Image_File_Names_and_Lua

Image File Names and Lua

Okay, if you're like me, you always end up getting something neat and new, and when you open the box up, instead of going through the manual, you instead toss it over your shoulder and dive right in!

Only to later make a lot of mistakes and trying to find that manual!

I'm not saying that you should always read the manual first (actually you should), but it's kind of a "guy" thing. I think it's related to why we refuse to stop and ask for directions when we're lost, and why we don't hunt down a sales rep at a store and ask for help finding something. We like to "explore", how else can I have a good reason to walk all around the hardware store, drooling over the latest power tools? Or driving all around (just so I can drive), and spotting a good place to eat or hang out?

But in the end sometimes we need someone to tell us the information we need or point in the right direction.

If you dived right into using your Lua editor and started looking at the main.lua and node.lua files, you may have noticed a few things like the image names:

For a "Slide" type environment you might have seen this:

    slide { "background.png" }

And you see it all the time. You may ask yourself: "Does the name of the image that is show always have to be "background.png"?"

The answer is "No." But the name that you have in your Lua file MUST match the name of the image you want to use. It could say this:

    slide { "MyFatNose.png" }

As long as the image file you are using has the same name! Don't save your rendered image file as "MyFatNose.png" and leave the Lua file to say "background.png" because it won't load your rendered image.

In a "Cubic" type of environment, you'll see this as the default:

    cubic {"front.jpg","right.jpg","back.jpg","left.jpg","top.jpg","bottom.jpg"}

To me, it's a good idea to leave these names just like you see them, and if you use an exporter script in your 3D modeling program that exports your render in cubic mode, it will give the images the right names. The reason this is important is, you don't want to have your ground end up being your sky and the sky being your ground!

Does this mean you can't rename your images and change the names in the Lua file?

No, you can have your cubic images different names if you want, and you can put those names in the Lua file. BUT! You need to make sure you have them in the right order! If you change their names, you still need to have them in this order:

Front, Right, Back, Left, Top, and Bottom

It's up to you to decide which is the front and back (which in turn determines what is Left and Right), however, to have them displayed correctly in Pipmak, you must keep the order I list above. If you don't, you'll end up with a very silly looking environment, like the picture below:

So the lesson here is: you can use different image names, and put those names in your Lua files, just make sure you don't have any typos and that if it's a cubic type of environment, you keep the correct order the images need to be in!

---

Return To: [Main_Page]