using google maps and microdem TOGETHER

[Hawk]

I tried downloading Wolverine's PDF tutorial from this post, but my copy of Reader wont open it. Says something about "raise without handler" and quits. Maybe the old attached PDF is corrupted.

Nope! Nothing wrong with the pdf file in the post you linked to. I just tried it and it opens fine.
What pdf reader are you using? I'm using Sumatra, but Foxit opens it as well.

[Wolverine@MSU]

I think there's a way to "paint out" the ground texture in the Editor.

[Gumboots]

What pdf reader are you using? I'm using Sumatra, but Foxit opens it as well.

I'm using Adobe Reader. Anyway it doesn't matter. I got it the .bmp to work without reading the PDF. Turns out you don't even need an alpha channel on it. Just plain RBG channels is all it needs. The key point apears to be using a 24bit .bmp instead of 32 bit. 32 bit was a mess. 24 is fine (on W7/64 bit OS).

I think there's a way to "paint out" the ground texture in the Editor.

Sure, you can do that, but then you're not really using the .bmp, because you're replacing all the textures with ones you have painted yourself. I did do a bit of messing around with painting manually, and that overrides the .bmp. Anything you paint manually will, assuming it's a large enough feature, be visible even from high altitude.

Like I said in the other post, I think this will have to be a case of using the.bmp as a guide to manual painting of textures. It's still a big help, because you can easily grab the ground colour for an area just by Ctrl+clicking on it from high altitude (where the .bmp textures look solid) then using that to paint manually when zoomed in. This should still give very good results, even if it's not quite as convenient as we might like it to be.

The thing about the map I'm playing with is that large areas of it look more or less like the surface of Mars. The Strezlecki Desert is a bit like that. So although RRT3's default ground colour would not be that noticeable when zoomed in if the ground colour you wanted was some some of green anyway, it'll really stand out badly if the place is supposed to look like Mars.

[Wolverine@MSU]

I think there's a way to "paint out" the ground texture in the Editor.

Sure, you can do that, but then you're not really using the .bmp, because you're replacing all the textures with ones you have painted yourself. I did do a bit of messing around with painting manually, and that overrides the .bmp. Anything you paint manually will, assuming it's a large enough feature, be visible even from high altitude.

I guess I mis-used the term "paint". I wasn't referring to actually painting to the bitmap, but using the Paint tool to remove texture (see image below). You can see that the ground texture has been removed on the left hand side compared to the right hand side. I used the Pencil tool in this example, but you can use the paintbucket set at "fill below" and find the highest point on the map to remove texture from the entire map. There's still the grainy appearance that remains, but you only see that when zoomed in really close.

Untitled-1.jpg (117.55 KiB) Viewed 6063 times

[Gumboots]

Ok, tried that. Perfect! Thanks for the tip. If you start right down on the coastal fringe and use the "fill above" option, one click fixes the ground texture for the entire map, and the .bmp colours go right down to ground level. I left the ocean alone for now, but as you said you could do it the other way, and start at the high point then fill down.

Obviously it could still do with some manual touching up here and there for local detail, but overall it's great. Looks like we have a viable system.

[Gumboots]

One other detail. Google Earth puts a heavy drop shadow around coastlines by default. There doesn't appear to be a user option to remove this. It seems to be a hard-coded feature that you have to accept.

What this does is (not surprisingly) put a heavy dark border on your coast when you make your 1024 x 1024 .bmp. This shows up once transferred to your .gmp. It's not that bad, and you'll probably be painting beaches etc anyway, but it's something else to deal with in the editor. Because of this, I've decided it's better to remove it when I'm making the coastal tiles. More work in PS, less work in RRT3 editor.

Another point worth noting is that RRT3's ocean edges will match the .bmp very accurately, but RRT3 puts the breaking waves on coasts several blocks back from the actual ocean edge. This means that to get a truly realistic coastline, you'd have to artificially extend the ocean several blocks further inland, so that RRT3's waves appeared to break where they really should.

The problem with that is that it will mess with coastal elevations, since oceans always have a height of 0. That may be a problem in some situations. It may be possible to cheat this, and use a lake tool to artifically extend the ocean edges to where you want them, without changing elevation. I haven't tried that yet (just thought of it) but will give it a go sometime and see what happens.

The only other alternative would be to paint an artificially wide beach, or rock shelf, or whatever, so it goes out and meets the waves. That's possible, but is more work, and rather defeats the point of getting an accurate coast from satellite shots.

[Gumboots]

Another point worth noting is that RRT3's ocean edges will match the .bmp very accurately, but RRT3 puts the breaking waves on coasts several blocks back from the actual ocean edge. This means that to get a truly realistic coastline, you'd have to artificially extend the ocean several blocks further inland, so that RRT3's waves appeared to break where they really should.

The problem with that is that it will mess with coastal elevations, since oceans always have a height of 0. That may be a problem in some situations. It may be possible to cheat this, and use a lake tool to artifically extend the ocean edges to where you want them, without changing elevation. I haven't tried that yet (just thought of it) but will give it a go sometime and see what happens.

Tried this. It works.

You can join a lake straight onto an ocean and, by using the land area smoothing tool, actually convince the "lake" part of it to slope up your beach. That way the waves break where they should break, and you don't have to paint unrealistically wide beaches.

The trick is to bring the ocean in as close as possible, then put a narrow strip of "lake", then run the smoothing tool along the coast. Only catch here is that it is going to be difficult to get it to work properly when you have cliffs on the coast*, but it seems fine for beaches.

*I'm not sure yet how much slope the "lake" can be convinced to take.

[Gumboots]

Ok, now I know how much slope a lake can be convinced to take. I'll never trust a water level again.

Shots are attached for the ocean part of the gfx, the lake part, and the resulting cliffs with waves breaking at their base. Trick was to start with the basic terrain from the heightmap, then go along the cliff using Shift+click to reset lake height as you go before setting each square to lake.

This will result in layer changes that are more angular than you want, so break out the smoothing tool. After that, it's just a matter of playing around at bit. I used the "plateau to sea level" tool a bit, as well as the "increase height" tool, to get the cliffs looking right at the end. By tweaking which cells are set to land, and which to lake, you can adjust exactly where the waves appear to break. I went for the classic "cliff with protruding rock shelf below high tide line" look.

I think the end result is pretty good for a first stab at it. Only took about ten minutes, and I could do it faster next time. Admittedly this is only a very short section of coast, but fortunately Australia has a lot of beaches anyway.

ocean.jpg (80.88 KiB) Viewed 5970 times

lake.jpg (74.65 KiB) Viewed 5970 times

result_cliffs.jpg (62.68 KiB) Viewed 5970 times

[soccersetter643]

Wow guys, this is amazing! Gumboots, GREAT JOB on the in-depth research on this project. Concerning the texture degrading when you zoom in on my Durango & Silverton map, I had always just assumed that that bug was just a side affect of me using the mac version of RT3, and it always bugged the hell out of me! So glad to hear that there is a fix to this problem! I'll get to work on updating that scenario ASAP.

On a side note, sorry I've been gone, but I've been in the process of moving from California to New York, which has taken a good deal of time and energy. But I'm getting settled, and I'll try to follow through on this post more!

GREAT WORK EVERYONE!

[Gumboots]

Oh here's another detail: trees. I've just been playing OilCan's new Central America beta map and it has no trees on it.

As I found out myself when playing around with Google Earth sat images for RT3 maps, none of the default Poptop trees sit will with the colours of such images.* They always look out of place. I assume this is why the new map was made without trees.

I'd found a similar model with maps of Australia, in that even with default PopTop land textures the available trees never looked right. They're obviously made from an American perspective and don't necessarily fit other places at all.

The problem with leaving the trees out of a map is that doesn't look right either. It leaves the map feeling rather dead and flat. I had thought that at some point there might be some value in making some extra tree packs. These should be quite simple to create, since the default trees have very simple models and would be easy to re-skin. Custom tree packs could be made for extra locations to fit custom maps, or to fit Google Earth colours, and just dropped into UserExtraContent as required.

Since these would be simple re-skins they wouldn't break anything, so even if you had the wrong pack in place it wouldn't really matter. It'd just look a bit odd. Might be worth thinking about, if anyone wants to have niftier maps.

Another thing I thought of was ground textures. The Google Earth shots give a very good overall effect particularly at higher altitudes, but are lacking in detail when viewing from near ground level. The thing is you don't want the default RT3 ground texture applied full strength either, since that overpowers the sat image at close range and looks stupid too. This got me thinking that the best option might be to apply suitable RT3 ground textures at low opacity, so that they enhance the sat image at low altitude/close range rather than fighting it. I think this technique might make it possible to have a map that looks convincing at all viewing distances.

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*While I think of it, I think one problem with GE sat shots is that they're dependent not only on the general colour of the area in question, but also on its albedo. This tends to make forested areas look darker than you'd expect, with the very dark ground texture not sitting well with RT3 trees. There may be some value in playing around with brightness and contrast in some areas of GE sat shots to get things looking better.