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FSXA Adding water polygons over photoreal

bina

bina

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217
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azerbaijan
I'm trying to add several water polygons (lakes) made in SBX over the photoreal image. But they don't show up in FSX, even if they are tagged with altitude parameter.

1. Do I understand it correctly that to achieve this I need to add blend masks (make transparent lakes) to those areas on the bmp image in addition to SBX vector polygons? Doubling the work that is... :(

2. If yes, is it possible to... say port the vector polygon coordinates as a selection to Photoshop to achieve best shorelines match between SBX and Photoshop blend mask? Sounds crazy, I know...

3. I've tried to find an answer both in SDK and Luiz's tutorials but still don't understand why hydro polygons need altitude parameter, if they still clip to the mesh (whatever its height is) lying underneath? Can you please explain in layman terms? :)

Thanks!
 
Last edited:
JRobinson

JRobinson

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1,510
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unitedstates
Hydro polys are effectively a wet flatten so they need to know what elevation to flatten to. Just try setting one to an elevation 500' above the surrounding terrain once and you'll see what happens - lake on a plateau. Or set one to 500' below the surrounding terrain and the result will be - lake in a hole.

When you make photoreal, technically there's no reason to mess with the underlying hydro polys at all - you just water mask your photoreal and water magically shows up. The problem is when the default (or otherwise) hydro polys underneath don't match the outline of the water body in the photoreal and in that case you'll usually see "climbing water" at some point around the shoreline, the photoreal water might climb up onto the shore of a lake with an inaccurate hydro poly underneath and you see shiny humps and bumps in your water. To fix that you make new hydro polys that precisely match the photoreal water body so the shorelines are all in the same place, the flattening effect of the new hydro poly gives you a flat base for your photoreal water to lay on and the climbing water disappears.

bina said:
Do I understand it correctly that to achieve this I need to add blend masks (make transparent lakes) to those areas on the bmp image in addition to SBX vector polygons?
Click to expand...

No, and I think that's the root of your problems, just leave the lakes in the photoreal at 100% opacity (white on the blend mask) and use the water mask to make them wet.

Jim
 
bina

bina

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217
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azerbaijan
I'm back... And thank you, Jim!!! Your explanation is very clear - before I had holes on the island (where should have been lakes) when water-mask was added on top of the blend mask, revealing the underlying FTX Vector water polygons and shorelines. But...

JRobinson said:
The problem is when the default (or otherwise) hydro polys underneath don't match the outline of the water body in the photoreal and in that case you'll usually see "climbing water" at some point around the shoreline, the photoreal water might climb up onto the shore of a lake with an inaccurate hydro poly underneath and you see shiny humps and bumps in your water. To fix that you make new hydro polys that precisely match the photoreal water body so the shorelines are all in the same place, the flattening effect of the new hydro poly gives you a flat base for your photoreal water to lay on and the climbing water disappears.
Click to expand...

I followed this particular tip to the letter - this time I can see water masks (ripples) over photoreal only, no water polygons which I have manually added with SBX. Each water mask (i.e. lake) made in paint program has a corresponding vector polygon, as you can see in the attachment. But together they don't show up... :( I tried many different options including: no exclude CVXs, changing vector type to Hydro Default Perennial, compiling the river and the lakes only, shpvec with ADDTOCELLS flag, etc.

Thanks again!
 

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JRobinson

JRobinson

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unitedstates
What do you mean they don't show up together? If you remove your photoreal .bgl you see the water polys, right? The photoreal will cover up everything underneath it, you're only making the CVX hydro polys for the flatness across your photoreal lakes. I compiled your .sbx and they seem to work fine for me?

Jim
 
bina

bina

Messages
217
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azerbaijan
JRobinson said:
What do you mean they don't show up together? If you remove your photoreal .bgl you see the water polys, right? The photoreal will cover up everything underneath it, you're only making the CVX hydro polys for the flatness across your photoreal lakes. I compiled your .sbx and they seem to work fine for me?
Click to expand...

Yes, that's right - water polygons and masks don't work together but when I remove the photoreal I can see the polygons. Do you mean the approach to use photoreal with CVX is not a good idea and polys will not show over photoreal anyway? What can be done then to make 'realistic' lakes (i.e., polygons + masks)?
 
JRobinson

JRobinson

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1,510
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unitedstates
Nope they won't show overtop the photoreal. What's not realistic about your photoreal lakes? Ugly water? I've fixed ugly water by selecting a lake for example on my photoreal source and clone stamping some water from other imagery sources where the water looked better. There's some nice water (maybe too light for your application?) at 44.15, -68.54 in SBuilderX using VirtualEarth Satellite imagery :)
 
bina

bina

Messages
217
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azerbaijan
Aha, that means I didn't understand your earlier post from the very beginning. When I read this
The problem is when the default (or otherwise) hydro polys underneath don't match the outline of the water body in the photoreal and in that case you'll usually see "climbing water" at some point around the shoreline, the photoreal water might climb up onto the shore of a lake with an inaccurate hydro poly underneath and you see shiny humps and bumps in your water. To fix that you make new hydro polys that precisely match the photoreal water body so the shorelines are all in the same place, the flattening effect of the new hydro poly gives you a flat base for your photoreal water to lay on and the climbing water disappears.
Click to expand...
I thought I can combine polygons and masks over photoreal. Because that's exactly the problem I have with FTX Vector water polygons lying below my image and I thought this could help since I can't exclude FTX Vector polygons anyway.

Now I understand... I will experiment with coloring photo lakes to make them blend well with default FSX water colors then. Then I will add the water mask on top.

Thanks a lot for clearing this for me!!!


Sent from my Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk
 
G

GaryGB

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7,450
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us-illinois
Hello:

Some additional related info on this topic: :idea:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/resample-error.427351/

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/flatten-poly-creation.434781/#post-718788

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/geotiff-blending.431787/

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/sbuilderx-water-mask-issue.426022/#post-637825

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/photoreal-ground-grass-everywhere.75338/#post-222135

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/render-polys-above-vectors.352678/#post-545523


Hope this helps a bit more ! :)


GaryGB
 
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