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MSFS How to make night textures for buildings

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35
Hello,

I am developing some sceneries for P3D and MSFS. I have question about night textures. I draw my models on Sketchup. How can I make a night texture? I use photoshop.
 

=rk=

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I could not reply to your post because I had been banned from this site for 5 weeks. To convert a photographically derived texture to night render mode in Photoshop, first create a new layer. Select the paint bucket tool, color 0,10,10 apply to the new layer, set layer opacity to 94%. Merge, export as .png and this is a basic night texture. Next, set the opaque layer invisible and use the magic wand tool, or the square tool, or the freeform draw tool, to outline every window that you want to appear illuminated at night. Once all windows are outlined for selection, make sure the opaque layer is visible and selected and click delete. Now you have a night texture, with illuminated windows. For a final addition of realism, find all the streetlights, area lights, basically anything that makes a pool of light. For each spot, you can use the eraser tool on the opaque layer, to selectively remove opacity, so what is left, looks like the beam of a flashlight. There are freely available Photoshop brush presets that are specifically designed to look like light wash from spotlights and you can use these with the paintbrush tool, light colors against a dark background, or alternatively with the eraser tool on a dark layer, to reveal a lighter layer beneath.

These are basic ideas to get you started. My texture documents are multi layered with different versions and intensities, experiment. Consider that available light effects make light wash and light glow textures almost unnecessary. Additionally, we are allowed to increase the emissive factor by about 4x, which will allow the texture to emit light.
 
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