Autogen Annotater and "transparent" photo textures

[Guest rellek01]

Is it possible to make a transparent phototexture such that I can use the autogen annotater to place trees and buildings to appear over the default ground textures?I want to add to small towns and vegitation around my scenery without changing landclass or fussing with seasonal phototextures.All of my scenery is created with gmax and exported directly.Thanks, Rellek

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Rellek.You could use Ground2K4, or a similar program to draw a VTP poly at Layer 4, and use number 253 for a texture.Each LOD13 area the poly uses would need a Custom texture ( properly named... G2k4 has this name at the bottom of the drawing screen ). Each CUSTOM texture can be an 8-bit mipped texture with alpha.. but make one bit grey so it shows properly... I'll attach one in a zip file.The textures and their autogen should be in the "SceneryWorldTexture" folder, with all the other default landclass textures and autogen. The BGL can be in your project's scenery folder.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/62463.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/62466.jpgDick

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Rellek.There may be a better way of doing this. Arno had listed some older posts in another thread... so I followed them and got this info from Holger:Here's how I do it in FS9: placed custom slices on the ground via SDK resample (with alpha-masked water; all files in local scenery/texture folder); VTP2 polys (layer 20, texture #253) in several areas where I wanted to have autogen (no custom texture slices, just the custom-tile named .agn files made with Annotator, placed in FS9SceneryWorldtexture)Holger here indicates a transparent bitmap is not needed. Just make a VTP2 poly with "253" as the texture name, and make sure the properly named CUSTOM autogen is in the 'Worldtexture' folder.. with all the rest of the autogen.I just deleted the textures in my above example, and YES, the autogen still shows. In that earier post, I was cautious about a memory leak due to the sim not finding the textures... but Holger found this to be not true. So, you could copy and rename a default autogen... or make a new one... for cities. You still need to copy and CUSTOM name them for each LOD13 Area the VTP2 poly covers, but you don't need to make and name the textures... which will save some harddrive space.In this way, textureless autogen can be placed by VTP2 polys. It should be possible to have sets differ with the seasons by using "252" as the VTP2 texture name.Thanks to Holger ( again ).Dick

[Guest rellek01]

THANKS !Looks like I'll be busy this weekend trying to figure this out.Relek

[rhumbaflappy 113]

One last note:"It should be possible to have sets differ with the seasons by using "252" as the VTP2 texture name."That really isn't possible... my mistake. Only one Agn file per CUSTOM name.Dick

[Guest GerrishGray]

That's right Dick. Separate .agn files for seasonal effects are not necessary - the Autogen trees respond correctly to seasons even when placed as landclass 253. It is not possible to apply seasonal textures to Autogen buildings - but who really needs that anyway.CheersGerrish

[Guest Dominique]

Still exploring all the possibilities of scenery making around a specific project.This thread is quite useful but still... and trials and errors is little longish a process in this case so I wonder if anybody had a clue ?I want to autogen a small city in Alaska spreading over 4 LOD13 areas without using a ready made default texture.Can I draw a large VTP2 square over or do I need to have four joint VTP2, one for each area ?Then with one VTP2, how do I name the annotated file. Do I need a 253 texture? I did the annotated file with a dummy 512x512 texture (actually a piece of my topomap) over a large VTP2. But it doesnt seem to work. How do I call it? I called it customan.agn but it crashed. If I use a 0003020131101an.agn format it doesn't crash but nothing appears. If I need four VTP2 do I need four annotated files one for each of the area ?Thanks for reading to the end this gibberish.Dominique

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Dominique.1 VPT2 polygon ( it can be any shape or size to cover the area you wish to drape with autogen... doesn't need to be square unless you want it so ). Texture # 253. Make the layer number high ( 50? ) so the autogen will show over anything under it.Annotate dummy 256x256 bitmaps.The names of the autogen need to be like:011222313221010an.agnAppropriately named for each LOD13 area. They need to be placed into the "C:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesFlight Simulator 9SceneryWorldtexture" folder, like the default tile autogen. The trick is that you don't need 011222313221010Su.bmp, and the autogen will still show.The placing BGL from Ground2K4 can be in the scenery folder of your choice.Dick

[Guest Dominique]

Thank you very much Dick ! Sorry if I'm a little thick. Let me get back to it again. I understand now that I need for a 4 LOD13 area city.- One VTP2- One annotated .agn file generated with the help of one 256x256 bitmap, renamed four times differently in the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXan.agn format, one for each of the LOD13 areas, and placed in Scenery/World/texture. - Now about the #253 texture. If there is one VTP2, there is only one 253 texture. How do I name it ? Is there's a need to name it if actually there's none anywhere at the end of the process ?best,Dominique

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Dominique.Value 253 is a landclass number that forces that LOD13 tile to use properly named photoreal for that tile. When used as VTP, we can make it any shape or size we like... just like any other poly.The sim will properly place the right photoreal tile on each LOD13 area the VTP2 poly covers ( just like any other landclass number ).If your poly covers 4 tiles, then you'll need 4 separate XXXXXXXXXXXXXXan.agn files from 4 separate XXXXXXXXXXXXXXSU.bmp files. The only trick here is that you can disgard the bitmap files if you want, and the autogen will still show.Dick

[Guest Hans Palsson]

Hi!An almost similar question... I have used Sbuilder to place photo-textures covering 4 LOD13-squares, and the photo is blended into the default scenery using the Alpha-map function of SBuilder. But when I annotate the photo-textures, and check the result in FS2004, the autogen looks nothing like what I want. Trees are scattered all over the place...I have a faint notion of that the default textures

[Guest luissa]

Hi Hans,I wonder if that happens because of the transparency. Have you opaque and transparent tiles? (check the size of the bitmaps; opaque are 43KB DXT1; semi transparent are 85KB 8-bit with alpha). I would say that on opaque tiles the default autogen will not show (I used the technique in Madeira Islands). But I really did not test on the semi transparent ones. They were far from the interesting regions that I did not look to the autogen ... Also I wonder if that has to do with the Coexist/Replace flag or even with the Layer Number. With SB you can set the Layer Number by I do not remember what SB uses for that C/R flag.Regards, Luis

[Guest Hans Palsson]

Hi there!The scenery contains a mix of opaque and semi-transparent (yes, I got them working at last!) textures, in previous sceneries I only used opaque tiles and did not experience this problem. Also, the annotation is made with the FS2004 annotator, but I cannot say that the differences between the two versions should cause this behaviour. Havent

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Hans.VTP=placed photoreal Bitmaps are vertically flipped in order to display correctly... but the Autogen is not flipped. Maybe that's the problem?Dick

[Guest Hans Palsson]

>Hi Hans.>>VTP=placed photoreal Bitmaps are vertically flipped in order>to display correctly... but the Autogen is not flipped. Maybe>that's the problem?>>Dick>>Hi Dick!No, I learned that "the hard way" the last time and have tried annotating both flipped & "un-flipped" bitmaps... I