Autogen on top of photoreal scenery help.

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diger44
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Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 6:29 am

Autogen on top of photoreal scenery help.

Post by diger44 » Thu Jul 29, 2010 6:55 am

I am new to SbuilderX.
I am currently using SBuilderX 3.1.3 and the latest Airport Design Editor to re-do my local airport. I have the photo-real scenery working great, however because this airport is near a forest, the square cut around the airport doesn't match, so I wanted to put auto-gen around airport boundaries, I did a little reading and then placed polygons over the areas I wanted auto gen. the below attachment shows this. However the compile dialogue changed to include Terrain Vectors. When I load it up in FSX, the autogen did not appear in the assaigned polygon. What did I do wrong?
P.S. Yes I made sure I checked to select polygons and maps.
Attachments
sbxhelp.jpg
my actions

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luisfeliztirado
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Location: Santo Domingo

Re: Autogen on top of photoreal scenery help.

Post by luisfeliztirado » Thu Jul 29, 2010 1:20 pm

From the images and information provided, it is not easy to understand the exact nature of the problem. However, please consider the following possibilities:

- vector terrain, including polygons, will not appear over custom (photo-real) textures. So, if you have created a custom ground for your airport and then try to draw forests over part of it, neither the forests nor the forest ground texture will display, because the custom textures always take precedence. If this is the case, then try annotating the custom textures instead to add autogen trees to it.

- if you are drawing very small polygons in order to get trees to display, then the polygons may be too small and will not allow for that display.

- many land class types, such as "cool fields and woods" are not completely covered with trees, because, of course, they also contain fields. So, they may not always reliably display trees. You can try using a completely forested land class type, not one containing fields.

More detailed information from you would probably help in determing the exact nature of the problem.

Best regards.
Luis

meshman
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Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2006 11:54 pm

Re: Autogen on top of photoreal scenery help.

Post by meshman » Thu Jul 29, 2010 4:34 pm

diger44 wrote:...the square cut around the airport doesn't match,...
Then change it. The imagery (MAP) must be rectangular for the compiler to process, but using a blendmask along with the imagery will allow you to control what is shown in FSX. The blendmask process is covered in the SDKs and once it is setup you can have SBuilderX recognize and process both files, the imagery and blendmask.
Lance

diger44
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Re: Autogen on top of photoreal scenery help.

Post by diger44 » Thu Jul 29, 2010 5:06 pm

I did a little more reading about blend masks, however Fireworks CS4 doesn't support very large images, especially bitmaps. I get an error every time I try to edit it, same with Paint, however it gives me an "invalid bitmap" error (Probably because it's too big), PAINT.NET just froze my computer for about 5 minutes while trying to zoom in. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Right now I am trying to edit the LX1234567890 (w\e) file and replace the parts that I want FSX default auto-gen to show up with white, but none of my programs want to open a 12000x9000 image! Help!
What image editing program do you use?

meshman
Posts: 219
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Re: Autogen on top of photoreal scenery help.

Post by meshman » Thu Jul 29, 2010 11:54 pm

I use Paint.Net, but as you have found out image size can be a concern. I don't know the size of the image in Kb/mb, but if it's bigger than 300-350mb you'll be in trouble. Unless you have a 64 bit OS, 6gb or more of RAM and a 64bit program to recognize all that RAM, that is.

For the purposes of making photo based scenery, BIGGER is not better when it comes to doing any editing. And the Resample compiler doesn't care if it's one file at 12000x9000 or two files at 6000x9000 or twelve files at 3000x3000. It will all come out the same.
Lance

diger44
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Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 6:29 am

Re: Autogen on top of photoreal scenery help.

Post by diger44 » Fri Jul 30, 2010 12:44 am

Unless you have a 64 bit OS, 6gb or more of RAM and a 64bit program to recognize all that RAM, that is.
The file is 12000x9000 and it's 474mb! I have Windows 7 64bit with 6 gigs of ram!, and I finally got GIMP to render it. However all day I was learning the annotate with Annotator.exe, and that solved most of it. I am using gimp to blend the edges and make night textures (idk about seasons though). If I am painting directly on the image, how do I blend it? just a fuzzy white brush around the sides?

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luisfeliztirado
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Re: Autogen on top of photoreal scenery help.

Post by luisfeliztirado » Fri Jul 30, 2010 1:11 am

Please see Make photo-real ground textures in Flight Simulator X, available in the Avsim library:
http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?Ca ... LID=140539

for complete details on blend masks, seasonal variants, and more.

Best regards.
Luis

diger44
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 6:29 am

Re: Autogen on top of photoreal scenery help.

Post by diger44 » Fri Jul 30, 2010 1:20 am

I have that, but that proccess shows an external blend mask, is it possible to do it just on the image or does it take an extra file. How do I get the mask to show up in SBuilderX?

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luisfeliztirado
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Re: Autogen on top of photoreal scenery help.

Post by luisfeliztirado » Fri Jul 30, 2010 1:40 am

If making the Blend Mask in the same file, use another channel.

Best regards.
Luis

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