After a long day of visiting with friends on Furcadia, you decide to leave the family room and return to your bedroom... Upon opening the door you find your brat of a little sister sitting on the edge of your bed holding a Queen of Hearts in one hand and your mother's sewing scissors in the other... Her mumblings of "off with their heads" seemed a bit strange even for her until you noticed she had gone "Alice" on your favorite deck of playing cards... As she dropped the Queen of Hearts and ran off waving the scissors high laughing (yes, running with scissors) you notice she had cut the centers out of every card in the deck except for the Joker and the Queen of Hearts... With tears flowing, you gather up the cards, each in turn adding to the depth of the gapping hole which once was the deck's center... Then as you slid the Queen of Hearts into the middle of the deck the tears stopped... It was all clear to you now... Holding the deck tight, you rush back to the family room and scan three of the cards into your computer...

       

The first card you scanned was the Joker with his back towards you... You named this file "card1.bmp"...
The next card scanned was one of the damaged cards also with it's back towards you... You named this file "card2.bmp"...
Finally, the last card you scan into your computer is the "Queen of Hearts"... With what seems to be a bit of a smurk on her face you have her facing you... You name this file "card3.bmp"...
With all three cards now scanned and stored together in the same folder, you lean back in your chair and grin... You have just created your first "Insert Set" for D.W.A.R.F...

Start D.W.A.R.F. and select the main menu item File ..> Import Insert Set... to open a standard Windows dialog box...

Browse to the folder that has the "cards" insert set and select "card1.bmp" ... click open to import the insert set textures... D.W.A.R.F. will automatically search for and import the other "card" files included in the insert set...

Use the Wall Thickness Scroll Bar to increase the wall thickness to 12... This is what your beloved deck of cards will look like when first imported into D.W.A.R.F. as an insert set...

Select the "Shade Sunless Sides" button and using the Shading Scroll Bar set the shading percentage to 40%...

Click on the "Toggle Light Source" button to change the direction the "Sun" (light source) shines from... Notice the little "Sun" icon in the final image panel moved from the left side to the right side...

Click the "Insert Textures Dialog" button to open the Insert Textures Dialog box...

First notice the Insert Set panel on the right side of the dialog box... Here D.W.A.R.F. shows all the textures it found for the "cards" insert set... We could have added another texture to the set and named it "card4.bmp" if we so desired but for the purpose of this tutorial we'll just use the three we have...

The first texture shown is our "Joker" we scanned in... This texture will be the one used for texture wrapping and should not contain any Transparent Color...

The second texture from the top was one of the "damaged cards" with it's center cut away... Strange as it may seem this texture is called our "Cutout" texture... This is the texture D.W.A.R.F. will stack as if with a deck of cards, to create the main portion of the wall... Any areas of Transparent Color will show all the way through... In this particular case, the Transparent Color is the center (cutout) of the card and is Pure White (RGB 255,255,255)... The Transparent Color used for the insert set should be the same for all the textures used in an insert set... You can change your preferences as to what color you use as the Transparent Color from the main menu... So if the "cutout" section of the card had been filled with Pure Red (RGB 255,0,0) instead, then you could tell D.W.A.R.F. to use that color instead of the default Pure White (RGB 255,255,255)...

The third texture shown is the infamous Queen of Hearts... This texture is being used as our "Primary Insert"... This texture could have included transparent areas as well, especially if we were using it as a window and wanted to add glass to it, but for the purpose of this tutorial the background of the "card" was changed to a near white color so that no transparency would be shown...

A forth texture could be included in the insert set and used in exactly the same way as the "Primary Insert"... The forth texture is called the "Secondary Insert"... A useful example of a use for the "Primary Insert" AND "Secondary Insert" would be if you wanted a window (Primary Insert) with curtains (Secondary Insert) behind it, or purhaps a window (Primary Insert) with iron bars (Secondary Insert) in front of it...

OK, now how do we go about using these textures..?
Check the "Apply Selected Styles & Options" checkbox in the Applications panel... This tells D.W.A.R.F. that you do indeed want to use these texture with your wall... When checked, all available options will become available... Simple check the boxes of the effects you want to apply and set the positions within the wall you want the textures placed (kinda like where in the deck do you want the card placed)...
For this tutorial we need only select the "Use Primary Insert Only" radio button in the Insert Style panel and set the Primary Recess Scroll Bar to 4... The amount of recess available will depend on how thick the main wall is... If at any time you change your mind about the settings just click cancel... if some settings have already been applied, you can turn them off by just unchecking the "Apply Selected Styles & Options" checkbox... but for now, let's go ahead and apply our choices by clicking on the "Apply" button near the bottom of the dialog box...

Select the "Wrap Texture" button and the "Highlight Edges" button above it and *PRESTO* you've created your first wall using an insert set...

From here you can continue on creating your wall by adding shadows or enviromental effects or purhaps making your wall transparent... Play around with D.W.A.R.F. and see what you might be able to discover... You can also check the User's Guide for more information on the different menu options and effects...
Good luck..! and thank you for trying D.W.A.R.F... Siberian Ice