; TIPS.TXT file for Leveller 2.0
; Original contents Copyright 1999-2001 Daylon Graphics Ltd.
;
; You can add your own tips by simply typing them, one per line, 
; up to 1,000 characters per tip. Blank lines and lines starting 
; with a semicolon are ignored. Tips are displayed in the same 
; order that they are listed here, and then cycle over.
; Very long tips may not fully appear; always preview your tips 
; to make sure that they are readable. 

You can navigate the 3D scene using the A and Z keys and the number pad keys.
The scene navigation keys are customizable. Use the Navigate, Keyboard Controls... command to do this.
You can show the elevation in a tooltip near the map cursor by accessing the File, Preferences, Other... command.
You can refresh the scene pane in the active window by pressing F5.
You can choose the Camera tool with the spacebar if you set the corresponding preference in the File, Preferences, Other... command.
You can define preferred folders for use with the File Open/Save dialogs with the File, Preferences, Folders... command.
You can improve tech support by logging commands to a text file with the Help, Diagnose, Log Commands... command.
In File Open/Save dialogs, you can switch to a drive's current folder by specifying the drive letter and a colon (e.g., "D:").
Holding down the Ctrl key while clicking the map with the Camera tool lets you circle a specific point on the heightfield.
If you Ctrl-click with the camera to circle the heightfield, you don't have to hold down the Ctrl key to keep circling.
Once you've raytraced a scene, you can move the light object and instantly re-raytrace it by pressing F8. The same is true for changing textures and colormaps.
If you need to re-raytrace a scene, but you are only changing colorizer settings, it is faster to use the View, Raytracing, Colorizer Settings... command instead of the View, Raytracing, Raytrace... command. 
You can add your own tips to the Tip of the Day dialog. Simply open the TIPS.TXT file in Notepad or any similar text editor.
Water textures render much faster if they are 24-bit, and have square dimensions that are a power of two (e.g., 128 x 128).
You can set a preferred bitmap format, which will be suggested as the default format in bitmap Open/Save dialogs.
You can store frequently-used camera positions in viewpoints, with the Navigate, Set Viewpoint command. The viewpoints are stored in the document for instant reuse.
The camera position for a newly opened document defaults to its first viewpoint.
"Grid units" and "pixels" are synonymous terms.
Terragen documents can be opened directly in Leveller using the File, Open... command.
You can export the heightfield as a texture image by raytracing an orthographic projection with the camera facing straight down.
A bitmap which is N pixels wide creates a heightfield which is N-1 units wide. This is because pixels are mapped to vertices, not to the space between vertices.
To create large mounds or depressions, make a radial ramp with the Ramp tool, instead of using the Dig/Raise tools.
Selections can be arbitrarily semi-opaque, like an alpha channel. The opacity of a selection pixel controls how strongly an effect occurs to the heightfield's elevation at that point.
You can press Alt-1 and Alt-2 to select the previous and next editing tool, and if the tool is a brush-based tool, pressing Alt-3 and Alt-4 will select the previous and next common brush size.
If the navigation keys don't do anything, try clicking the scene pane first.
You can increase available memory by copying a small selection to the clipboard, which will replace any large selection that may have been on it.
You can make realistic crater walls by selecting a circular area, deselecting a smaller circular area within, and using the Mound filter with some hand editing afterwards.
You can use Reference Shapes to test how other 3D objects fit next to the heightfield.
You can create arbitrarily-angled straight-edged selections by using the Arbitrary Selection tool. The tool shape's endpoints are always joined with a straight line, and...
...by using the Ctrl key, you can subtract straight-edged sections from a selection.
You can disable the auto-refresh of the scene pane by accessing the document's preferences.
You can position the scene camera with the mouse by using the Camera tool.
You can use a hi-res heightfield to create a detailed texture, which can then be used on a lo-res version of the heightfield. The results are often visually adequate while taking far less memory.
You can make Leveller start in maximized mode by making a shortcut to the Leveller icon, and editing the shortcut's properties.
Pressing the spacebar rotates between the currently selected tool, the Zoom tool, and the Pan tool.
You can exit the full-screen scene mode by pressing Esc.
With large heightfields, using a 2 x 2 or a 4 x 4 sampling rate for the rendition style usually is unnoticeable in the scene pane (but renders much faster).
Pressing F1 when a dialog box is open will display help specific to that dialog.
Newly created documents and views are based on the application's preferences.
Leveller colormap, animation, and reference shape files can be edited with a text editor.
The map and scene panes in the document windows can be switched around by pressing Alt-9. The editing and brush toolbars also move to be near the map pane.
Attached textures and water can be shown on the overview map.
The current view rendition style affects how scenes are exported.
You can export POV-Ray renditions as Leveller-importable heightfields using its 'HFGray16' keyword.
The Selection, Defloat, Union command lets you merge a floating selection into the heightfield in an intuitive manner.
If your heightfield is large, using selections will speed up processing.
If your heightfield is large, you should use the View, Set Work Area command to limit processing to the area being edited.
If your heightfield is terraced, compressing its TER file with PKZIP or a similar program will reduce its size substantially.
If your heightfield is terraced, you can use lower-quality formats when exporting it without affecting render quality.
You can scale a selection in XZ space by copying it to its own heightfield, then resizing that heightfield, and copying it back.
Plug-in menu items are placed in different menus depending on their purpose. Import and export plug-ins, for example, are found in the File, Import and File, Export menus, respectively.
The view, document, and application rendition preferences all use the F key in their menu shortcuts. Press Shift-F, Ctrl-F, and Shift-Ctrl-F, respectively.
This is the last tip.

