[farang65]

Well here's the link to photobucket
You can see Magnetic Island, Townsville, Hinchenbrook Island Palm Island Group and Cairns.
Still after some info on those how to's above mentioned
May add a few more textures to make it look more brown.
Example Fly River in PNG is mud and silt not a light earth colour

http://s282.photobucket.com/albums/kk242/kirbicus/


Cheers Kirby

Chiang Mai

[Neil Lowe]

Coming along nicely Kirby

Cheers, Neil

[Neil Lowe]

1) Rounding off the square and rectangular coast lines etc

Looks like the coastines have a hard edge. Prolly just needs the coastlines in Map_c.tga to be blurred a bit (1px or so) Of course this will prolly introduce areas of black (water texture assigned to land) just make the appropriate adjustment to Map_t.tga.


Cheers, Neil

[farang65]

You have answered one of my how to's from before
Yes the coast line is square so the info is greatly appreciated
Thanks Neil.
Thank Christ Fred gave me a good workable map to get started with
At the moment I can fly in it but I can't put any ships on the water as yet.
Have learned a lot about new textures and the load ini.
Changing textures on the map over the next week or two to get a good final result.

Cheers Kirby

Chiang Mai

[fabianfred]

to get the ships to work...do this..

open your map_t.tga in Photoshop ....and the Thai map one too (just for picking colours from)

1. set the foreground colour and move the dropper to the sea on the thai map and set that colour

2. select the Magic wand tool and set the tolerance box to 0 and other three boxes left unticked (top of screen)
3. edit menu/fill use foreground colour (RGB 28)

4. Select menu /modify/border... 1pixel

5. set foreground colour again ...and zoom in on the Thai map to see the single pixel border on the sea of a different colour and set that

6. edit menu/fill use foreground colour (RGB 31)

6. deselect ...and save as a copy

[farang65]

I'll give that a try tonight while the wife is out visiting with friends.
Should be back at work on Monday.
Has anyone been really crook for a week or so in your area?
I got it from my students.
There's a lot of the same virus going around Chiang Mai.

Cheers Kirby

[fabianfred]

There are also many cases of hemorrhagic fever about

[Tyberan]

to farang65

I just had a quick look on google maps around the townville area, its a good start if you want authentic looking textures for the area during the drier times of the year. But obviously texture authenticy is limited to IL2's engine. good luck with it anyway.

Just out of curiousity what scale is the map your making. I know 1:1 is to large and boring.

Like I said before I'll try to give you a hand with the queensland map, but I'm really busy atm. I'd really like to have map of the local area.

[tsb47]

@farang,

ppl have answered most of your other questions. One which remained unanswered until now is how to create coastline foam - i assume you mean surf. To do this you:

1. First need shallow water on your coastline. This is simply a blurred edge between land and water in your map_c.

As noted above, one way of doing this is using the blur filter. You can also use one of the blur tools from the toolbox and manually drag it around your coastline.

Any pixel on your map_c below RGB value 129 is water, any above RGB value 129 is land. The depth of water at a particular pixel corresponds to how far below RGB value 129 a particular pixel is e.g. RGB 127 is very shallow, RGB 0 is very deep. Pixels below about 110 cannot be dsitinguished from deeper ones.

In reality surf breaks in shallow water. So, the area where you want surf in your map should be shallow - e.g. between RGB 129 and 116 (getting deeper towards the sea). One method of doing this accurately is to make a graduated sea depths using various select tools then apply gaussian blur filter. Follow this up with one or two applications of standard blur filter. (As already noted, blurring coastlines in map-c will also solve you nasty jaggedy coastline problem, and give nice shallow areas close to shore)


2. Second you need to apply the surf texture in map_t to the area one pixel offshore.

Surf and no-surf coastline textures correspond to RGB values 31 and 30 in map_t respectively. Applying these textures in a one pixel band offshore is easy. Just select your sea (this should be RGB value 28 for boats to be able to navigate on it), then select an internal border of that area of 1 pixel. Paint RGB 32 in that border and you should have surf on the coast when you open your map. (I may have got RGB 31 and 30 mixed up, so try with 30 as well!!!)

I feel a beach boys song coming on!

PS I would like to make an RAAF vs. RNZAF map + missions. It would be the Il2 equivalent of the Bledisloe Cup... (btw who holds that right now? :wink: )... let me know if you're interested...

PPS I felt left out of your thank you post. That really hurt my sensitive feelings... ...just joking :lol: !!!

tsb47

[farang65]

Hi,
I recall that your thank you was just one post were as the others were all slotted in to on post he he.
Working on all these detailing tasks over the next week or so.
The foam coast info is brilliant.
I played around with water colour in the load ini this week but I think I'll have to take it back to the original Thai map water colours to achieve success.
Tried a few times with Fred's instructions last night but I think due to water changes with the added textures from these changes did not have great success.
I will post results on all of this
Rounding off coast lines.
Foam on the coast lines
and moving ships on the water once I have achieved satisfactory results in a week or so.

I also read the map making guide downloaded from the this site. That has been a great help.

I THINK THAT THE KNOWLEDGE and EXPERIENCE FROM THIS SITE IS WORTH MORE THEN THE WEIGHT OF GOLD!



CHEERS KIRBY

Chiang Mai

[Dleg]

I hope your sugar cane fields texture works out, kirby (I can't view it from this computer - blocked by network! ). Once I get some more time on my hands, I plant to move forward with my full Marianas map, and you just can't have an accurate 1944 Marianas without sugar cane fields, which almost completely covered the islands at the time.

Fantastic info on the shallows and foam, too, tsb47. I've already added it into the next version of the AAA community map making guide, is that OK?

Dleg

[fabianfred]

@ tsb47 ... I thought it was RGB 28 for sea and 30 for no-surf and 31 for surf

[tsb47]

Fabian fred, as usual, you are right, I am wrong. Damnit! My post above is amended.

I have two excuses 1. it was midnight on a school night 2. the way I texture my maps.. (actully this is just an excuse to espouse my methofd of texturing maps.

My method of texturing maps:

I have created two "palettes" in GIMP:
(1) grayscale of 256 colours, RGB 0 - 255 (in that order) with each coloured labelled with the RGB value, and
(2) RGB with colours that roughly correpond to those that you would expect in the load.ini's LowLand0 (dark brown), LowLand1 (slightly lighter brown) etc in the order that the textures are set out in the load.ini i.e. the first colour is labelled LowLand0, the second LowLand1.

Think of the coloured palette as the "painting palette" - this is actually what I use to paint my maps. Thik of the grayscale paletter as the "converter palette" - I use this to convert those colours to RGB values that the game will understand.

Step one: make standard map_t, either using the standard Microderm method, or by reducing the size of map_c

Step two: convert this to a colours that make sense (i.e. your painting palette). Go Image>mode>Indexed, select the converter palette and deselect "remove unused colours". The image will now convert to an indexed grayscale image. Go Colors>Set>Colormap, select the painting palette.

Step three: paint map using the painting palette. Open the edit palette dialog and use the appropriate tools and colors.

Step four: convert this back to an image Il2 can understand. Go Colors>Set>Colormap, select the converter palette. Go image>mode>grayscale. Save as .tga, unselect compression. You are done.

I can make my converter and painting palette available via e-mail if ppl are interested.

Cheers,

tsb47

PS thanks fabianfred for correcting my mistake

[Dleg]

^That sounds pretty useful, actually. I suggest you just upload it somewhere (I suggest rapidshare) and post a link to it in a separate thread. If it works, maybe it should be in the map making utilities thread??

[farang65]

If you are keen on my textures I will send them to you via e mail as you can not see them at photobucket.
One looks pretty good. Another look a tad blue you just have to change the colouring abit.
Cane fields are massive normally so you will get some patch work when you fly over them.

kjdale69@hotmail.com


Cheers Kirby