Photorealist - Seeking Help

[woodsonl 0]

I have completed an attempt at the night scenery.

It is quite different from the default night lighting technique used by others.

The roads serve as my street lights with a process that is fast and simple to do.

Please try my sample and let me know what you think about my results.

The area done is Southern Connecticut KBDR.

The water masking has not been blended yet and a few lakes need to be removed still.

 

http://www.sim-savvy.com/Downloads/CT_South_Sample.zip

 

Thanks Larry

[woodsonl 0]

Ok How do I upload and post a picture to this forum?

I have to search hard everytime and I can't find it this time.

 

 

Found it. Here is a night shot

Thank you for the blending info also.

[Clutch Cargo 385]

Just tried your sample. This is very subjective but I personally am not "WoW" ed by it like I was the first time I loaded up MegaScenery at night. The streets are to solid with light - everywhere be it on highways or back roads. And tooooo bright! B) Some of the smaller roads looked better than the major streets. Not sure if that is trees creating a less solid line effect. Be interesting to see that with color correction on the textures as the sample is very blue.

 

My question is why not apply the same method they did before? Appears they were taking road data and combining it with custom detailed night road textures (one type for major highways and another for smaller roads) which were automatically laid over the photoreal textures. Granted some of the night roads went off course not following the day textures but at night you really did not notice that when flying unless you looked real close. But I thought the concept of this method was very solid.

 

If you continue experimenting with this method, I would say keep try to create more pools of light representing light poles instead of solid lines of light.

 

Congrats on getting a gig with MegaScenery. There is so much potential there.

[kjb 0]

This is how I do them. Be advised, it isn't very fast.

 

In Paint Shop Pro, I start with the original image, then create a duplicate and use Illumination with no lights and 96% darkness. Then I lower the visibility of it so I can see the original image. On top of that I create a Brightness/Contrast layer that doesn't do anything, except let me select an area that I can drag around. In this case, I used 100 x 100 pixels. I have a hotkey setup in PSP (ctrl - space) and a saved setting for my light. To place the lights, I generally start with intersections. Drag the floating selection to a location, press ctrl - space and hit the enter key. Then, keep dragging and using the hotkey. The lights come out at a consistent size and with a more realistic spacing.

 

When it butts up against an FSX default area it looks sort of underwhelming since FSX lights up everything like downtown Las Vegas. But, I think it looks more realistic. In most areas I've seen, actual street lights are roughly 200' apart, with few in residential areas.

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

Found it. Here is a night shot

Thank you for the blending info also.

 

Wow, I think that looks pretty good for your first try and almost similar to the MegaScenery stuff. Looks like your on the right track so far. I always admired the way the MegaScenery did the street lighting and though it was the best compared to other competitors work who included night on their photo real but would skip the extra work to do the roads. I must say I am pretty excited about your new work after seeing your first night sample. Keep this up and I will start buying some new areas that MSE never did and hopefully some updates to their current stuff that didn't turn out so well.

[greggerm 312]

The basic process involved, which assumes a familiarity with FS Earth Tiles and an image program such as Photoshop, is...

 

Thanks for the primer, Petraeus!

 

As expected, it's not a terribly easy process. Takes a healthy amount of time to draw in the elements needed and flip/flop colors to make the proper files. I did a very small section for testing purposes and it seemed to work well!

 

I'd love to take on a larger project, but I think it would be very time consuming to properly illustrate a coastline. That being said, I might still give it a shot. Working with the .ini file is one of the bigger challenges, as well as remembering to STAY ORGANIZED with a larger project.

 

What zoom level in FSEarthTiles have you found to be suitable in creating the base images for your masking? Surely using Lev1 or 0 is unnecessary? Which one has given you appropriate detail for a coastline while still saving some download cycles and letting you work with larger areas?

 

-Greg

[Bobu 0]

This is a great project. I hope we can get this for current customers. Love the product otherwise.

[Petraeus 147]

What zoom level in FSEarthTiles have you found to be suitable in creating the base images for your masking? Surely using Lev1 or 0 is unnecessary? Which one has given you appropriate detail for a coastline while still saving some download cycles and letting you work with larger areas?

 

Depends on the area. If I'm doing Boston Harbour then I'll do a relatively small area at LOD 1. If it's just coast that I fly over at 35,000 feet, then LOD 4 or even 5. With the latter, the shorelines can be a bit pixellated on close examination, but not at high altitudes.

[turner112 52]

I don't know much about making the water masks themselves, but do believe the only feasible way to do it for the whole country (efficiently) is to use vector data of some sort as an overlay.

[Chief Cargo 0]

I love my MegaScenery (except the Miami package which I actually just deleted...) and I was wondering why they weren't releasing anything new.

 

One thing that always impressed me was their night scenery and I hope you can pull that off again. I have tried and it was a disaster...

 

Good luck on this new endeavor.

[Jim Young 2,356]

I'm going to move this over to the Scenery Design Forum where it belongs....

 

Best regards,

Jim

 

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[woodsonl 0]

Thank you all for your help. I think we have it.

 

http://www.sim-savvy.com/Downloads/Connecticut_South1.zip

http://www.sim-savvy.com/Downloads/Connecticut_South2.zip

 

The night scenery is next. Larry

[turner112 52]

Looking forward to trying this out, Larry.