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Guest Claviateur

MS Oshkosh scenery, anyone knows how...?

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Guest Claviateur

Hi,I wonder if you noticed in the Oshkosh scenery released lately by MS, the photoreal layout of the airport and the surrounding area fades nicely into the default terrain textures unlike other photoreal add ons I saw around and wich are simply a rectangle or box that does not blend with the surrounding like Oshkosh scenery does.Presuming they used Resampler.exe method. So if we use Alpha Chanel to errase the parts we do not want to show we will get water where the Alpha Channel is aplied, is that right? So how did they do to blend it with the default ground textures you think?CheersMichel

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Hey MichelYes, if we use the alpha channel in custom (ground)textures we get water, I dont think there is any way to get around that.If you look at the MS oskosh textures individually you'll find that they haven't used any secret special way to get the textures to blend - they've just been really clever and managed to make the oskosh textures (especially the perimeters of the phototextures - where they border the normal Landclass textures) blend into the surrounds. This is just clever work on behalf of the texture painters.CheersJarrad

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I'm working on a semi-photoreal scenery and I am blending in to the surrounding area. I havn't seen the MS Oshkosh scenery yet (too big to download on a modem) so I don't realy know what you are talking about exactly, but I am trying to avoid the large square looking thing when you get near my scenery. I just found what the default textures were that surrounded my scenery and made sure that they blend in on the edges. These screen shots should explain. There are, of course, issues with roads ending and what not, but I am trying to make that look as "natural" as possible. This is very much still a work in progress.

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Guest Claviateur

Thanks for he tips but how did you do exactly to make only the roads overlay the default ground textures: did you take snapshots of the area in FS and then pasted it underneath the photoreal image and then croped the road to make the snapshots image appear underneath and then flattened the whole thing? ThanksMichel

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that's pretty much it....take screenys, do some testing..for some reason when I resample a screen shot back to fs, its darker..so I tend to lighten and enhance the contrast of any screen shot pixels, then layer the screen shot image below your image and carve with feathering on your image. B

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Guest Claviateur

I see thanks allot :) I believe as Jarrad mentioned above MS did almost the same thing to make a subtle mix with the ground texturesCheers!Michel

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Looking good, tlassiter!This is ground-breaking. It is the best technique we have at the moment, to completely replace a small section of scenery. That's why MS used it in the Oshgosh scenery. You, and Bob Bernstein are right at the edge of ground-scenery design.

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Thanks Rhumba,Were it not for you, I wouldn't have even tried this method! What I do is as follows:(I am assuming you have assembled the terrain/scenery slices that resample.exe has given you.)I first figured out the forest texture that the default scenery used around my airport. I did this by applying some forest textures from the World/texture folder that I thought were close to slices that bordered the default. It was easy to tell which was the right one after starting FS. This texture would be the base of all blending that I would do (actually there were others, but I digress...).I take each texture (unconverted) and open it in PhotoShop Pro 5 (I think it is 5). Then I Copy/Paste ANY of the forest textures (in my case the 027b2su*.bmp) to a layer on top of my B/W slice. I then run the opacity to 0. Then I outline the forest area on the texture with the free form marquee. I usually feather this 3 - 5 pixels. Then I go to the layer menu and choose the Add Layer Mask/Reveal selection. Then I run the opacity up to 100%. This places the default forest texture in the place of the marquee area you marked off. This provides a seemless boundary because all of the default textures within a certain group (027b2su*.bmp) are "tileable".For the other features in the slice (like roads, grass, dirt, etc) I choose an appropriate color and flood that in a newly created 256 x 256 canvas. I then copy and paste and all of the above marquee Mask selection stuff, but the last opacity I crank to about 60%. Then you can choose the blend method that you want to use. I choose Color most of the time for the first layer. I then go over the same layer in a different color and apply as above but use a different blending like darken or color again. This gives the dirt/grass look and other effects. This is highly time consuming. There are probably a hundred different ways to do this, but I like the way mine is going right now. I am not really sure how Bob is doing his. I thought I was doing like he was but he has said differently. One of the problems I see with the method I am taking is that it will be absolutely crazy to do all four seasons! I mean, it will be done, most likely, but God! The time involved. I looked at my scenery at night and laughed. There is nothing but a bunch of moving yellow lights on roads in my airport circa FS2000. Oh well, I guess it is all worth it.Sorry for the long windedness...things take so much longer to type out than they do to speak!Hope this helps....

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Guest Claviateur

Yup painting a photoreal area to look convincing and smooth is a big work indeed. now I am hesitating between doing that or waiting for the SDK. In fact I have to fix a coastline shape to make the coastal airport fit nicely in it and get the coastal and city visual references for VFR pilots. I was hoping MS terrain SDK will put the light on those coasts but it seems a top secret for now this is why the photoreal thing can replace a coastal reshaping but we have the time price to payCheersMichel

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