FSX Adding (More)Autogen to Default Scenery/Landclass

[richard64]

Thanks Gary I am having a look at all that you have suggested.

Richard

 

[robystar]

Hi,

After reading through all the posts in this thread a couple of times, I finally understood that the question was in fact the contrary of what I am trying to do.
I explain:
I made a photoreal scenery and added autogen to it with the annotator. So far so good.
But as the photoreal cannot be used when uploading the scenery I substituted the photoground meticulously with FSX landclass polys.
Unfortunately I do not seem to be able to keep the annotated autogen although I kept the (blended out) photo.bgl in the scenery.
Any suggestions?

 

[GaryGB]

Hi,

After reading through all the posts in this thread a couple of times, I finally understood that the question was in fact the contrary of what I am trying to do.
I explain:
I made a photoreal scenery and added autogen to it with the annotator. So far so good.
But as the photoreal cannot be used when uploading the scenery I substituted the photoground meticulously with FSX landclass polys.
Unfortunately I do not seem to be able to keep the annotated autogen although I kept the (blended out) photo.bgl in the scenery.
Any suggestions?

Hello:

AFAIK, one could make a copy of the photoreal imagery source file and edit it to contain not the multi-color aerial image, but rather an all-single value shade of gray image, further edited to contain at least 1 single pixel of gray in an otherwise all-black image.

Alternatively, others suggest making both the top left and bottom right corner pixels a unique non-black gray scale value, with all other pixels of in the image file being a black "255" value that sets 'transparency'... thereby allowing underlying FSX land class to show through the "substitute" photoreal layer.


Perhaps these discussions offer insight on the creation of a 'invisible photoreal' layer:


http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22023&highlight=invisible+photoreal


"I've played with this problem recently (making a transparent FSX photo-real texture for resample), and the solution is to have 1 pixel in the alpha as not solid black. I make it a mid-gray which should be fine for DXT3. You can hardly see the pixel, but it satisfies the requirement for DXT alpha as not being totally transparent."

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showpost.php?p=142021&postcount=13


NOTE: Although the discussions linked above involve DXT3 format files and transparency via alpha channels, IIUC, the concept of using 1 or 2 'non-black' pixels in an otherwise 'black image' file might also be applied to other image file formats ex: as in making 8-bit gray scale Blend Masks for use with photo-real imagery (...or "substitute" imagery files intended to be 'invisible').



So, IIUC, this means that the copied and edited imagery file subsequently consists almost entirely of a completely black or "255" single gray scale value, with 1 or 2 pixels which are NOT completely black or "255", but rather a "lesser" numeric value more towards the direction of white (such as 254 ...or even less, such as a "mid-gray" ex: 127 etc.).

This is then substituted for the aerial imagery, and used in conjunction with the original project blend mask and multi-source *.INF file.

Additionally, one may add a default NullValue statement in that .inf file as needed; some info on this:


...Also see:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=75338&highlight=blend+mask+Gradient

...and:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21253

"Notice I added a source file... a greyscale tiff file the same size as the original bitmap. I made the tiff in Paintshop Pro, but any program that makes a 256 color greyscale tif file will work. It's a solid grey value 1 ( black is value 0 ). In the Source1 bitmap, the color white will be kased (masked) out entirely, and no autogen would show.

You can then use Annotator to place autogen trees and buildings. The photoreal goes into the scenery folder, and the AGN files go into a twin texture folder.

In the sim, you will see the original landclass, but the autogen will be set by the invisible photoreal."


Since FSX will acknowledge and load the "substitute photoreal imagery" *.BGL as a custom land class, if the 'proper' gray scale value is used in the Blend Mask, the custom autogen annotation *.XML or *.AGN file associated with that "substitute photoreal imagery" *.BGL custom land class texture tile(s) may be displayed instead of the autogen annotation associated with the underlying FSX land class texture tiles... although those underlying FSX land class texture 'image' tiles may show through as a function of the Blend Mask transparency.

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21253&highlight=invisible+photoreal



PS: I suspect that as much as 100% compression may be used in the "substitute imagery" *.BGL Resample output file.


Hope this helps !

GaryGB

 

[robystar]

Hi Gary,

Thanks but I already solved my problem. It was a matter of the blendmask being not grey or white enough in the places I wanted to have the autogen appear over landclass blended with phototexture.
The downside of it all is that the file size grows tremendously.
Appreciate the explanation but do not understand the part about the null value.

Roby

 

[GaryGB]

Hi Gary,

Thanks but I already solved my problem. It was a matter of the blend mask being not grey or white enough in the places I wanted to have the autogen appear over land class blended with photo texture.

Congratulations !

IMHO, one would also wish to consider this info:

Make photo-real ground textures - tutorial by Luis Feliz-Tirado

http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fsxsd&DLID=140539&Cookie=1


"Blend Mask and autogen

Custom ground will prevent the display of the default autogen buildings and vegetation. If you use a Blend Mask, the default autogen will be excluded up to the limits of the transparent areas of your custom texture, but will display on the semi-transparent parts.

This will create a problem if you attempt to annotate your photo-real texture with the Autogen Annotator to replace the default buildings and trees, because the Blend Mask will gradually fade out your texture, making it very difficult to see where they should be added. Therefore, if you intend to add autogen, it is best to first create a version of the custom ground without a Blend Mask, annotate that texture, delete it, and then create another version with Blend Mask for use in game."

The downside of it all is that the file size grows tremendously.

If the color photoreal imagery file is substituted entirely by a gray scale image file, that will reduce the Resample "substitute imagery" invisible 'photoreal *.BGL' output size, since in that gray scale input "source file" there is only 2 "color" values or shades / levels of gray involved: black and mid-gray... instead of the "millions of colors" one would otherwise have in a 24-bit color aerial imagery source file.

Use of 100% compression during processing by Resample may be possible since, again, the "substitute imagery" and Blend Mask image files being dealt with would be gray scale rather than color aerial imagery source files, thus less color byte values are involved overall (because no actual 'visible' aerial terrain image is being represented by the "substitute image source file").

Appreciate the explanation but do not understand the part about the null value.

These threads might prove to be informative:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40744&highlight=blend mask Gradient

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showpost.php?p=222135&postcount=3



...See especially:

Making custom ground textures - mini-tutorial by Luis Feliz-Tirado

"Any part of the selection for which there are no tiles will display in pure white (RGB values = 255,255,255) and will serve as a Null Value, that is, will be completely transparent and display the underlying terrain.

Be careful, as other parts of the image may also have pure white pixels, and they too would be completely transparent, so you may want to edit the Map in any image editing program first before compiling into custom ground."

http://www.ptsim.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3435


Default NullValue of the .inf file - mini-tutorial by Luis Feliz-Tirado

http://www.ptsim.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2147&sid=fc7d0cb1683fa683cdc6ecda54451162


Hope this helps a bit more !

GaryGB

 

[robystar]

Many thanks, Gary,

It helped explaining things a whole bit more.