G'day all, After terrascene/terrashape my project I thought I would try yo add beaches to the coastlines. Unfortunately when I slice the modified tga file the coastlines end up with a black border edging which makes the beaches look as though there is a thick tidal oil slick at the waters edge. Looks like the "Exon Valdez" revisited. :-( Is there a cure/procedure/method to prevent this from showing.?Cheers,Roger @YSSY.ps. don't know if it will show up on the uploaded pic as it was taken at high altitude.

You could try editing the water mask and "blurring" the edges where the beach is. This would give a transaprency effect to the edges. Maybe this is what you are looking for?[h3]Ken Salter (aka SaltyDog)[/h3]Fly! Forum Moderator[link:members.ud.com/services/teams/team.htm?id=5E79C613-0A60-4A3B-BDC1-F9EE49F2D4FE]Join the AVSIM Online Cancer Fight!!

G'day Ken,That sounds an interesting idea. I've absolutely no idea how to go about modifying the water mask? Can I just blurr the black *tga file and then use terrascene to regenerate a new water mask?. Sorry but I'm not particularly au fait with all this scenery stuff :-)Cheers,Roger @YSSY This pic shows the problem better.

Roger,If you want total control on the coastlines AND water mask at the same time, use Terrashape! I have my own layer for beaches. First time I tried this, the coastline made my beaches look ugly. The solution was simple: I made a separate layer (different colour) in the dnnetl shapefile, which I called "Beachline". Made this the same thickness as the coastline (land side), an mapped the same colour as the beach. Now I also use a "Pierline", which elegantly removes the false coastline from my Piers. I also do this inside fjords, they should absolutely NOT look the same way as the coast, mostly the water is calm there, no sandy or white lines, just a "Stony" texture.And when you render, the watermask will fit perfectly. I never edit the tga anymore :)

G'day Andrew,Mate thanks for the advise. Please be patient as I have a few real beginner type questions. :-)1. How do I get the coastline data into my dnnetl shapefile. ? It only contains streams and inland water ( lakes) information. Do I simply import the dnnetp data into dnnetl and trace over it on the newly added beachline layer ? 2. "thickness of the coastline (landside)" ?? Is this refering to the one of the two polygons in the tga's for the water mask?.3. "never edit the TGA anymore" - how do you VARY the depth of the beach. ???Thanks for your assistance.Cheers,Roger @YSSY

Hi Roger,Your`e not the only one full of questions nowadays, look at me >:-) OK, I`ll do my best to answer:1: The original dnnetl (in my area), was so bad that I just discarded it. After importing the other shapefiles into AutoCad as a dxf, I just made a new layer called dnnetl. In this layer, I have two colours for two new lines I have made, the "Pierline" and "Beachline". As long as I use different colours for those two, they will show up as two different Attributes when I get to the part of giving them names in Terrashape. For each colour you add in a layer, you get an attribute. I find it very easy to work with layers this way. Now, I have my Piers in the pppolyp, and my Beaches in a separate polygon layer which I have named "Landp". Then I enable just those three layers to show in AutoCad, draw my Pierlines on top of the coastline along the piers, the same with the sand-coloured Beachline, it goes on top of the Beach coastline. In ENZV I made the Beachline white, and used it as a new coastline everywhere the sea comes straight in to the land side.2: No. It is just a line, not a polygon. I have my default coastline 3 pixels wide, and the same value to the Pierline and Beachline in order to "camouflage" the coastline where I want to.3: Like Ken said. Off course you can`t do everyhing with Terrashape. (Or...?)If you want a seamless change in the sea colour from the coast and out in the water, you will have to edit the watermask in a paint program. I have been tempted to try this, but I have enough with all the other stuff right now!Hope this helps :)

Ken,Do you know where I can find the Flattenator excel sheet? When I do searces in the library I can only find Flattenator Deluxe and a readme, but not the sheet...

G'day Andrew,Thanks for all your help, really appreciated.As you can see I now have beautiful golden white sandy beaches with no ugly lines.What I did was to convert the ponetp coastline file into a dxf file and open it in QuickCad. I created a new layer (beachline) and traced the coastline as a polyline. I then deleted the ponetp layer, converted the beachline layer into a shapefile and added that to my project. I mapped beachline to a solid colour (sand). I didn't quite follow how to get depth to the beach without editing the Tga so I edited the tga and sliced the Tga.Now I need to edit the watermask :-)I'll take a break and do a bit of flying for a change.Thanks again for your help.Cheers,Roger @YSSY

Roger,It is nice to see some progress! And you found your own way of doing it, not bad, eh? You will discover that with TSH & Cad, you have an extremely powerful "Land Use" scenery tool :)Try a gray color on the watermask. Use gray from the coastline, and let it gradually fade into black. That`s the simple basics.Good luck,

Have you looked on my web site (link below)?[h3]Ken Salter (aka SaltyDog)[/h3]Fly! Forum Moderator[link:members.ud.com/services/teams/team.htm?id=5E79C613-0A60-4A3B-BDC1-F9EE49F2D4FE]Join the AVSIM Online Cancer Fight!!

I must have missed it the first time, yesterday it wasn`t available, but today I finally got there!