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Old 3rd August 2011, 11:09 PM   #1
rogue
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Default screensaver using textures

Is there a way to get the free 3d screen saver to use textures?
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Old 5th August 2011, 06:10 AM   #2
Andy
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Default Re: screensaver using textures

Try using a .rgb file as a texture -that might work. make sure the file is in the models folder along with the model that uses it.
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Old 5th August 2011, 11:55 AM   #3
rogue
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Default Re: screensaver using textures

I can't get that to work either. I'm on windows, so I dl'ed xnview and converted the jpg to an rgb file. Then in the ac file I replaced all texture.jpg with texture.rgb. Still doesn't work.

Edit:

I've got it to work. It was having trouble finding the texture file (which does indeed need to be an rgb file).

The best solution seems to be to give complete absolute names to the texture file. E.g.,

"C:/Program Files/3D Model Screen Saver/Models/texture.rgb"

(Note: The usual windows backward slashes will not work. They must be forward slashes.)

Also, as it is currently installed it does not show up in the list of screensavers. Copying ac3d.scr to C:\Windows\System32 fixes this.

Last edited by rogue; 5th August 2011 at 07:09 PM.
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Old 25th June 2012, 05:41 PM   #4
PixelOz
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Question Re: screensaver using textures

I'm still having trouble making the texture work.

I took the Aston Martin car, converted the texture to an .rgb file using Gimp 2.8 and placed it in the models directory (in the C:\Program Files\3D Model Screen Saver\Models folder) together with the Aston Martin .ac 3D model.

It still came out white. But I was able to make it work once. I remember that I sort of opened the model in AC3D and went to the Object/Texture menu and selected Load texture... option and selected the converted Aston Martin.rgb file as texture and saved the .ac file.

Went to the screensaver and the Aston appeared as a textured model. After that I did another model as test and couldn't get it to display the texture (and I still placed both the model .ac file and the .rgb texture in the C:\Program Files\3D Model Screen Saver\Models folder but to no avail.

I went back and tried to repeat the process I had done with the Aston but to my surprise couldn't duplicate it, what I got was the Aston now appearing completely white in the screensaver.

I tried many times to duplicate what I did before but couldn't get any model to display textures in the screensaver.

What exactly is that you have to do to achieve this? What do you refer to about the path of the texture?

Are you talking about changing the extension of the .ac file momentarily to .txt and editing it as a text file in Windows Notepad to change the path to the texture? Cause I tried that and I'm still having trouble with it.

I tried the slashes forward and backward and still the model opens white in the screensaver.

Can you guys elaborate a little on how to give the models textures properly? Can you explain that part about the path to the texture better?

I already understand perfectly the .rgb texture part cause the Flight Gear flight simulator uses that and I already had put an AC3D model of an Xwing Fighter there experimentally and made it fly like a Jet so that is no problem. Converting the textures to Silicon Graphics .rgb format is easy.

It seems that I still haven't manage to make the screensaver find the texture. Can you help with this? I bet that other people could be having this issue too and I'm sure that it could help to clarify this.
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Old 27th June 2012, 08:16 AM   #5
PixelOz
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Smile Re: screensaver using textures

Ok, I figured out what I was doing wrong and now I can finally display the models with textures too in the screensaver! Yeeees!!!

The issue is that you have to actually open the file (by changing temporarily the extension from .ac to .txt) and specify carefully the absolute path to the textures as was previously stated.

But I made the mistake for example in the Aston Martin car to forget to look for all the instances inside the file of the object textures. So I had to be careful to find each of the words texture and in all of those, in each and every one of them the absolute path had to be specified as well.

I used the Windows Notepad Find function to find each instance of the word texture and fixed the path of each one carefully. If you leave even only one without specifying the absolute path to the texture the screensaver will give up and display your model blank without any of them.

The other issue to watch out for is what our friend reminded us before of using the correct slashes for the texture path and they should be as in this example:

texture "C:/Program Files/3D Model Screen Saver/Models/Aston Martin.rgb"

If you specify each and every object texture with the correct absolute path to the textures your model will display with textures. After that change the extension of the file back from .txt to .ac. That's all.

Last edited by PixelOz; 27th June 2012 at 08:19 AM.
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Old 6th September 2015, 03:00 PM   #6
jkberna
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Default Re: screensaver using textures

What do you mean .rgb?? there is no rgb extencion... I tried using .jpg and .png in RGB format, It still doesn't work.

BTW, this litlle screensaver could be something great, if it had a few more options and getting the textures working wasn't such a pain.
I could see companies bying this to be able to have theyr logos and ans sutch as a screensaver. I've looked all over for something like this, and can't find any.
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Old 7th September 2015, 08:09 AM   #7
Andy
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Default Re: screensaver using textures

.rgb is a specific file format (invented by Silicon Graphics I think). You may find a graphics program that is able to write the .rgb file for the textures required for the screensaver.

We may look at updating the screensaver.
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Old 7th September 2015, 11:09 AM   #8
jkberna
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Default Re: screensaver using textures

Yes you are right of course, I was unaware of that format.
I got the textures working (thank you PixelOz for your detailed tutorial), but it's a very user-UNfriendly process. You should really look into improving that...
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