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Ground Poly & Transparency

pinkjr

pinkjr

Messages
1,257
Country
us-texas
Hi,

I am about done making my first photoreal scenery using Sketchup and ModelconvertX. My scenery is done and it is working, just trying to improve it a little.
I made my ground polygons originally by cutting out the taxiway and runway areas in Sketchup so that the AFCAD lighting would show, and it works great. Only thing is that the edge transition is a little bit sharp......so I started editing the ground images with photoshop to make the desired areas transparent, and to smooth out and blend the edges better.
ModelConverter is not liking this, it craps out when it reads the texture, which I converted to .png format.

Should I save the image in another fromat that would work? Is my idea totally uneal?

I did a Fence texure this way and now I make my fences in sketchup and works great!

Thanks!
 
Also, my round tectures were downloaded from USGS, but the resolution is still kind of crappy. What is a good source for high res sattelite imagery? Where do payware developers get theirs?
 
ok, this is what I see in sketchup. When I load FS9, it looks exactly like that....the cutouts appear white and not transparent.
 

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Hi,

ModelConverterX should support PNG files with an alpha channel and these should be converted to a DXT BMP file with alpha channel as well.

When you load the object in ModelConverterX you don't see the transparency already?

About where to get images. That is not easy to answer. For the US the USGS is usually the best source, since you can use them. Other options are to buy them from image providers. What resolution they have differs a bit per state, but I think for most areas around between 30 cm and 1 meter resolution should be available.
 
Thank you Arno,

I played with it last night. The prblem is not MCX at all, it handles png files on smaller items Ive created perfectly.

The problem is applying the png texture image to the ground polygon (rectangle) in Sketchup. It gives me an error message when I try to load it when I create the texture, which I suspect may be due to the size of the png picture.....however there is no problem with the .tiff version of the same image (i.e. it loads correctly).

I will try tonight with a smaller area of the same picture to troubleshoot if the png file size is the issue.

When I edited the picture in PS CS5, I did not create an alpha channel, I simply trimmed out the elements I did not want to show (leaving the typical white/gray dotted background on the cutouts. Do I also need to add an alpha channel? I did not do this for my fence texture and it worked alright.
 
Hi,

I think when you save from photoshop those gray and white areas will automatically become an alpha channel. So that should be fine.
 
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