Textures for 3d Buildings using FSDS

[Guest]

Can anybody help, with textures using psp 7I've got digital photos of the hangers I am trying to replicate and I have built these hangers in Fsds.I use 'make a Texture Template' in FSDS and apply textures through Part Menu's. Unsure on the advantages between Polygon or Part placing of textures.I had hoped that having digital photos would save on creating textures, not that easy. Getting the right colours seems really difficult, given the light changes for different times of day, dependant on which way the elevation is facing. There must be some way of changing colours, via filters and adjustment layers. I just haven't had much success. The texture template seems so small, against the size of images in photo's, the scale of my Building Macros are 0.02, is this correct? Their size seems ok in FS2002. The reason I mention this, is copying sections from the photo and by the time I reduce these the detail is lost!I am willing to spend many hours creating detailed textures, but am very unconfident that my labour will be rewarded when applied, especially with the lightness aspect.I hope somebody can help or may be suggest a web site with glorious tutorials, am I dreaming!!!!!I hope somebody understands, it is difficult to try to explain precisely.Kind regardsDave

[Guest]

Dave, you are asking the right questions. That's the right place to begin. Most of what I know about texture creation was developed by trying different things over several years.Some misc. things about texture creation:To maintain best resolution, when I use "distort" in Corel Photopaint (not sure what its called in PSP), I try to ALWAYS reduce the image, never expand it. I'm talking about the process to remove perspective from a building wall, for example. The graphics can be resampled over fewer pixels more correctly than over more pixels.I try to leave my images as large as possible. Some common sense, I take a 600x400 digital photo, say the image is present in 1/4 of the frame. I'll maybe resize that photo to 800x800, and begin to construct the texture by undoing perspective, and editing the graphics as I wish. Once I'm done, I evaluate the size of the object in question. If less than 256x256 pixels, I'll copy it directly to a new file of 256x256. If bigger, I'll scale it to just less than 256x256. I leave the file at rgb 24bit color space. I convert it to dxt1 or dxt1+alpha from 24 bit color. This works for gmax. For FSDS you may need to use 8 bit color. If so, do it last.This will make it easier to use the texture utility in fsds, cuz your image pieces will be as big as can be done. Sadly, the absense of a zoom in this utility is a weakness of fsds.Part vs Polygon mode: This was also a question that I worked on for some time. My methods were to use part mode always, unless I couldn't. Part mode was just faster. For a traditional hangar, using part mode for the side wall won't work perfectly cuz it assumes all surfaces visible from the side is intended, so it projects the side wall pixels onto the wall AND the roof. You can edit the texture in part mode, down to the top of the wall, and then do the roof seperately in polygon mode.Polygon mode takes priority over part mode, so be careful. I've used it for just that reason sometimes, but other times this priority may cause problems.If you are designing for fs2002, and you are just learning fsds, you may want to focus on gmax instead. Its a more efficient modeller for fs2002.Best,Bob Bernstein

[arno 1]

Hi Dave,I don't have a real tutorial or so, but here are some points of attention.First it always is a lot of trial and error to get a texture as you want. If you have made more textures it will go faster, but it always stays some sort of trial and error.Second, Most of the time I don't change the colors for my digital photos very much. Of course this might be necesairy when the colors of the photo are to dark (due to the weather or something like that).I think the color changes Fs2002 makes, make the texture more realistic during different times of the day.Then a last comment, you say you use a texture template, but I work the other way around. I first make my texture on a resolution I want (32 pixels/meter for example for airport objects). Using a fixed resolution of course means that I have to design my object in such a way that the texture fits (for example long wall need to be split in two parts, because the texture is not wider then that). This means some calculation etc, but once you are a bit familiar with it I think it will work quite fast.Arno

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[Guest]

Hello Dave,I found this tutorial a joy to read through!http://www.hovercontrol.com/tutorials/phototextures/

[Guest]

Hi all appreciate the response, it seems I am tresding in familar footsteps, and although I have been using FSDS for a long time, I have heard that Gmax is alot better for textures although unsure in what context. I see my Gmax dawn approaching!!!I'll check out the tutorialIt seems a case of find what approach works best for you.all help appreciated, feel I'm not alone.Regards Dave