Hi Guys, I am struggling yet again, although I always get through with the forum :)I have recently Taken reasonable quality images of the buildings at the Airfield I am currently working on, although the image isn't as sharp as I would likeThe problem I am experiencing is tremendous loss in quality, which I assume is due to reducing a 1600x1200 to 512x512, not to mention 256x256. It is more like loss of detail after reduction, which makes the image seem uselessI am not a natural artist and find this aspect of scenery design very difficult, not that other parts are easier.I use Paintshop pro7, and am fairly experienced in using layers, I have tried sharpening the image(before/and after reduction), reducing before copying to the 512x512 and reducing once copied to 512x512. Sharpening seems to only improve a little before degrading the imageI reliase that it could depend on the quality of the original image, see samplesI hope someone can helpRegardsDavePs Arno, you achieve some fantastic images!!!! :-jumpy

I usually set my digital camera to lowest possible resolusion (640x ). That is very close to the final 512x512 image size for textures. Doing it this way, you will not lose that much in the resizing process and the images will remain clear and crisp.RegardsJohan

Hi JohanThanks for the tip, I guess I will have to visit the Airfield againThanksDave

One thing I've found is to never "enlarge" the image, never stretch it to remove perspective, always shrink. My camera is realy cheap, the best it can take is 640x4600, so you may be having false expectations.B

I don't think the resizing should be a big problem. My camera makes photos at 1280x960. But ussually the part I want to use on the textures does not cover the entire photo, so after I cut out the part I want not that much resizing is done.But I think the main thing that is different is that I don't make my texture at a high resolution first and then resize it. I cut the parts I want in the texture and then I scale them until I have the resolution I want (in pixels per meter as they will appear on the object later). After that I fill my texture (which is ussually 512x512) with all those parts of texture till it is full.

A lot of detail is going to be lost below as the resolution is not sufficient to include everything -- if you have a building 30 metres long, creating a 512 pixel image is going to give you um... about 6cm per pixel. You can hide a lot in 6cm. For instance, in the image you've shown some of the vertical edges will disappear, others won't, giving an uneven effect. Halving the resolution (in my current project I normally fit two textures across, making each 256px. This allows me to 'upgrade' large or important buildings to the full 512px) reduces the resolution to 12cm -- I can just about hide my entire face in that!Anyway, the point I really wanted to make is that the method you use to reduce the images has a marked effect on the quality. Many imaging tools have different resizing methods -- I've mentioned this briefly in a tutorial here:http://www.windowlight.co.nz/ontarget/gmaxt30.htmlMany methods of resizing are optimised for enlarging, so they aren't that effective at reducing. I really noticed the difference when I attempted to create textures using my favourite software on another computer -- without changing the resize method they were very poor compared to what I normally aim for.

Hi Dave!I also have taken a lot of pictures in 1600x1200 but as Arno said, every picture does not include only the object. What I have found is also it is not good to maximize whole object to the whole width of picture due to distortions at edges. Anyway, I use PhotoShop to generate textures, sometimes also Paint Shop Pro in legendary version 4 :) Anyway, be careful with resizing in Paint Shop Pro. It knows two methods, one is resize, which is worse than resample. And do resample in steps. So If You have a picture of let's say 1024 pix wide and You need to reduce it to 512 pix wide, do resample first to 900 pix wide, then to 800, 650, 550 and at last to 512. This way You will still have many details although sometimes large only one square and just a little bit different color than it's neighbours.You also use FSDS if I remember correcty? I would also advise You to leave one pix gap between texture and bitmap to avoid those one pixel gaps (although it seems this has been corrected in V2.11)Best regards,Goran BrumenFS Slovenija 2002 teamhttp://slovenia.avsim.net

Hi Guys, Thanks for the suggestions, it really helpsI think some of my pic's are taken to closeI will try 'resampling', I have either used 'resizing' or more often than not'Deformation'So Arno, actually makes an elevation from seperate bits and virtually composes the image, like painting, yes its so obvious!!!! Using the photograph to get texture and colour correctAlthough I use FSDS, I use it to create the scasm code that my mind can't create, like 3D points, although I do draw these points in Autocad afterwards. May be I should just use Autocad to create the 3d Drawing. I also tend to use FSDS to help with the Bitmap co ordinates in the Texpoly() command, as I find this really difficult. I really must Upgrade my FSDS.My building be very dark grey can't help in loss of detailThanks to all againDave;)

Here is a little pic of one of my textures, just to make a bit more clear what I tried to write :). As you can see there are a lot of small pieces that each belong to a certain part of the building.http://home.wanadoo.nl/arno.gerretsen/pics/TxText04.jpg

Thanks Arno, Very detailed imagesI already understood that aspect, but your images are very crisp. I'm Hoping when I have prepared my Gable elevation, I know I can use that elevation on both Hangers as they are the same, just different sizes..in length not height.....Many thanks for the thought, thoughI just need to do some more experimenting with making the textureRegardsDave

Hi allJust as a matter of interest, I have tried taking test photo's at 640*480 and it does seem to produce better results, as one could expect...http://forums.avsim.com/user_files/8732.jpgJust a shame to have to go back againRegardsDave