Buildings 2021-22 Your location? Have a camera?

[Volador]

It was a challenge (I need to have a word with myself about angles while photographing - taking 2 mins to get as square on a possible does save time in post) but here's the result, it's not perfect. Another thought - are there any programmers that could code with a set of individual window, door and wall and roof textures (given set spacing, dimensions, weighted preferred relations between materials etc) create multiple combinations and output as png's? we might be missing a trick here to create random textures with half the work, any ideas? We'd still need the template (that I'm finalising with the Dev's)



If you're creating images like this include the rough grid ref in the filename (this is Yorkshire -1.54 53.79) just use the scenery map and right click to get the coords

https://scenery.flightgear.org/static/map/index.html

Plans are to tag images with metadata (heights, repeatable x and or y etc)

Don't worry if some of the editing is beyond the skills you have, just keep taking the pics, that is the big win here for the sim. Once we have a bank of images (repository details coming soon I hope) there will be opportunity to cut them up and use them to create the textures.

[Volador]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MySfl29JcRg
There is a tutorial here if you fancy taking doors windows etc from your photographs with extreme angles - (the tut is designed for extracting shapes for blender). Hopefully your square on photos will not need much distortion

[Volador]

This picture of an industrial unit highlights the problems you may get using a smartphone camera, I just took the opportunity to snap this, so no DSLR on this trip



but if you look at the full scale image the detail on the brick is fairly poor because of the compression algorithms phone cameras use - also I had 'raised' the exposure to compensate for the sky, so that might have contributed. I realise that this noise/detail could be acceptable but it's 2021 and we have the technology to get good results, why not push for the best we can make it? ...and talking of contributions, how are you getting on with your photo gathering? Sorry there is still no new on a repository, the Dev's are rather busy with the next release

[Volador]

Warehouse-UK-001.png this image now tiles on the x axis (in case the building is longer), estimated height 7m based on the size of the blue access door.



...and name changed to protect the proprietor

[Volador]

Sorry for the radio silence, and hello to everyone who said they could grab some photographs from around the globe. We really can make a difference to the visuals in Flightgear and it's only contributors like ourselves that can make it happen. The news is we have a repository, yes! but to get your photos in there you should email them to me at FG-Assets@outlook.com
There will be an award for the first photograph ...it should be a good picture of a building or roof and not your birthday party I'll report here with the winner.
Chris

[manbhas06]

Hi Volador!

This is Mike from FlightGear Indian Community. We are currently working on Indian scenery and have got more than 2-3 sceneries out. If you still need someone to represent from India sure, we got you covered!

MikeAlphaNovember
Admin & Co-project head FGin

[Volador]

That's great Mike thank you! Yes, cloudy day building and roof pics would really help the scenery updates. It took a while to get the repository I'm just hoping all those who expressed an interest in helping get back in touch too

Vanosten's longer term plans for the scenery assets we're gathering form contributors like yourself (as far as I understand) will form component parts to generate plausible building textures all over the FG globe based on geographic and demographic and osm data - really quite clever stuff and all our contributions will bring us into the year 2021

To send in your photos please use FG-Assets@outlook.com

Chris

[wlbragg]

Chris, will you take un-retouched photos? I can make time to get photos, but have no time to re-touch them.

[Volador]

@wlbragg Yes! send them through - please give them meaningful file names though and, if you can't include rough coordinates do name the region. looks like you're getting the award... [edit] unless someone beats you to the first contribution... [/edit]

All, send your photographs to FG-Assets@outlook.com

[wlbragg]

OK, I'll try to get some off in the next week.

[AzulProfundo]

OK, if I get one of those typical early morning overcasts during this weekend, I can send you a few raw photos (no gimp edit) of traditional houses in my region, to your email. I expect a critic so that the following set can be more effective in generating the image textures for FlightGear...

[Volador]

Great AzulProfundo! (Remember you could just photograph the sides or roof of a building that are in the shade if it's sunny) I'll have a look and give some feedback. Please name the files so we can identify the region.
Chris

[Volador]

does anyone know how to use individual png's (with some sort of code in GIMP for example) to generate something like this?

[merspieler]

I've found the gimp scripting stuff difficult to work with.

You might want to look at imagemagics montage command... I've found it rather intuitive... tho I'm just putting square tiles together on a larger square... so not sure if this more complicated thing can be done with it.

[pb321]

Finally took some photos which I will send. I thought I had read that there was a site set up to upload photos, though, so I thought I'd check before sending them.

One thing I'm unclear on, do you need only the front of buildings?