Pictures and Signs

PICTURES:

One of the coolest things about building in CNW is the fact that you can actually place a picture frame object that displays a 2D jpg image in your build. Likewise, there are various sign objects that will display text in a variety of colors. There are various objects that are designed to display online jpg images and sign text, see Junkyard World’s "Signs, Picts and Animate Panels" section. To display a picture, type this in the Action: box of the pict object you are using:

create picture tile01.jpg

tile01 is a texture that’s available for use in CNW’s list of textures. You can display textures as pictures in this manner if you so desire. If you want to display a jpg image that’s not in the textures list, you must use that image’s entire web address url in the command:

create picture http://fotosgalore.com/mydog.jpg

(Note: this url is just a made up address)

You can also use the texture command to add a texture to the frame edges along the pict object that does not display the picture. Here’s an example:

create picture http://fotoagalore.com/mydog.jpg,texture tile01

The portion of the pict object that doesn't display a picture will then be textured. To take that one step farther, sometimes builders prefer to use just the square display portion of the pict object, that part that shows the image, so they type:

create picture tile01.jpg,texture fw1 mask=fw1m

The masked texture fw1 is a transparent jpg image when you apply its mask in the texture command. That means the object you place that in will be invisible except for portions of that object that have been isolated from the texturing action done with texture commands (like pict and sign objects).

SIGNS:

Sign objects will display any text that is typed into their Description: box if "create sign" (no quotes) is also present in the object’s Action: box. The default colors of the sign text and background are white text and blue background. You can also adjust the text and background colors by adding color=__ and bcolor=__ to that line like this:

create sign color=brown bcolor=grey

That will display a sign with brownish red text on a medium grey background. There are 31 "pre-programmed" color names loaded into the CNW server that allow builders to display a color in this manner. Here is a list of all of them:

aquamarine, black, blue, brass, bronze, brown, copper, cyan, darkgrey, forestgreen, gold, green, grey, lightgrey, magenta, maroon, navyblue, orange, orangered, orchid, pink, red, salmon, scarlet, skyblue, tan, teal, turquoise, violet, white, yellow

You can also customize your colors by using a hex code (html) color picker that displays a color palette that you can click on to choose just the right shade and hue. Once you click on the color you like, the program will display that color’s html hex color code that you can type into the sign or color command you are using in place of a pre-programmed color name (like green). Here's an online color picker program that’s available for builders to use at:

If you have any questions about this Building Tip you can email:

ewasx@cybernetworlds.net

~Ewasx~