched high and low for the original page that I downloaded this from but with no luck, so I hope the credit above will suffice.
So here's how the program works:

1. Open the program by double clicking the .exe file.
2. There are three fields: Original Model File, Texture Name, and Output Model File.
   • The Original Model File is the file you want to apply the texture to.
   • Texture name is what it implies, the name of the texture file (usually a JPEG).
   • Output File Name is the name of the file for the newly textured object.
3. Click on the Original Model File Button. A window should open allowing you to select an object file from your computer. Choose the object to be textured and click "open".
4. Next click on the Texture Name Button. Choose the texture to be applied in the same manner as above.
5. Click on the Output Model File Button. Name the file that will be created (i.e. textured_object.rwx).

***NOTE***
Be sure that the .* in front of the .rwx that is already present when the program is opened is no longer there or else you will get an invalid file.

So that's how to use these two programs. That should help to get you on the way to texturing just about anything. Remember, if you prefer to do it by hand just refer to the link at the top of this page or on the links page.