• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

FSX transparent textures?

I

igabc

Messages
219
Country
italy
Does anyone know if it's possible to resample an aerial image giving that specific source a 100% transparency?

the SDK documentation talks about Sampling Parameters but I am not able to understand what all those parameters really do. Is there any in depth explainantion somewhere available? I tried to make searches for "Channel_Value"MajorityMode" etc but I couldn't find anything.

thanks a lot!
G
 
Why don't you try it and see?

I don't know why it wouldn't work. Take the original source, make a blendmask of pure black, convert to 8-bit grayscale TIFF and set up an INF file for compiling.

Once the BGL file is in sim you "should" see nothing.

Why would someone want to do this? The resulting BGL file, if totally transparent, could be used for placing specific autogen over the FSX landscape. Since I have thought about this in the past, but yet to try and implement it, my only question is how low the LOD setting could be for autogen placement. No use making a LOD=15 file (1.19 meters) for an invisible file.
 
What I've found, is that you need at least 1 pixel NOT totally transparent in the blend mask ( or alpha channel ). But, the area masked as 100% will still not be usable for autogen, if I recall right... you need a gray mask for this. I'm not sure exactly what value of gray/transparency. Test it and see.

Dick
 
Last edited:
If the black mask is over land, it will allow autogen to show.

I found this by masking a lake before covering it with a mesh-clinging water poly.



 
Hi George.

I know the default autogen will show through a transparent area of photoreal... but can you add new autogen to the transparent area via the Annotator?

If I've got time, I'll check that today.

Dick
 
Hi George.

You might wish to use a transparent autogen area to lay down seasonally-changing autogen trees, for example, without actually changing the underlying terrain texture.

Here's an example of autogen trees placed, but the underlying texture hidden by a nearly black blendmask:

Transparent_Photoreal.zip

Dick
 
Last edited:
Hmm, presumably you have photographic textures at that position. I see trees at all seasons.
 
Hi George.

This is the image:

imagewb.png


and this is the blendmask:

grayscale001.png


You can't see the gray image because of the blendmask ( value 1 in the range of 0-255 ).

Dick
 
Sorry Dick, I see what you mean. You are adding custom autogen on a transparent texture.
 
Here's some pictures... I added an autogen container pile with the Annotator.

Non-Transparent ( no blendmask ):

nontransparent.png


Non-Transparent Winter ( no blendmask ):

nontransparentwinter.png


Transparent ( with blendmask ):

transparentwinter.png



Note the trees have changed... that is a problem with autogen. Changing seasons or restarting FSX may change the style or location of vegetation. If exact locations and models are needed, you would have to use effect-objects to show seasons.

I hope Flight allows conditional display of models so we can again have seasonal trees... :rolleyes:

Dick
 
Last edited:
Golf-HotelDelta said:
I've no idea, but why anyone should wish to is a mystery.
Click to expand...

A great example of using a transparent photo scenery with autogen, working on a land class base, would be in the Hawaiian islands. On the island of Lanai there is one city, Lanai City and then a resort area on the SE coast. Lanai City is very defined, laid out in a block as the center of the pineapple operations. Well suited for precision autogen placement.

Another great example is to look at the eastern coast of The Big Island of Hawaii. There are many, many areas where the housing is single row on both sides of a street. Agricultural areas are in the back of these row houses. Nothing in regular land class begins to replicate this type of structural placement, but again, using autogen on a transparent photo file would do the trick.

Thank you, Dick. When I work around the islands your trials will help guide me along the way.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top