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New regional textures

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New regional textures

Postby gsagostinho » Fri Apr 17, 2015 4:14 pm

This project aims to create new regional textures, particularly for the Southern Hemisphere.

Work done so far:
- African savanna
- African deserts
- African Mediterranean
- African/Middle East cities
- Rainforests (Amazon, Serra do Mar, African and Southeast Asia
- Brazilian cerrado
- Brazilian pantanal
- new Latin American city texture
- new Mediterranean town texture
- Brazilian caatinga
- South American pampas
- California
- Mexico
- Central America
- Southern Europe (Mediterranean region: Portugal, Spain, south of Italy, Greece, coast of Balkans)
- new industrial texture
- winter textures for 18th century European city and European town
- urban shader and night light for 18th century European city and European town
- American town texture
- better pack of ice textures
- large city and mega city areas: making the street lights more dense
- new airport grass texture
- new HD runway textures


Working on:

- implementing dirt runway effect

Link for the repository: https://github.com/gilbertohasnofb/new- ... l-textures

Please note that you should backup your Materials and Textures folder as some of the files on them will be overwritten. Also I give absolutely no guarantees about the result as this is still a work in progress. This has only been tested with FG 3.6 from git and I have no idea on backward compatibility.

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ORIGINAL POST:

Hi all,

I just would like to share some improvements I am currently making to the scenery of Brazil and of Latin America in general by playing with materials and creating new textures. It's by no mean perfect as I am learning these techniques only now, but here are some pictures and comments about them.

1. Serra do Mar region (coast of Santa Catarina, Parana, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro). The default scenery was really bad for this region... The image below show how it looks in real life:
Image

The default scenery had wrong type of trees, lots of crops, fields, grass, etc., where in fact we should have a dense forest. It also had non-tropical trees all around it. Now it looks like this (I am in Santos and those hills behind lead to Sao Paulo):
Image

This is a typical Latin American city, with small houses with orange roofs:
Image

And this is the new city texture. It's by no mean perfect but hopefully they resemble those pictures above (they don't have an outstanding resolution but it's so hard to get GPL satellite imagery for Brazil....):
Image

It also has night illumination:
Image

This is how it looks with the urban shader off:
Image

As you can see, the whole way up to Rio de Janeiro will be covered in forest, and the new texture (based on Texture/Trees/tropical.png which) is also greener and has some better alpha channel:
Image

2. Amazon forest region

Manaus was simply not there, our scenery thinks that Manaus is not a city but only fields and grass!:
Image

Since there are no other fields around Manaus, I did a little hack: for that small region around the city, FG will create city textures and buildings where fields were supposed to be. See:
Image

The colour of the water also have been modified. Here is the Rio Negro (Black River) with its dark blue colour. Also note in the background some deforestation area:
Image

Just in front of Manaus, the Rio Negro meets the Rio Solimoes, which is a light brown river. The result is this:
Image

And here is what I managed to do in FG:
Image

All other rivers in the Amazon forest will have this typical brown colour as well:
Image

Here is how they look in a different weather giving them more reflection:
Image

3. I applied my city texture to the whole Latin America (from Mexico all the way down), and I also use my new tree texture for the Latin American tropical region.

4. I also added some objects to our database, so by tomorrow TerraSync should give you some interesting points in these regions (Amazon Theatre in Manaus, Pacaembu stadium in Sao Paulo, Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro).

Things to do still:
- improve city texture
- improve tiling effect with the city textures
- create the North the coast of Brazil with the more tropical looking trees Texture/Trees/tropical-alt.png
- add more objects to these cities, particularly tall buildings to Sao Paulo

Hope you will find these modifications interesting.

Cheers!
Gilberto
Last edited by gsagostinho on Sat Dec 26, 2015 6:52 pm, edited 12 times in total.
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Re: Some improvements to the scenery of Brazil

Postby Johan G » Fri Apr 17, 2015 5:56 pm

Those changes looks really good. :D

I wonder if it would be possible to have a regional texture and normal map for the urban shader.
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Re: Some improvements to the scenery of Brazil

Postby gsagostinho » Fri Apr 17, 2015 5:58 pm

Johan G wrote in Fri Apr 17, 2015 5:56 pm:Those changes looks really good. :D

Thanks a lot!

Johan G wrote in Fri Apr 17, 2015 5:56 pm:I wonder if it would be possible to have a regional texture and normal map for the urban shader.

I don't think I quite understand what you mean, I probably lack a lot of terminology regarding this area (it's my first scenery project only). Sorry :(
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Re: Some improvements to the scenery of Brazil

Postby Müller » Fri Apr 17, 2015 9:00 pm

Hi gsagostinho,
I am Brazilian and everything is working to improve the scenery or terrain (mostly) in my country is very welcome.
The Brazil is very large, it is a huge area, therefore is subject to have more problems, eg "z fighting", broken runways, and others.
Thanks
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Re: Some improvements to the scenery of Brazil

Postby gsagostinho » Fri Apr 17, 2015 9:06 pm

Hi Mueller,

I know what you are talking about. For me, the main problem with the Brazilian scenery (and actually everywhere else except for Europe and USA) is that the resolution of the land cover classes is very low, so you have those huge straight lines separating things. Just look at that land class map of Manaus I posted above and you'll see how huge areas are mapped into a single square of land class. Also, because of the resolution, some of the details are lost. As an example, the littoral of Sao Paulo up to Rio de Janeiro is practically beach-less, there is no sand anywhere to be seen. Third there is the problem of incorrect land classes all over the place, which is what I am trying my best to remedy for some smaller areas.

And by the way, I am from Brazil as well by the way :)

Cheers,
Gilberto
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Re: Some improvements to the scenery of Brazil

Postby Müller » Fri Apr 17, 2015 9:22 pm

Hi gsagostinho,
Thanks for your work, it is with this attitude that we can improve the scenery / terrain in Brazil. :D
Best regards
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Re: Some improvements to the scenery of Brazil

Postby Johan G » Fri Apr 17, 2015 9:42 pm

gsagostinho wrote in Fri Apr 17, 2015 5:58 pm:
Johan G wrote in Fri Apr 17, 2015 5:56 pm:I wonder if it would be possible to have a regional texture and normal map for the urban shader.

I don't think I quite understand what you mean, I probably lack a lot of terminology regarding this area (it's my first scenery project only). Sorry :(

I was speculating about whether the urban effects shader could have regional definitions with different textures and height maps (not normal maps :oops: ) in a way similar to regular textures/land classes. I am not sure it is currently possible, but it would be nice if it was.
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Re: Some improvements to the scenery of Brazil

Postby gsagostinho » Fri Apr 17, 2015 9:46 pm

@Johan Oh, I believe I understand what you mean now. This is currently implemented, the <texture-set> of <effect>Effects/urban</effect> takes two textures, one for the image itself, the second is the height map. A third image is used as a mask for adding random buildings and trees. Here is how the code looks like:

Code: Select all
 <material>
    <name>BuiltUpCover</name>
    <name>Urban</name>
    <effect>Effects/urban</effect>
    <texture-set>
      <texture>Terrain/latin_american_city1.png</texture>
      <texture n="2">Terrain/latin_american_city1-relief-light.png</texture>
    </texture-set>
    <object-mask>Terrain/latin_american_city1.mask.png</object-mask>
...


So in the case above, Terrain/latin_american_city1-relief-light.png is the height map for that 3D urban effect.

Iis that what you meant?

Cheers,
Gilberto
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Re: Some improvements to the scenery of Brazil

Postby Johan G » Fri Apr 17, 2015 10:27 pm

It quite seems to be. :) Just do not get to technical on me. ;)
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Re: Some improvements to the scenery of Brazil

Postby gsagostinho » Fri Apr 17, 2015 10:35 pm

Oh, sorry Johan! Basically what I meant is that one can use the urban effect with either one or two textures: an obligatory image (the texture itself that will show in FG) and an optional height map. So for this Latin American city texture of mine, I created a custom height map, but it's far from perfect as you can see in one of the pictures above :)
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Re: Some improvements to the scenery of Brazil

Postby gsagostinho » Sat Apr 18, 2015 3:49 am

Here are some more improvements to the Latin American city textures. I adjusted them for better colour (they look more orange now), they have a better height map and better night illumination:

Image

Image
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Re: Some improvements to the scenery of Brazil

Postby gsagostinho » Sat Apr 18, 2015 5:05 pm

Some more work done on this texture, and I think it's done for now. It has clearer roads, still better heigth map and night illumination;

Image

Image

Image

I just want to do some more improvements in the material xml files and some more testing before sharing a link here, ok?
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Re: Some improvements to the scenery of Brazil

Postby lomar » Sat Apr 18, 2015 8:59 pm

hello, first of all, what an interesting work here!
i was planning for a long time to start something like this, but i could never learn how to do that(originally, my plan was to do something like they are doing in the US scenery)
well, now i am trying to learn how to handle with static models, to add some buildings around Rio de Janeiro,at least the ones that have an helipad, like Edise(Petrobras headquarters), UCAM headquarters and my preferred one, the Ventura Corporate towers

also, it would be nice to create different regional materials.xml for each different region of brazil(i.e. cerrado.xml, amazon.xml...) if you want i can try to make some
and how do i get the water colours like that? is it on GIT?
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Re: Some improvements to the scenery of Brazil

Postby gsagostinho » Sat Apr 18, 2015 9:30 pm

Hi lomar,

I am glad to hear you like this work so far. If you'd like we could work together on these Brazilian sceneries. This would make the work progress faster and better, and also would avoid that two people would be working on the same thing! About this:

- adding static buildings and objects would be great! I was planning on doing the same for Sao Paulo, would you have interest in that as well?
- great idea about having different regions with different regional materials. I have done the Amazon forest, serra do mar and cities for the whole country. I was also planning to do something for the north-eastern littoral. But it would be great to also have the cerrado, maybe the southern pampas, etc.
- are you familiar with git? That could be a nice way to make a collaboration if you'd be interested on that.

Let me know then, and thanks for your reply!

Cheers,
Gilberto
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Re: Some improvements to the scenery of Brazil

Postby legoboyvdlp » Mon Apr 20, 2015 7:49 am

I would like to use the Urban texture for Venezuela. It is very like houses there!
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