Changing the Sky or Ground in Alice

Learning about Alice:    How do I change the texture of the sky and/or the
ground?

Sky:

In the templates, the only sky color that isn't blue is the space template.

So, the color of the sky isn't a problem unless you want the space
template. In this case, you can drag in a new sky object from the "Stars"
3D model, located in the

Local Gallery --> Environments --> Skies folder.


Ground:

a) Select the ground object in the Object tree
b) In the Properties panel of the Details pane (under the Object tree), you

will find a tile
labeled "skin texture", which in the green grass template, is a texture map

named "ground.GrassTexture".
This is what needs to be replaced. The problem is that the texture map is
actually a graphic image file buried within the template world.

So, let's say you want to replace the green grass texture map with with the

moon texture map. There are two ways to do this:

First approach:
1) Save your world.
2) Open a world with the moon template.
3) Right mouse click on the ground and save it.
4) Open your original world, and import (File-import) your moon ground
(Chapter 4 of our text deals with this in more detail)
5) Remove the original ground object.


Second approach. This takes advantage of the fact that an Alice template
world is actually a zipped file and you can unzip the file and find the
texture map. I believe that you will find (in the unzipped files) an image

named "image.png" -- this is the texture map.
a) Extract the "image.png" file from the zipped template world. Renamed the

extracted image
to something like "moonTexture.png"
b) In Alice, click the Properties panel for the ground object. At the
bottom of the panel, find the
Texture Maps subdirectory and click the Import Image Map button.
c) Use the popup window to locate the extracted image and click on the
Import button to bring
the new texture map into the world. You should see a new tile with the name

of the new texture
map on it.
d) Finally, drag the new texture map tile up to replace the grass texture
map. You should see
an immediate change of the ground appearance.