v7 beta documentation in progress. v7 beta documentation may be incomplete or inaccurate.
v7 functions and features may be significantly different from previous ACS versions.
These instructions are not valid for current v6+ ACS!
PaintSystem should be used if you wish to provide preset graphics textures for parts of your vehicle for the vehicle owner to be able to alternate, such as different seat cover textures on a motorcycle, or different interiors on a car.
PaintSystem allows you to create a list of part categories and make a list of texture UUID's in a notecard that the vehicle owner can cycle through for each category from the vehicle menu to swap textures on a single prim face or groups of prim faces you have pre-defined.
For example, if you create a category named Fenders in the necessary notecard and add three texture UUID's in that category and assign that category to specific prim faces using the Mechanic HUD, the vehicle owner will be able to choose that part category from the Paint menu in the Graphics menu, and swap through the textures. You can have several custom categories all in the notecard.
To use, you must install the single PaintSystem script in the root, as well as prepare a notecard named cfg-paint to be placed in the root as well.
PaintSystem will work with single-face sculpts as well as specified faces on multi-face prims.
PaintSystem will work using texture UUID's, or you can include the texture files in the vehicle root and refer to them by texture name. You will need to refer to them by name if the texture is no-modify for you and you cannot access its UUID. (see below)
PaintSystem will also allow vehicle owners to change texture sets of parts if you have multiple categories. This is based on the order the texture UUID's/names are listed in the notecard. This allows you to make matching sets of textures applied to different categories that can easily be swapped.
PaintSystem can be installed and functions fine along side the other ACS graphics systems such as KCPaint.
Upgrading from earlier ACS versions:
Previously in ACS this system was configured using a script called GFX-T or GFX-TC along with a cfg-paint notecard. You can use your existing cfg-paint notecard with the new PaintSystem if you are simply updating an older vehicle, though you will still need to assign prim faces using touch select for your categories with the Mechanic HUD. Defining your custom categories is no longer done in the script, rather it uses the category names from the notecard. (see below).
Setup
- Install/inject the PaintSystem script into the vehicle root.
- Create a new notecard called cfg-paint and place it in the vehicle root. (all lower case letters)
Open the notecard inside the vehicle, and make up a category name for the part(s) you wish to define, such as tire, seat or hood. Then enter that name on a line in the notecard.
Then, on following lines, add the texture UUID's that you are assigning to the category. Each key must go on a new line. Your notecard will look something like this:
Fenders
00c5c7e1-909c-932c-2f38-eff388509c4b
3cdab740-d6a9-59d4-7874-a9e60833570e
9415bb5b-9cad-8442-9cad-0ee0184e806a
Now we have a category called Fenders, and three textures for it. The next step will be to assign the Fenders category to specific prims using the Mechanic HUD. After that, the vehicle owner can choose the Fenders category from their menu and cycle through these three textures. The texture will be applied to all the prim faces that you have pre-defined for that category.
NOTE: Categories must have at least TWO UUID's or they will not be usable. Blank categories or categories with less than two UUID's (or texture names) will not be available to the user menu or for assigning by you via the Mechanic HUD.
Assigning category to prim faces:
- With the Mechanic HUD on, touch the vehicle to connect.
- From the Mechanic HUD menu, choose GRAPHICS and then PAINTSYSTEM
- Choose LOAD PAINT CARD on the the Mechanic HUD to load the notecard for setup and wait a few seconds for it to load.
- Choose TOUCH SELECT PAINT FACES on the the Mechanic HUD.
- Touch the prim face or multiple faces on the vehicle you want to be assigned for the example Fenders category.
- The prims/prim faces you have touched should be slowly flashing to indicate they are selected.
- From the Mechanic HUD menu select ASSIGN CATEGORY TO SELECTED
- You will get a pop-up menu listing your categories. In this case, choose Fenders. Your category is now assigned to the selected prim faces.
- Choose MAIN MENU on the the Mechanic HUD to exit setup mode so you can access the vehicle menu
- Touch the vehicle and choose Options, Graphics, Paint. The Fenders category should now appear.
- Choose Fenders to swap through your three assigned textures on the assigned prim faces.
The PaintSystem is ready for use.
Note: Reboot the vehicle after setting up to correctly sync up the different systems.
Adding more categories
You can add up to at least 50 categories to the notecard and as many textures to the notecard as you like.
Multiple categories would look like this in your notecard:
Doors
7884e905-0d6f-2104-5df1-b4cf2f6921eb
5ee5f67a-d5ef-6b59-28a0-e2cd50858fca
318c115e-9aee-4e92-8637-5f11741b0a66
fd913124-4145-b44f-99a9-f9957905b214
ac85b639-00b5-25a6-3391-ec1658f87bdc
Fenders
00c5c7e1-909c-932c-2f38-eff388509c4b
3cdab740-d6a9-59d4-7874-a9e60833570e
9415bb5b-9cad-8442-9cad-0ee0184e806a
Tire Tread
318c115e-9aee-4e92-8637-5f11741b0a66
fd913124-4145-b44f-99a9-f9957905b214
ac85b639-00b5-25a6-3391-ec1658f87bdc
This would add the options Doors, Fenders and Tire Tread to the > Options, > Graphics, > Paint menu on the vehicle.
Calling textures by name instead of UUID
You can load a texture by name instead of UUID. You will need to do this if you do not own the texture full permission and therefore cannot access the UUID. You may also wish to do this to protect the UUID from being viewed in the notecard by the vehicle owner.
You will need to place and leave the texture file in the vehicle root or the script will not be able to access it.
You will need to add a ! (exclamation point) directly before the texture name (no space between the ! and the texture name) in the notecard. You can mix UUID's with texture names.
To assign the textures Blue Paint and flames005 to the Fenders category, your notecard would need to look like this:
Fenders
!Blue Paint
!flames005
You can mix and match texture names with UUID's like this:
Seats
!purpleflames
7884e905-0d6f-2104-5df1-b4cf2f6921eb
5ee5f67a-d5ef-6b59-28a0-e2cd50858fca
318c115e-9aee-4e92-8637-5f11741b0a66
!Black Leather
ac85b639-00b5-25a6-3391-ec1658f87bdc
00c5c7e1-909c-932c-2f38-eff388509c4b
3cdab740-d6a9-59d4-7874-a9e60833570e
9415bb5b-9cad-8442-9cad-0ee0184e806a
trunk
318c115e-9aee-4e92-8637-5f11741b0a66
!acs steel 5
fd913124-4145-b44f-99a9-f9957905b214
ac85b639-00b5-25a6-3391-ec1658f87bdc
Texture Sets
Texture sets are created by default based on the notecard contents. If you have more than one category, the option to move through texture sets with the »Set and «Set option appearing in the user's menu.
Let's say you have three categories, each with three UUID's listed in the notecard. Advancing forward through the sets would load the second listed UUID for each category, then the third, and then the first and so on.
The number of texture sets depends on the shortest list of UUID's in a category. If you had five textures in one category, seven in another, and four in the third category, the vehicle would swap through a maximum of four sets. The category with the least textures defines the maximum amount of sets. Textures outside of the range of sets can still be manually cycled through by the user by selecteing the individual category from the menu.
Other MCH menu options for PaintSystem setup:
- Clear Current Selection: Simply de-selects any flashing selected prim faces
- Wipe Specific Category: Lets you choose a category from the menu to remove from the entire vehicle linkset
- Wipe All Categories: Remove all PaintSystem prim faces assignments from the entire vehicle linkset.
Things to Know
- PaintSystem texture changes do not have any effect on ColorSystem groups and vice versa. PaintSystem changes the base texture on prim faces, not the assigned color or shine levels.
- Category names can include spaces, but not numbers or punctuation.
- Categories are re-loaded into memory when the vehicle is rebooted, so if your notecard has a lot of entries, it will take longer to process.
- Once categories are assigned to prim faces, you can add to/change the lists of textures directly in the notecard. You will need to reboot the vehicle to load the new changes.
- Texture repeats and offsets are only what is manually assigned to the prim faces by you, the builder. Changing the texture via PaintSystem swaps only the texture and does not change the texture repeats and offsets, therefore textures must all line up to the repeats and offsets set on the prim face itself.
- Categories will not appear in the vehicle menu if you have not assigned those categories to prim faces, so be sure any included categories in the notecard are actually assigned to prim faces.
- Once you assign prim faces and categories using the Mechanic HUD to a prim or prims, you can unlink the prims and re-link them, or even link them to another vehicle. The category and face assignments stay with the prim until you specifically delete them. For example, if you assign the category Tank to a sculpted fuel tank, you can unllink that prim into another vehicle and it will respond to the Tank category without needing to be re-assigned.
- Texture names and UUID's are not stored in script memory, the script reads them from the notecard when it needs to apply the texture. Therefore a long list of textures in the notecard will not use up/max out the script memory. You can have virtually unlimited amounts of textures per category.
- You can have up to at least 50 categories, though exceeding much more than that that amount may run in to trouble. Chances are you won't need more than a handful. If you have a huge amount of categories, they will take a long time to load after rebooting the vehicle.
- Make sure when calling the textures by name from the notecard to add the ! before the texture name, or the script will mistake the texture name for a category and things will not work properly.
- It is best to keep category names a reasonable length, such as 12 characters or less so that they can be displayed properly on the vehicle menu.
- You can have more than one category assigned to a prim, but if you have more than four different categories assigned to a single prim, especially if your category names are lengthy, you may exceed the prim storage capacity. There are limits. In most cases you will likely not need to assign more than a couple different categories to an individual prim.
- You can assign an individual prim face to more than one category, but whichever category is changed by the user from the [[menu] is going to override any other category.
- PaintSystem works fine along with KCPaint and prim faces can be assigned to both systems. For example, if both PaintSystem and KCPaint are both set up for a motorcycle tank texture, the user can use either system to customize the tank texture.
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