[redko]

Kapteeni, Agracier can i ask you something?
Are you both using Avala landshine and if yes with the SAME settings? I ask because i think there is less saturation on Agracier's pics than Kapteeni's, and Agracier's pics look more naturals like live footage than Kapteen's.
I like very much the colours you both have choose for this map, really really much, but a little work on saturation and Avala's landshine would produce something more photorealistic.
Desaturation and Avala's landshine produce that nice effect of far far mountains. It could be nice with your maps mates.

As far as I know I don't use Avala landshine (unless it is standard with UI 1.1 or Ultrapack 1.8). Maybe you're seeing the differene in our monitors and the screenshots we get from them.

Also, I have a tendency to fly at dawn and dusk and thus have screenshots from that period of day too. I rather think everything looks nicer then, with lengthening shadows and darker landscapes and clouds in contrast with sun ... maybe that has an influence on the screenshots too?

Ok so i have to download the map and compare to what i get.

[redko]

BTW, i rember NOW that i did something with my Avala's landshine settings..........and since i did that i don't use Gapa Gamma mod Rolling Eyes Confused . I can post my settings if you want guys. It helps for what we call in art the "atmospherical perspective" which is the way colours degrade with distance and it helps a lot to have nice photorealistic rendering. It was a secret of italian painters of The Renaissance period like Da vinci and co.
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what is Gapa Gamma Mod ? never heard of that before

Hahah. Me neither. And i think that we use same texture settings, but agracier is more like early morning bird, He prefers screenies from dusk or dawn...
perhaps somebody could lighten us here!!
Kap

Yes i guess you have both the same texture...what more normal. But if one of you use Avala's landshine with different setting it can change the rendering. Gapa Gamma mod is this : viewtopic.php?t=13614&highlight=gamma.

It's a tool which play with the monitor settings, you must use it in background during the game. it affects windows rendering.

All the pics i posted on Avala's Benghalli topic were made under gapa gamma mod:

viewtopic.php?t=20474&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=gamma&start=60

Avala's landshine is a mod like avala's planeshine which affects only the land rendering. Since i use this the lightening in my landscapes is much better

[agracier]

Avala's landshine is a mod like avala's planeshine which affects only the land rendering. Since i use this the lightening in my landscapes is much better

I did a search for this but couldn't find any results ... have a link perchance?

[redko]

Avala's landshine is a mod like avala's planeshine which affects only the land rendering. Since i use this the lightening in my landscapes is much better

I did a search for this but couldn't find any results ... have a link perchance?

The link for Avala's landshine is in the topic for Benghalli map.

[agracier]

OK - followed your advice Redko and destaurated the textures. I first made some new 1024 pixel textures for Andalucia, to get more detail. Then I desaturated them and fiddled a bit with this and that ... I left out the cultivated fields textures for the while since i don't have any yet that look good for Spain... but here are a few results. They do look better than the original textures ... good tips from Redko.

BTW - flight time was around 16h, no dawn or dusk this time ...

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[kapteeni]

Use these!
kap

[redko]

hum i like it mates....looks better to my opinion.

at 4 pm colours are dark you are right agracier.

ok you wanted some secrets secrets Agracier ? . here you have some :

now that these nice textures are desaturated you can select some interresting details on each one and increase the contrast for these detailed parts : the human eyes work like that, 1- a global an quick look, 2 - very fast analyse of details. These 2 sequences allows to brain to create a global vision of the landscape....this is how we all work . This is where desaturation is useful : the loss of colour intensity (desaturation) must be balanced with some selected details which will be increased by better contrast.

I mean when textures are too saturated and with too many detailed points (in the whole surface), it makes a feeling of confusion...and you don't "feel" the landscape, so you loose realism. Its important for a texture to have 1 or 2 detailed points to focus the attention, the goal is to drive the glance. In dogfight but that's true for all kind of human movement you focus on where you go or what you shoot in our case....but the eyes in fractions of seconds still analyse the environement !

So...too much unrealistic colours and/or to detailed textures break this ocular work and you can't feel your self "in".

The seconde trick and this is the most delicate is to find the "link colour" between all the textures in order to make of it a global thing and not a sticked textured work. So all the textures must have the same level of saturation/desaturation. The only way i found to do it is to put all your textures on the screen in the same time with you photo editing program (i use photoshop 7 ), watch, take your time and ask yourself : are these textures looks like coming from the same place or not?

If yes it's ok your are on the good way.....if not, keep all this open and texture by texture desaturate or resaturate, and do the same for contrast.

Third point but you allready discovered it Agracier : in the same purpose for having a global linked set of textures, try to find parts/details you consider are typical of the landscape you want to create, copy and past it in the other textures. Not ALL of course but those you consider must have this detail too.

For Okinawa it was the little villages :wink: .


This is a way for photorealistic maps, you are on the good way guys.


So Kapteeni, Agracier.....see you soon on Monte Casino :wink: !

[redko]

Are you using 1024x1024 textures only now?

If you would have to choose 1 land colour describing andalucia what colour would you choose. When you will get the answer....there you will have your colour link for all your textures. this will help you to make a choice in your textures.

[redko]

One more thing :

juste take look to these little houses in the pic 1 and 2...tell me don't you find it integrates better now in the landscape with your new desaturated textures ?? :wink:

in the pic 2 if you don't take in consideration the foreground (too close but that's engine limitations) and only the background doesn't it looks like a picture ? i would say yes...compare to the first pics on this post.

it's easy to realize you are taking the good way guys.

[agracier]

Are you using 1024x1024 textures only now?

If you would have to choose 1 land colour describing andalucia what colour would you choose. When you will get the answer....there you will have your colour link for all your textures. this will help you to make a choice in your textures.

For Andalucia (where i will be moving to in a few years) the answer is rather simple - it's brown, but so many varieties of brown, from sometimes reddish to light sand and greyish or even yellowish brown ... interspersed with bits of green, almond or olive orchards and also low brush vegetation. But in the mountains - Sierra Nevada or Sierra de Baza - the green of dry pine forests.

You've given some good tips redko, which I greatly appreciate.

And yes, I am trying to make use of 1024 textures in the main. I don't have a large and varied enough set of 1024 textures yet (as compared to 512textures) but I am getting there bit by bit.

What mostly gives a headache is trying to integrate cultivated fields into a landscape. There are too many geometrical shapes in a cultivated fields texture that too easily create patterns in the landscape that become overly repetitive. And what is often worse - those mountain flanks with fields on them ... such a spell breaker that!

But not everyone has the skill and patience to place textures by hand ... wish I did but I don't ...