Create a new Texture object by double clicking on
"Texture" in the Object Toolbox, or by selecting the "--- new Texture
---" item in the "Texture" pulldown in a ParticleBurst,
ImageLayer, or other object. The Texture dialog will
open. Under most circumstances, the first action youll want to perform is to select
a Bitmap object for use by this Texture. Go to the
"Bitmaps" tab in the Texture dialog, and, in the Bitmap pulldown, either select
the name of an existing Bitmap object, or select "---
new Bitmap ---", which will create a new Bitmap.
Once you have selected a Bitmap for
use with this Texture, you can use the X1 / X2 / Y1 / Y2 indices to control how much of
the Bitmap will be used. They represent percentages of the
total width and height of the Bitmap, i.e. 0.0 represents
the left or top edge of the Bitmap, and 1.0 represents the
right or bottom edge. A value of 0.5 would represent the center of the Bitmap. The default values for X1, X2, Y1, and Y2 select the
entire bitmap, as shown graphically below:

If you wanted to use just the upper-left-hand quadrant of a Bitmap, you would use values of 0.5 for X2 and Y2, and leave X1
and Y1 at 0.0, as below:

Finally, you can use values for X1, Y1, X2, and Y2 that are outside
the range 0.0 - 1.0, enabling you to tile the Bitmap. For
example, values of 0.0 for X1 and Y1, and values of 2.0 for X2 and Y2 would create 4
copies of the Bitmap, tiled in the following fashion:

Also consider that you can use negative values for any of the
indices, and that you can "flip-flop" the indices to mirror a Texture. Since all
of the indices are ControlChannels, you can animate them over time to create zoom and pan
effects with the Texture. Finally, you can use the Tile / Clamp Horizontal and Tile /
Clamp Vertical controls to select the behavior of a tiled Bitmap.
By default, Tile Horizontal and Tile Vertical are selected, causing indices outside the
range 0.0 - 1.0 to tile the Bitmap as in the above example.
If Clamp Horizontal or Clamp Vertical are selected, the Bitmap
edge pixels will be repeated, instead.
Now that youve selected a Bitmap
and defined how much of it will be used, youre ready to select options for this
Texture, located on the "Type" tab. If this Texture is going to be applied to
polygons, you can set Type to either "Normal", causing the Texture to be applied
to polygons like a layer of paint, or "Environment", causing the Texture to be
applied to polygons like perfectly reflective chrome. If this Texture is going to be used
by some other type of object instead, you can ignore Type.