planet textures

[hohonator]

how do you give a planet a texture in us?not a default one...a custom texture

[spaceranger]

The short answer:

Create a sphere-mapped image file for your planet texture. The image pixel ratio should be 2:1 (i.e. twice as many pixels wide as high; for example: 1024 pixels wide and 512 pixels high). Convert the image file into DDS. Save the file, using a UNIQUE name, into the ..\Universe Sandbox\Media folder (do not overwrite an existing file). Convert your .ubox file into xml. Find the <texture> section of your planet's/star's parameters and update the texture name to your custom texture. Convert your updated xml file back into a ubox file. Enjoy.

However, the short answer may not be entirely clear to you right away. If you don't know what a sphere-mapped texture is, you'll be stuck from the get go. Luckily, there are some free programs that create sphere-mapped textures by default; this thread lists a number of such programs that you can use to create your own textures http://universesandbox.com/forum/index.php/topic,3760.0.html

If you already have a custom texture, and it's already sphere-mapped in the correct proportions, then you simply need to covert it to dds format and save it with a unique name into the \Media folder. Here's one free tool that you can use to do this:
http://eliteforce2.filefront.com/file/DDS_Converter;29412

You can also use GIMP and a DDS plugin, here's one short reference. However, I would just go to the GIMP site and download the latest version of GIMP directly from their site http://www.gimp.org/:
http://forum.ragezone.com/f497/using-gimp-instead-photoshop-editing-633188/

If you're still unsure as to what a sphere-mapped texture is, I would download either the DDS Converter or the GIMP/plugin software (or both, if you want) and take a look at the dds files in the ..\Universe Sandbox\Media folder (on my computer, the full path is C:\Program Files\Universe Sandbox\Media).

Post any specific questions here, it's much easier to answer them as you go step by step through the process, then to document an exhaustive reference covering every possible question or knowledge gap that you may have.

Good luck!