Special Aircraft Service
Individual Mods and Packs for IL-2 1946 => Skins, Maps, Missions & Campaigns => MapWorx (Common) => Topic started by: Uzin on October 30, 2010, 04:37:33 AM
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I wonder if it is possible to fine moving the texture on the map, or positioning it precisely where it should be. It would be useful for instance when making a city as texture, and placing it so it sets where we need.
Some suggestions ?
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Probably best done on the map_t in a graphics program. If you have a geographical reference for the city - i.e. a lake or river - then you can draw in an area of the appropriate grey shade and then edit it further in the FMB.
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Probably best done on the map _t in a graphics program. If you have a geographical reference for the city - i.e. a lake or river - then you can draw in an area of the appropriate grey shade and then edit it further in the FMB.
Is this possible also for the streets of the city and of blocks of buildings ? I did not tried it yet, perhaps it will be the next step. Anyway, thanks .
EDITED:
As far as I know, for a 1:1 map size one pixel corresponds to 200 meters in map_T, so I do not understand how it would be possible draw , for instance, city streets wide , say, 15 meters, in that map_T. Can anybody help me to understand this, please ?
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You can't really change the streets of a city texture unless you change the texture itself. But this can only be done in a graphics editing program, not in map maker or on any of the maps like map_t or others. Textures are just images or photos if you wish, of a certain type of terrain. And RGB values in map_t assign which texture goes where in the map, but nothing else. To adjust streets to a certain width, you will have to edit the tga texture itself in a graphics editor.
You can rotate a city texture 90/180/270 degrees in a graphics editor, but nothing else since it must remain a square with straight alignment to 180 degrees.
City textures are a mess to fool with I've found. They are often too different in structure and appearance from surrounding terrain. Ideally there should be some kind of intermediary texture to gradually allow fading in and out of one terrain type to another.
And the usual manner of positioning houses in a city, is to align the objects according to the texture, not the other way around. Luckily in map maker you can select objects in group and copy/paste and rotate - which gives you some easier ways of placing objects as you want them, without having to place them one by one - a certain path to the loony bin with maps having 10 000 objects and more ...
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Thanks, agracier.
I met objections of some users that my Koenigsberg city has nothing common with the reality . I am preparing to repair it, but even if I have sound geographical info, I am not sure how to implement it best into Il2. There is the problem how to populate the island in the centre of this city. Another problem is how to place correctly the swedish fort near Pillau.These are my problems for now. Any advice such as yours is very appreciated.
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Well, none of the maps have much relation to reality as such ... all cities are very simplified on maps in Il-2. They are supposed to create an abstracted illusion of flying over a city, not recreate a city itself. And often you just have to make do with what is possible within the game limits. If you can get a few elements that define a city onto a map, then bravo. A fortress, train station, a palace, barracks, city walls or whatever, that's doing good already.
None of the cities on my maps have that much to do with reality either ... it's enough to give an impression of a city and make sure the maps look good.
That said, I've had a lot of disappointment with city textures. They often don't fit into the landscape very well and also require very careful and patient positioning of objects, if you want to do it well. And even then ...
One little tip in making cities that is handy though: most cities do not have sharply defined limits. They peter out into suburbs, or continue along main roads while the area in between may be more rural or undeveloped. It's a good idea to have cities taper off into the landscape ...
And also, make maps for yourself primarily and have fun doing so. Unless you're getting paid for maps and then I'd like to hear how you managed that ... ha ha
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Maybe my redone Stalingrad map is helpfull to you for what to do with city textures.
A while ago I fiddled around a bit with textures and stuff and customized the Stalingrad summer map by using Compan's textures.
Unfortunately the factory, village and city textures didn't fit in anymore so they also needed a repaint.
I edited the village texture by cloning parts of Compan's texture into it and left out many roads of the default texture.
(This village texture can be repainted better, I know, but it was just a try out...)
As you can see I also redid the factory texture in the left top corner and edited the city texture. I used Google images for both.
Besides using photo textures there are so many ways to edit the textures to make it fit in the landscape and to give the illusion it doesn't look that empty anymore.
(http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh195/Uufflakke/d58e5d69.jpg)
And after populating it a bit with some repainted buildings it doesn't look that bad at all. And still good fps.
I don't know if the landscape textures and cities etc. look realistic or whatever but what the heck. Everything looks better than the stock map! ;D
(http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh195/Uufflakke/e3192c6f.jpg)
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Thank you very much for encouraging, agracier and UUfflake.
Do you suppose the following pictures to be feasible to simulate in Il2 ?
(http://i734.photobucket.com/albums/ww341/Uzin_2009/th_Koenigsberg1927_cityCenter.jpg) (http://s734.photobucket.com/albums/ww341/Uzin_2009/?action=view¤t=Koenigsberg1927_cityCenter.jpg) (http://i734.photobucket.com/albums/ww341/Uzin_2009/th_Centr_Kenigsberga.png) (http://s734.photobucket.com/albums/ww341/Uzin_2009/?action=view¤t=Centr_Kenigsberga.png)
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Thanks to you, UP_Boomer for opening a bit the door of wizards kitchen. ;)
The small problem with Google maps is that there is the present state of Koenigsberg island,
which was bombed severely during WWII, as you can see by comparing with the above photo .
Look at PM, please.
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Thank you very much for encouraging, agracier and UUfflake.
Do you suppose the following pictures to be feasible to simulate in Il2 ?
It's always difficult to predict how things will look when flying, but I suppose you're aiming for a densely built-up, old historical city look. The trick is tho make one with a decent frame rate and without spending an inordinate amount of time of the populating either.
Uufflakke managed to do something more or less similar with Madrid. Placing buildings/objects through and into one another often helps create a cluttered densely built look,especially if you use housing blocks with single house objects.
Also, if you are going to make very dense urban areas, there isn't always a need to have the usual type of urban textures, since you probably won't see much of the texture anyway because of all the objects. That would allow you to use textures that blend in better with the surrounding terrain. And it also relieves you of the need/urge to follow the street pattern as given on an urban texture. You can the place objects according to your own preference, without worrying about aligning them to streets ...
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Also, if you are going to make very dense urban areas, there isn't always a need to have the usual type of urban textures, since you probably won't see much of the texture anyway because of all the objects. That would allow you to use textures that blend in better with the surrounding terrain. And it also relieves you of the need/urge to follow the street pattern as given on an urban texture. You can the place objects according to your own preference, without worrying about aligning them to streets ...
Perhaps instead of default city textures it might be possible to make a pavements and streets , say, of concrete aerodrome plates, and then make such a dense building population that the "grass" is not visible, as I understand it right ?
Or even better: place a grey, monotonous texture of the colour of streets, in the centre of the town, then populate it densely with building blocks directly in MapBuilder ?
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Perhaps instead of default city textures it might be possible to make a pavements and streets , say, of concrete aerodrome plates, and then make such a dense building population that the "grass" is not visible, as I understand it right ?
Or even better: place a grey, monotonous texture of the colour of streets, in the centre of the town, then populate it densely with building blocks ?
Something like that ... I'd say if you are going to make Koningsberg/Kaliningrd, then the surrounding terrain will be a green of some sort probably. Maybe a texture of a gray-greenish color might work well, something halfway in color between the two. I don't think that a flat color would look good, as it would stand out too much amongst the surrounding countryside.
But first off, why not collect all the different urban/town textures that you can find and put them in a separate directory to compare. There are at least 33 different urban textures that I know of that have been used in one map or another. They are sometimes subtly different from each other and perhaps one of them might suit your map better.
https://www.mediafire.com/?fjcjipy1ajbjels
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@agracier:
thank you for kindly supplying with city textures.
Just my 2pence: all the textures include certain street pattern, which can hardly be associated with the real town. So perhaps it is worth to consider the texture without any street pattern, just plain grey, and to create the streets by simply putting enough bulding blocks on that texture background, following the pattern of real town. The gardens might be created by grass airdrome plates, as I did on the present state map, with adding the trees and bush there.
I perhaps shall try these approaches in the future, after having finished (at least partially) the airfields , which amounted over 50 now. ::)
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Maybe my redone Stalingrad map is helpfull to you for what to do with city textures.
A while ago I fiddled around a bit with textures and stuff and customized the Stalingrad summer map by using Compan's textures.
Unfortunately the factory, village and city textures didn't fit in anymore so they also needed a repaint.
I edited the village texture by cloning parts of Compan's texture into it and left out many roads of the default texture.
(This village texture can be repainted better, I know, but it was just a try out...)
As you can see I also redid the factory texture in the left top corner and edited the city texture. I used Google images for both.
Besides using photo textures there are so many ways to edit the textures to make it fit in the landscape and to give the illusion it doesn't look that empty anymore.
(http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh195/Uufflakke/d58e5d69.jpg)
And after populating it a bit with some repainted buildings it doesn't look that bad at all. And still good fps.
I don't know if the landscape textures and cities etc. look realistic or whatever but what the heck. Everything looks better than the stock map! ;D
(http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh195/Uufflakke/e3192c6f.jpg)
Very good work Lejo. I was thinking the same for the maps using big cities. I'm planning to use the same idea for the new versions of Okinawa and Kyushu, and some other maps i'm planning to repaint like germany or russian maps.
That's looking nice.
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If I can add a tip or two. If you are going to make city texture from scratch, or if you using Google Earth images (like I’m) would be good to edit colors on them. Would be good to leave some green parts on your city (urban or suburban) texture (that could be gardens, parks or whatever), so that you can select and edit those green parts in a way that you make them look in same color tone like your other ground texture (fields, forests, bocages, etc . . . ). Also, it is good to make all ground texture, or at least at one area, in the similar color tone.
In that way you get, more natural look of the settlements, (peter out in the suburbs, as agracier said), overall more natural look, better blending with other textures.
Here is example of the suburban texture from Google Earth, and some field textures. All of them are with their colors and color tones tuned, and seamless. At the bottom is how that looks in game.
(I had to resize it; it is a little too big to show them all in real size)
(https://www.sas1946.rocks/images/imageshit/dead/dead.gif)
(https://www.sas1946.rocks/images/imageshit/dead/dead.gif)
(https://www.sas1946.rocks/images/imageshit/dead/dead.gif)
(https://www.sas1946.rocks/images/imageshit/dead/dead.gif)
(https://www.sas1946.rocks/images/imageshit/dead/dead.gif)
(https://www.sas1946.rocks/images/imageshit/dead/dead.gif)
(https://www.sas1946.rocks/images/imageshit/dead/dead.gif)
(https://www.sas1946.rocks/images/imageshit/dead/dead.gif)
(https://www.sas1946.rocks/images/imageshit/dead/dead.gif)
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Those look good. Very realistic.
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Look nice.
But:
what about flying much lower?
what about bombing the buildings there ? Will they be destroyed ?
how to position precisely these textures with regard of rivers? Re-work map_C ?
Just questions arising ...
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Look nice.
But:
what about flying much lower?
what about bombing the buildings there ? Will they be destroyed ?
how to position precisely these textures with regard of rivers? Re-work map_C ?
Just questions arising ...
Sometimes it's useful to make a layer on map_T that contains only rivers. Normally it's made with RGB30 (for river water, no surf). If it's on a layer in map_t (layered version) then you can switch it on or off depending on what you wish to do. If, for instance you're positioning city textures in regards to a river, then you can turn on RGB30 and see how the textures are positioned.
Now, to make a river layer for map_T, you do need use map_c (the unformatted version which is usually called my_mapc) and copy the rivers from the map into a new image. Then reduce in size - to 25% or 2x50% ... you'll have to fiddle around with the threshold setting maybe so that you won't get too small or too large rivers. Once you think threshold is satisfactory, then copy and import into layered map_t.
Be sure that when you copy the rivers from my_mapc, that the transparency is on ... and be sure to place river RGB30 layer correctly in map_t. To place pixel perfectly, it's often useful to place a marker pixel in one of the corners of your map before copying. That way, you can align the marker pixel in the appropriate corner of map_t ... marker pixels in corners save oodles of time in positioning ...
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Look nice.
But:
what about flying much lower?
what about bombing the buildings there ? Will they be destroyed ?
how to position precisely these textures with regard of rivers? Re-work map_C ?
Just questions arising ...
That's just texture, you can't bomb this of course. And it's nice from middle/hight altitude only, it's not made for low flight. It's the bad point of this technic, the good one is that it give a real feeling to be flying a real city.
I used a similar technic for my repaint of Kyushu map at the first stages. But the results of Avala are better. Well done mate
(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4041/4201804314_f899774e26_b.jpg)
(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2796/4209165033_d08024c562_b.jpg)
Final stage of Kyushu :
(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2687/4213532634_6181682844_b.jpg)
(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4027/4212768973_3282e0fe62_b.jpg)
But be careful, there's people who really hate this kind of illusion. I would say that this kind of city textures is better for very big maps, where you can't really recreate all the cities with objets without having troubles with a too heavy actor.static.
I was thinking that maybe there is a third path, the one who mix urban textures and objects.
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If I can add a tip or two. If you are going to make city texture from scratch, or if you using Google Earth images (like I’m) would be good to edit colors on them. Would be good to leave some green parts on your city (urban or suburban) texture (that could be gardens, parks or whatever), so that you can select and edit those green parts in a way that you make them look in same color tone like your other ground texture (fields, forests, bocages, etc . . . ). Also, it is good to make all ground texture, or at least at one area, in the similar color tone.
In that way you get, more natural look of the settlements, (peter out in the suburbs, as agracier said), overall more natural look, better blending with other textures.
Here is example of the suburban texture from Google Earth, and some field textures. All of them are with their colors and color tones tuned, and seamless. At the bottom is how that looks in game.
Very nicely done Avala :)
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Thank you very much for encouraging, agracier and UUfflake.
Do you suppose the following pictures to be feasible to simulate in Il2 ?
(http://i734.photobucket.com/albums/ww341/Uzin_2009/th_Koenigsberg1927_cityCenter.jpg) (http://s734.photobucket.com/albums/ww341/Uzin_2009/?action=view¤t=Koenigsberg1927_cityCenter.jpg) (http://i734.photobucket.com/albums/ww341/Uzin_2009/th_Centr_Kenigsberga.png) (http://s734.photobucket.com/albums/ww341/Uzin_2009/?action=view¤t=Centr_Kenigsberga.png)
Not that big. As Il2 engine work using squared sections, you just can get about 1/5 of your city in a squared texture. So to get 5/5 of the city you would need to use 5 slots textures of the load.ini file to a have a complet city. The bad point is that 5 slots textures used for a single city makes that you don't have enough slots for the rest of the map. It's going to be a poor and repetitive map.
If the map is small, with just 1 or 2 cities, than it's more easy to make it. For exemple this my repaint of SandOfTime map :
(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4145/5026092979_c5cb698202_b.jpg)
(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4090/5026710986_9cbc00032c_b.jpg)
I'm using to textures here....so 2 textures slots on the load.ini are needed.
To create the illusion that the textures aren't to repetitive, you will have to paint it manually.
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What Lejo and Avala showed is the good technic for me even of they get a different result. the idea is to used google earth pics - reworked of course - to get urban structure. You can chose to keep the painted bilding or not. the important is to keep the urban structure provided by the streets.
For MTO repaint for exemple, i will recover the painted bildings with 3d objets. I made 4 city textures, each one with natural progression from the center of the town to suburbs and "fields" (we are in the desert ;) ).
Once you get to good colours, tones, contrast and saturation this what you get, a nice BUT repetitive city (on the pics here there is a small part covered with real 3d object, it will be 100% fully covered at the end):
(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4024/5137927064_98af1bc7b4_b.jpg)
(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4128/5137321819_8130997399_b.jpg)
(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4153/5137927944_41e3d2ae5b_b.jpg)
(http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1185/5137322581_f59028fdb9_b.jpg)
Here you can see the squared sections. Too repetitive of course but it's important to reach this step : here the important is to check that all the textures fit (colour, contrast, saturation, motives) each other. When you get that, then the next step is manual painting = you make disapear the repetition by puting one by one the textures on the ground, and you check BEFORE all fit each other, you now know there will be no more problem.
All will look natural and organic...like a real city.
(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4039/5137323293_ee5b186f70_b.jpg)
(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4091/5137324227_9b70e72084_b.jpg)
Textures are in resolution 4 on the load.ini...it's important to make them nice for low flight and ground attack missions ;) :P . The bad point is that the more the texture resolution is high more repetitive the effect is.
That's why is important to get 3 or 4 textures for the city, close in terms of colours, but with little differences in order to create the illusion that there is no repetition. The other 2 BIG parts are : desaturation and manual painting. With these 3 things you can get pretty nice results.
Please take in consideration that these are very preliminary stages of the repaint of Mto....this is WIP, the best part of the work cause it's a kind of inquest . The final result may be quite different.
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And take a look to Agracier's Djibouti update....very interresting work for city texturing:
https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,10258.0.html
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eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! . . . (Avala screaming like a girl) :D
Redko, you made FSX die :D
@Uzin
Of course flying lower over the texture shows that texture really is just 2D, and looks flat. But if you use texture as a template for placing the objects (like I will hopefully one day when I figure out how to use auto pop tool, with objects from 4.09) I think that it can also look good.
If buildings and other objects are placed on the map in working opened FMB, they should be destroyable and should behave as any “normal” building in some “the stock” map.
I think that you don’t need to rework the map_C, because map_C just shows where the water is and where is the land in the map. Everything that you do with the textures, you use map_t.
You can paint city texture on top of the water texture, and in that way, you will have city that goes right to the water banks. The bad thing with that way is that you can have trees in water. You can also put water texture above city texture, in that way you can’t have city right on the water banks, but there would be no trees in the water.
You must test and trial ideas that you have, there is no exact science in IL2 map making.
(https://www.sas1946.rocks/images/imageshit/dead/dead.gif)
(https://www.sas1946.rocks/images/imageshit/dead/dead.gif)
(https://www.sas1946.rocks/images/imageshit/dead/dead.gif)
(https://www.sas1946.rocks/images/imageshit/dead/dead.gif)
(https://www.sas1946.rocks/images/imageshit/dead/dead.gif)
(https://www.sas1946.rocks/images/imageshit/dead/dead.gif)
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Using phototextures and populating on top of it is a very good combination! So it looks good from high altitude and when flying low or at treetop level.
I helped another mapmaker at AAS with populating his map (which will never be released though...) and just like Redko is doing now I put houses on top of almost every phototextured house.
Here is an example how it looks at high and low altitude. As you can see the houses are not very close to eachother but it looks very densily populated. And still good fps.
So I can recommend you this combinations of applying phototextures and populating on top of it.
(http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh195/Uufflakke/50845efb.jpg)
(http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh195/Uufflakke/9dd10df4.jpg)
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Many thanks to everybody in this thread for their inspiring posts. I suppose the discussion is fruitful for any mapmaker.
EDIT:
But there is still untouched question (I think): where precisely will the texture be placed, I mean how far away from the point I clicked the mouse at opened map in MapBuilder ? And which part of the texture .tga file ? Perhaps is there more than just trial and failure method ? Essentially, how to precisely place the rexture at the place I wont ?
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The screenshots of the never-to-be-released map are very stunning ... never seen such a good looking European city before ... and can I hazard a guess as to which city? I was thinking of Hamburg ... not that it matters, but getting it right from the screenshots would be a compliment to the makers for getting it recognizable ...
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and can I hazard a guess as to which city? I was thinking of Hamburg ...
Wrong answer! ;)
It's Amsterdam...
(http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh195/Uufflakke/a4fa22f4.jpg)
(http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh195/Uufflakke/A06.jpg)
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Not fair, in the first 2 screenshot you couldn't see any of the grachten ... ha ha
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Wrong answer! ;)
It's Amsterdam...
(http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh195/Uufflakke/a4fa22f4.jpg)
(http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh195/Uufflakke/A06.jpg)
Ohhhh jeeeeeez.....what a beauty. And why will this never be released ???
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(http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh195/Uufflakke/9dd10df4.jpg)
Very nice. For the streets i was thinking that to make them a little more natural i would recommand to use a grey a little bit more clear and use it to paint lines in the center of the streets. It could simulate car wearing or track wheels.
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What about releasing the repaints of the appartment blocks? It would be a shame to let them not be used for another map surely ...
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@Redko: I will not discuss it here why this Northsea map will not be released. It's something between me and the mapmaker. ;)
Or maybe it will released whenever without my stuff.Who knows...
And you are right about the roads, but it was all in a WIP stage so during the process a lot of thing could be altered. But that's not relevant anymore.
@Agracier: I repainted two of Canonuk's houseblocks into typical Dutch canal houses and transformed a stock mill into a Dutch windmill. Just three objects. I've already sent them to Michel Boonstra to use it for his Netherlands map. So it's not necessary to release them right now.
https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,8022.0.html (https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,8022.0.html) (when you scroll down you will see my objects repaint.)
But I think we are getting off topic right now as this topic is about 'Moving Textures'. ;D
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But I think we are getting off topic right now as this topic is about 'Moving Textures'. ;D
Hey....Agracier is a very passionate guy. Every single thing dealing with mapmaking is in the topic...all ;) ;D.
Ok no more questions. By the way your house pack is very useful for MTO too, i won't forget to mention you this time on the future movie trailer.