Hi everyone, as promised I’ve recommenced work on adjusting the terrain textures for Australia’s Red Centre. Even I am surprised at how quickly I’m plowing through matters in between flights. It reminds me of how de-motivated I must have become last year. Now I’m really tackling the challenge with a different, committed way of thinking. Rather than plodding through it, I’m flying a bit first, then doing short bursts. After a few updates you’ll realise why!
In general, I am not changing Albert’s beautiful texture files. The detail he uses seems fine. But The files need SIGNIFICANT colour, brightness and contrast correction.
So below is a single example of what is being done with every one of the 27 texture files that I have identified as being used in the Alice Springs tile area. I may find more files, if unlucky.
I’m attempting to keep all the corrections to the same level for all files, to help the look in-sim and ease the adjustment process.
I’ve already seen that substantial editing of a few of Albert’s files may still be required, especially for some of the hilly textures, that in Red Oz do not tend to have verdant green pastures. But first I must prove that I’ve edited all required files and that I can get a ‘feel’ for how it’s all combining, before starting the fiddly editing.
The Photoshop editing:
This can be done in GIMP too.
Original file:
First I use the colour replace tool to apply weedkiller and a few millennia of drought to Albert’s often lush green highlights. I’d love to know how to do this via layers in PS, but haven’t found out how yet. The other adjustments use layers, to ease later adjustment:
Next I adjust the overall hue of the file, giving it the first red feel:
Then, as I’ve found the in-sim look of the textures far too bright, I reduce the brightness and increase contrast quite a lot. Im dreading the review of the overall terrain look, I expect to be making a few tweaks to this setting. Thank god for layers! :
Lastly, theres a final red highlights hue adjustment, again it looks quite exaggerated here but more subtle in sim:
If I need to make more adjustments, they’ll need to be repeated 27 times or more each cycle. Then compare in-sim, possibly only adjusting certain textures for blending purposes. Fun stuff, it is a very large task indeed. Then again, it’ll change a very large part of the world!
The next update will cover the .ter and pol. file structure and editing process, the most mind-numbing bit.
S
Better looking Australian textures are really required — in my virtual world tour, I was a bit disappointed when flying near Ayers Rock and everything was this default light brown/gray, instead of the red tone one can see in photos.
Is this working like other texture replacements (i.e. overwriting default textures), or is this some kind of scenery pack?
Yes Mario, it should just be a scenery addon pack, no need to replace anything.
And yes, I too was disappointed re. the red textures, hence the project. Next might be my own sth eastern region, Sydney etc. Even down here it’s far too green. You could take yrs to do it all! But if I can get the instructions out, many should be able to do their own region for others to enjoy.
I can’t wait to see them in action. Now if LR can update the documentation soon you might be able to apply normal maps to those textures….Then they will really POP!
Ta John! Yes, those new terrain and poly files have some snazzy new tech. But you used the normals with the glaciers no? Any tips appreciated!
I just wanna get a complete region going first, before trying better effects, but yes, will be nice to experiment. Tree colours too..
I was able to get specular highlights on the glaciers but no height mapping. I hope in the new documentation, has info on implementing normals in the .ter definition…..
Specular is nice for ice and snow but imagine being able to add a convincing texture to a mountain range or to a forrest. If it can be done I think the ground textures would look almost Outerra-ish.
But with that said how taxing would normals on a global scale be on the GPU? Dunno yet LOL ..With the added detail a designer may be able to use less textures by editing the .ter definitions which would free up VRAM….
What I mean is instead of 10 .ter definitions pointing to 10 different .DDS textures you can have them point to 2 or 3 & if my thoughts are correct doing this will become less taxing on the GPU and VRAM…..
The easiest way to figure out how to limit textures is to first color all the DDS textures with a solid color or pattern, fire up XP and see how those textures lay on the terrain. If you try this out you will see there are textures that can be eliminated IMO.
Also by using composite textures, documented well BTW, you can add more variety to you DDS files and blend them better into the terrain…..
Thanks John, good info. Wow, I must look up the composite texture definitions. They come up alot in the files. Might assist things as u say.
Going from 10 to say 2 different textures, albeit normals, might look far too gridlike ptt high altitudes.
Yeah it is a bit tricky and more complicated then that. With UM I knocked down the amount of urban textures the same way. There was tons of trial and error in order to make it work and custom composite/ composite noise textures to help with the grid effect….
Looks like I might have to load up Aus/NZ part of the world from the DVD what with this and the Sydney Airport and Christchurch stuff.
Finally 10.10 news / dev blog post a month later , dang
http://developer.x-plane.com/2012/06/were-still-here-really/
Wow, and I thought making liveries could be a pain in the butt… amazing work!
Thanks. But im very nervous, it’s all got to work and hopefully blend okay. It’s a good analogy, doing a livery. But it’s split up into 27 pieces. And you have 27 txt files that refer to different filenames that you need to track!
helpful- Chris has rewritten the low level joystick code; while this was suppose to be ‘just the hardware’ code (with new UI coming in 10.20) it looks like one aspect will go live in 10.10: you can plug and unplug your joysticks while you fly without restarting the sim.
Any updates on your red centre work? I just flew YBBN-YBRM and wondered why our stark, dry, red country was so lush and green!
Sorry I’ve had a rather large break from this far bigger task than I realized. I promise to finish, and will use the term used by a reasonably well known distributor of paywares when it comes to expected completion dates- it’ll be done, SOON.