Sapphire Users' Guide

To open the Sapphire 3D rendering window in L3DT, click on the '3D' button on the toolbar (shown below), or select the 'Extensions→Sapphire→Open 3D renderer' menu option.

	The Sapphire 3D viewer toolbar button in L3DT (see toolbar)

The keyboard/mouse controls are listed on the controls page (view as PDF).

Sapphire includes several heightfield editing mouse tools, which are described on the heightfield editing page.

Sapphire includes a brush tool for painting land types onto the attributes map, as described on the attributes map editing page.

Sapphire also includes a brush tool for painting textures directly onto the texture map, as described on the texture map editing page.

You can change some of the rendering settings, such as fog colour, by selecting the 'Extensions→Sapphire→Edit settings' menu option. The settings are described on the settings page.

In Sapphire, you can instantaneously teleport from one place on the map to another using the 't' (teleport) hot-key, or by selecting the 'Teleport' menu option in Sapphire. The controls are described on the teleporting and presets page.

Sapphire can render the terrain in three modes; wireframe, polygon and textured, which you can select using the 'm' (mode) hot-key, or by using the 'View' menu options in Sapphire. For more information, please refer to the rendering modes page.

It is possible to script some commands in Sapphire using the ZeoScript plugin ('Extensions→ZeoScript→Run script' menu option), or by using the zscript_Execute plugin API function. The list of scripting functions supported by Sapphire is given on the scripting page.

When using megatextures (16x or 32x high-res textures), there are a few tips to remember. These are listed on the megatextures page.

You can change the terrain triangle count using the '0' (increase tris) and '9' (decrease tris) hot-keys. However, since L3DT uses a view-optimised mesh, you don't actually need all that many triangles for your terrain to look good. This is explained on the triangle count page.