[WIP] Cutting lines... *UPDATED* - Printable Version

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[WIP] Cutting lines... *UPDATED* - VonBarb. - 24.11.2009

Hi

Canon's Channel is a work of art, but his choice to use a different set of textures for France and the UK left him with only a handful of available slots to cover very large areas. As a result, wide plains are often covered by only one or two textures. These textures being photoreal textures by Compans, which have lots of contrasts and elements that stand out even at long distances, the following happens :



Repetition of elements across the map create lines that are complete immersion killers IMO.

In an attempt to fix this, I have created a new texture from one of Compan's old textures from the Beta Channel, which I've called 'buffer texture'. The texture is meant to represent generic european landscape with autotrees but very little contrast, and only one shade of green grass , made to fit in well with both the UK and French textures. I have then used it to break up the wide areas covered by the denser fields textures which create the repetitions.

UPDATE : I'm calling the Map_T done for now, and have began working on the different 'buffers' to match each texture sets. I cannot guarantee 100% of repetition lines will be removed, but I think I have managed to reduce them by a good 70/80%. Some texture sets create more obvious repetitions than others and I had to compromise to reach something that looks pretty good with all textures IMHO.

Once all the buffer textures are completed, I'll make some extra modifications to the Map_T to try and cut down the repetitions on some other textures (moutain fields, marsh etc...) that still create pretty obvious lines.

Here's what it looks like with various texture sets. Pics taken at +/- 3000m (10.000ft), at noon with hazy weather. Two pics for each texture area (UK and France) : one showing the effect at long distances, and another showing the texture from up close :

Gilb57's 'Summer' seasonal texture pack :

UK :




France :




Gilb57's 'Spring' seasonal texture pack :

UK :




France :




Gilb57's 'Autumn' seasonal texture pack :

UK :




France :




VonBarb's 'Autumn Channel' texture pack :

UK :




France :




And finally, still at an early WIP stage since it seems I'll have to make a completely different buffer texture for this one, with Martin's England textures :

UK :




So here's what I have so far. Any comments and suggestions are of course more than welcome. It's been very instructive to read the great advice of more seasonned mapmakers.

Cheers

Nico

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- bohr-r - 24.11.2009

Hello Nico,

That's a great idea and good work. Would this be possible for other maps, too?

Regards,

RB

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- Guest - 24.11.2009

Nico,

That is a brilliant idea and it certainly does the trick, so much so that the reps are almost unoticable at all altitudes.

Good work, looking forward to altering some of my low texture variation maps soon.

GJE52

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- Thrud - 24.11.2009

the simple thing to as i have done on the NGNB map is to just take 3 textures and randomize them in given areas. very easy to do in photoshop.
select area/ fill with color 1/select same area/fill with 50% dissolve of color 2/ keep repeating with as many grays as you want.

example




in the "grass" area, it's a mix of 3 grays.
in the "jungle" area, it's a mix of another 3 grays.
in the "mix" areas, it's a mix of yet another 3 grays.

another example

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- VonBarb. - 25.11.2009

@ Thrud : I have tried something similar to your technique but didn't like the result I got. The Channel map uses only two field textures for the UK and three for France, all the others being used in specific areas and only useable very locally on the map (hills, coasts, marsh...) which is very limited and doesn"t allow much freedom of action. I'd rather not mess with Canon's placement of forests and woods either, as they're based on researched data and I have a tendency to cover entire maps with trees once I start trying to expand forests

@ bohr-r : Sure, though because they have more textures available, it may not be needed.

Cheers

Nico

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- agracier - 25.11.2009

I've found there are often repetitive patterns when using cultivated fields textures. Possibly it may be due to the effect that the textures themselves contain geometrical patterns of sorts - the fields - and that only enhances any repetition already inherent in the way the game uses textures.

Maybe that's one of the reasons I instinctively like to stay clear of Western European maps with their large areas of cultivation. Deserts and arid landscapes are easier to do and textures for such landscapes are easier to make as well, they needn't always be pixel perfect seamless.

I've found that when texturing any given RGB area in map_t, it helps to add random noise in another RGB value assigned to a somewhat similar looking, but still different texture.

Paint Shop Pro has a very simple but useful 'add random noise' function and there are other PS compatible random noise filters on the web available for free downloads as well.

This one is very versatile and useful I've found for creating patterns and especially random woods, since you can vary the size and shape of the random 'blots', unlike in 'add random noise' which all too often gives single pixel randomness. It's called 'blots 2'. The webpage stresses the psychedelic aspect of the filter, but if you use it with gray RGB values you can easily vary size of 'blots', spacing, elongation, placement etc. A very useful filter.

http://www.mehdiplugins.com/english/blots.htm

Here are 2 screenies showing how an RGB value is used to generate a random subsequent RGB value, which can then be imposed on the first. Photo 2 and 3 show different sized random RGB values, done on the same area, in photo 3 you also see the filter interface and can get an idea of the functions available.

[img]

[/img]

[img]


You can repeat this process of random generation as often as you like for any given area of course, but there is a limit to the number of available texture slots. [/img]

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- redko - 25.11.2009

Hi guys.



Von, very good idea this post !!!!

I'm now fighting agains this same probleme with some plane parts of my repainted kyushu.

I don't know for now if i have THE solution to this problem, but in my case i'm using only 2 textures for cities, one for mountains, and about 6-7 textures for the fields. I use all the sltos as possible.

For the moment i get good results for volcanic areas as you may have seen in the pics of Kyushu topic...i'm trying to do my best for the planes.

I don't like random textures cause it doesn't make the landscape work naturally.....a landscape is the result of a natural process, each texture must look to be the there for a logical and physical reason.


So for me textures must be applied manually, pieces by pieces in the all surface of a map....and it takes many many time.


I'm testing a binary method too. for a textures A, i have a B texture made from the same source BUT with some very little differents details. This way making these textures working binarilly (english :roll: ....well you seen what i mean) i can "break" the repetition effect.

And last point, manually placed textures + binary system + desaturation allows me (for the moment) to have a short range of colours for a map and it helps i think to make it appear as a whole thing and not as an artificial creation resulting of differents pieces puted together with no real link one to eachother, repetitiv structures are less present by that way.

I'm thinking to post some textures to show you how it works.

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- redko - 25.11.2009

Thrud method is close to mine i think.

the result he have looks to what i have in my repainted maps

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- VonBarb. - 25.11.2009

I hear you redko, those plains can be a real pain in the neck...

Have you thought of using the river banks textures ? Very often they're only assigned to, well... river banks, but if you choose a texture that's neutral enough to both look good near rivers and fit in well with the fields textures, you can use it as a 'dirt fields' texture to disrupt the patterns.

I know you work 'by hand', but you should try making a .psp layered templare of your Map_T file if you haven't yet, for quick editing of large areas. It will save you a lot of time

Cheers

Nico

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- redko - 26.11.2009

VonBarb. Wrote:I hear you redko, those plains can be a real pain in the neck...

Have you thought of using the river banks textures ? Very often they're only assigned to, well... river banks, but if you choose a texture that's neutral enough to both look good near rivers and fit in well with the fields textures, you can use it as a 'dirt fields' texture to disrupt the patterns.

I know you work 'by hand', but you should try making a .psp layered templare of your Map_T file if you haven't yet, for quick editing of large areas. It will save you a lot of time

Cheers

Nico

" I hear you redko, those plains can be a real pain in the neck" = 100%

"Have you thought of using the river banks textures ?" = yep, i use ALL the slots. the more textures i can put on the map the more they look natural.

The guy who will the try to repaint one of my maps will have a big surprise when changing just one texture :lol: :lol: ....he's gonna have pieces of his new texture scattered in all parts of the map as i use sometime beach textures for mountains and the contrary too.

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- redko - 26.11.2009

Bye the way Thrud when do you think we will have the great pleasure to touch your map ?

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- WhiteCat - 26.11.2009

Well I have an opinion about this: IMHO, if you count the time in a mission that you are over fields dogfighting and bombing, and you count the time you are landing and taking off, you'll agree guys that is more or less 90% / 10%. Given this, I would vote to spend less textures in super-perfect-historical landing strips and more in giving a more real feeling to the landscape.

I think that is the policy of mappers like redko, and, well the results are there... more immersion guys. That's why I like his way.

But, again, it's only my personal opinion...

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- redko - 27.11.2009

that right Whitecat.

good logic. it's the theory of compromise i like. we have to deal for compromises in life and for mods too. Too detailed textures are nice at middle and hight altitude but ugly at low. Too detailed texture bring more repetitive effect at high altitude, so we need to sacrifice some ground texture which are not so offently used as airfield textures or cost/rive line textures....

i will use just one texture for airfields in Kyushu and put 100% in the landscape : mountains, forests, fields, country, cities. without that i would never be able to offer volcanic textures for exemple, as this map will be the first one i think to use realistic textures only for that aspect....but what a pleasure !! How many of you guys never have fly over volcanic structures like Hawaii mounts, Iceland and other so beautifull landscapes ?

for the moment i have this for hight altitude:



As you see repetitive structures are almost gone :wink: . Of course not all the map is in this case, so that's why i have to work part by part all with the hand method.

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- VonBarb. - 28.11.2009

That makes a lot of sense, and I would agree with you for every other map but Canon's Channel. It is obvious Joe spent many recreating those airfields as true to reality as he could, and he did a marvellous job of it. I am not going to walk over all this hard work and destroy something that is a very important part of what makes this map what it is. Besides, that would mean editing the actors.static, and that's completely beyond the scope of what I am trying to do here.
Ironically, most FSX users seem to look at the problem the other way round : they'd rather have fully detailed airports than landscapes, since it doesn't really matter when you're cruising 30k ft high in your jet liner

I am making some progress, I now have a Map_T I'm quite happy with and 'buffer' textures for all of Gilb's seasons except winter and my own Autumn textures. Since Gilb's winter textures don't seem to create as many repetitions and integrating a working 'buffer' for both mainland europe and the UK would require changing other textures or further editing of the load.ini, I might leave them out for now.
Thanks to Agracier for mentionning the 'noise' trick. I'd always assumed it would create new shades of grey that'd mess up the Map_T and, well, I wasn't quite sure how to do it in Gimp All sorted now, it's been quite useful.

I'll post pics soon.

BTW, in order to avoid having to add another 8 maps to the all.ini, this mod will come as an Install-It-Yourself package that will require to do some editing of the load.ini files. Anybody interested in using this should try to get familiar with editing these files. I'm not too worried about the people who've been posting in this thread so far though

Cheers

Nico

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- GilB57 - 29.11.2009

I 100% approve all work & ideas provided here great work all !

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