[lowfighter]

Some of you know or even used it (Bada?) on the new maps, also it has been used on late oficial maps (like the Desert one). For who doesn't know:
Traditionally one has these lowland, midlland etc regions on map T as compact more or less extended regions. If you fly over such an extended (say lowland0) texture it becomes boring after a while, there are no variations. So the checkerboard idea is like this
in load.ini you asigned
lowland0=tx1.tga
and say
lowland1=tx2.tga
These textures to be used have to blend well yet to offer some contrast
On map T you have the extended region painted with lowland0 color (RGB=0)
Now you can create a checkerboard tga (say CB.tga)"template" containing only two colors RGB=0 (lowland0) and RGB=1 (lowland1). It's good to be big enough say 256 by 256 pixel each pixel alternating the color. In GIMP (possibly similar it can be carried with PSP etc) open your map_T and the CB.tga. Go to CB.tga, in the menu go to filters then noise then spread, select spread. The spread has some parameter but basically will move pixels around randomly on your CB.tga. Apply spread and the result is a random image containing only rgb0 and rgb1 pixels. Copy the whole image. Go to map_T and select the lowland region. Click on pattern and select the randomised checkerboard. Go to edit and fill with pattern. The result is that now the compact RGB0 region was replaced by a random looking pattern of rgb0 and rgb1. Save as different map_T such that you can always return, use different patterns etc. In game it means you have now some more variation if you fly over the former loland0-only region. Possible to use different patterns with one colour been predominant over the other, or patterns with more than three basic colors. The nice thing is that it's a fast procedure. :wink:
The cunning thing is how you choose and match your textures, especially that we are SO limited with the total number of textures to be used on a given map.
:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

[Guest]

thank you for your found Low, I hope you could make/ edit a little map like for example ..Balaton?.. with this mod applied as to see/try this surely good mod. Regards 8)

[fabianfred]

sounds like a great idea....I'll have to try it out on my map :wink:
there are many large areas at the same height which need breaking up a bit...but in a nicely random way

I suppose three or four textures could be used...not just two.

[|ZUTI|]

Damn you lowfighter, now i have no more excuses not to get rid of those booring repeating textures. Damn

[fabianfred]

Now the idea is out.... it can be done in many ways...just selecting a colour value (RGB) and spraying it around the template randomly, and doing the same with other values, then use the smudge tool if you want ...then painting it onto the map_t with the clone stamp tool set to have soft edges and jitter etc.

This was a great idea!

[lowfighter]

Fred, I think too there are more ways, cloning as you said, I think it's a nice idea. Whatever it is it must not alter the colors because then you end with some undesired textures etc.
Guys if you find some nice texture combinations and patterns please post (I'll do the same). The experiment I did to check it was with sk-Lowland0.tga and rom_lowland_0.tga, it's not a perfect combination but it works ok. Three textures: maybe 2 with just slight contrast and the third with bigger contrast to both, but in small proportion to the first 2, to represent "singularities in the landscape", for example if you have hill land, hills are green (the first 2 textures) with rare dirt patches (third texture).
I think anyway using it may be a fast way to make the older eastern front maps more attractive, also it could help with the Singapore one which have huge areas of the same texture...

[lowfighter]

One illustration on Singapore, nothing breathtaking, because using pretty plaintextures, but it shows (screenshots are not that suited to capture subtle lanscape changes) to some degree what i wanted. I used 3 textures one having about 70 % abundance and the others each about 15 %.

[fabianfred]

It has done wonders to my Thailand map as there are huge areas of low lying land in the Irrawaddy basin and the areas around Bangkok..

I used all four of the Lowland textures......RGB 0 to 3

[lowfighter]

Some pictures please?!

[fabianfred]

It was all the texture in the foreground previously :lol:

[lowfighter]

It looks nice, thanks for posting!

[JV69_BADA]

what i've done on the tobruk map was something like that, but i had to do it for several different regions of the map.

i made a big square (retangle actually) on the sea near the coast to use it as a test zone.
Manually, i made a mix of several textures, keeping in mind the kind of "decoration" i wanted to have for a certain area of the map, when i was happy with the patchwork, i save the map, get out of IL2, open the map_t with PS, save the zone i've build as "pattern", mostly something like between 40 and 70 pixels wide, not necesserly as a square!(otherwise you will stil have ungly repetitions) then i applied the pattern on the selected zone, save the map_t back to il2 and fly-test the area to check for textures repetition.

For tobruk i've used actually 19 different patterns , what means something like at least 40 tries in total.
Most of the applied patterns were also manually corrected afterwards :wink:

The patterns are a great help but first of all you have to know what kind of paysage you want to have and then make several tries before you get the wanted one.
A lot of work for several evenings, but after that, the map texturisation is faster than ever. :wink:

[delvpier]

I did it also for texturing plains in Philippines... and I agree with JV69_BADA (... excellent work on Lybia :!: )... You have to try a lot of patterns before to find the right one giving the best visual effect... but later it's time saved.

BTW, Gimps offers some interesting tools to produce some good visual effect in game, ie some brushes are really amazing when applied on map_c :

http://allaircraftsimulations.com/forum/...php?t=9163

[Poltava]

This is an excellent trick, as repetitive patterns on an otherwise nice map is REALLY disturbing!

[lowfighter]

M8s let's say we want to simulate the Russian steppe, what texture combos would you use? I've been thinking and experimenting about this for quite a long time but came to no very good combination of textures.