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FSX Adding night textures - possible?

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wales
Is it possible to add night textures to an existing model without going back to the gmax stage? I ask, as I have downloaded several FSX buildings, for placement using InstantScenery (Flight) and Object Placement Tool (Mission), but they don't show well at Night.

I understand that night textures are associated with xxx_LM.dds textures. Can I produce these and simply add them to the model's texture folder? Or does the link to these night textures have to be made at the 'construction' (gmax) stage?

Lastly, I appreciate that there is an ethical question here - should I be editing another author's work?!? Maybe this is not a problem if this approach to adding night textures isn't possible anyway...

Thanks for your help!

Cheers - Dai. :cool:
 
Decompiling a scenery model and editing it is (now) possible.

Editing and redistributing another's work without permission is frowned upon.

Simply adding a texture to the texture folder will not have any effect if it is not specified in the models material settings. So you would need (theoretically) to alter the model as well.

This raises another question, as the model you alter is a universal file, and will be altered everywhere it is used ... so altering core files in this way is a developer no no.
 
Thanks for that, HC - I guess the best thing to do is to contact the original scenery designer and ask for their advice and possible assistance. Although it might be feasible to edit the FSX materials associated with the scenery object, I'm afraid my experience in that particular aspect of modelling is almost zero, so I'd be letting myself in for a lot of frustration!

Mind you, I could always develop the model(s) I need with from scratch with gmax - ha!!

Cheers - Dai. :cool:
 
Hi,

Asking the author is indeed the best approach. Since he has the sources making the changes will be easiest there.

As hcornea already said the MDL files need to be modified to add night textures. This can be done with ModelConverterX, but if you want to distribute your improvement you would need permission from the author anyway.
 
I have a downtown Las Vegas addon but the buildings do not have night textures. Would it be possible to add the nightights to them in the different colors?
 
What do you mean with different colours?

As discussed above you can modify the objects and add night textures. You would need to make those in your texture editor.
 
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