Layers of land polygons

[BJamieson]

Hi folks,

Well it's been an adventure, but I now have my mesh, exclusions, polyholes, roads and rivers for the Falkland Islands.

I am trying to add certain features such as 'bush strips', rock runs and 'real' shores to the scenery, but I must be missing something...

I have my exclusion zone - then my polyhole, whick reveals the 'bare ground', then an exact duplicate of the ployhole set as savanna grass to give me my basic 'land'...

Linked is a piccie, or two of where I'm at with the scenery.

If I try to superimpose a dirt strip, a beach, or an area of bare rock - none of it appears, unless I remove my basic 'savanna grass' poly area.

Question - can I put layers of 'land' polygons on top of each other, like a 'pyramid stack' of coins ? I can't seem to get it to work.

Question - can I 'dither' say grass and rock textures together ?

 

[DougMatthews]

Hi folks,

Well it's been an adventure, but I now have my mesh, exclusions, polyholes, roads and rivers for the Falkland Islands.

I am trying to add certain features such as 'bush strips', rock runs and 'real' shores to the scenery, but I must be missing something...

I have my exclusion zone - then my polyhole, whick reveals the 'bare ground', then an exact duplicate of the ployhole set as savanna grass to give me my basic 'land'...

Linked is a piccie, or two of where I'm at with the scenery.

If I try to superimpose a dirt strip, a beach, or an area of bare rock - none of it appears, unless I remove my basic 'savanna grass' poly area.

Question - can I put layers of 'land' polygons on top of each other, like a 'pyramid stack' of coins ? I can't seem to get it to work.

Question - can I 'dither' say grass and rock textures together ?

You can layer polygons, but you're subject to the RenderPriority of the different textures (defined in terrain.cfg).

I'm not aware of a way to dither the different textures.

-Doug

 

[BJamieson]

You can layer polygons, but you're subject to the RenderPriority of the different textures (defined in terrain.cfg).

I'm not aware of a way to dither the different textures.

-Doug

Hmmmmmm,

OK, in the render.cfg two that I want to stack are:

LandClassPoly_Dirt
RenderPriority=30000

to become a dirt strip, on top of

LandClassPoly_Savanna_Grass
RenderPriority=30000

...so how do you folks stack them ?

Confused of 'Fox Bay' ...

 

[MatthewS]

I think if you start changing Terrain.cfg then your scenery will not look right running on other peoples FSX who have not changed their terrain.cfg

So it's probably a bad idea to change Terrain.cfg

Could you create your bush strip by first drawing the Grass area using 2 polygons making sure you leave a hole in the middle for the dirt strip. Then draw the dirt polygon in the hole?

That way you don't need to change terrain.cfg

 

[DougMatthews]

I think if you start changing Terrain.cfg then your scenery will not look right running on other peoples FSX who have not changed their terrain.cfg

So it's probably a bad idea to change Terrain.cfg

Could you create your bush strip by first drawing the Grass area using 2 polygons making sure you leave a hole in the middle for the dirt strip. Then draw the dirt polygon in the hole?

That way you don't need to change terrain.cfg

Perfect.

-Doug

 

[DougMatthews]

Hmmmmmm,

OK, in the render.cfg two that I want to stack are:

LandClassPoly_Dirt
RenderPriority=30000

to become a dirt strip, on top of

LandClassPoly_Savanna_Grass
RenderPriority=30000

...so how do you folks stack them ?

Confused of 'Fox Bay' ...

That one's a coin toss. See MatthewS advice about placing the dirt polygon in a hole in the grass polygon - it's what you want to do.

-Doug

 

[DonB312]

One way to accomplish this is to create a landclass.bgl which defines the underlying landclass as Savanna_Grass. You can use a utility such as Ez-Landclass to do this. Make sure you assign the new landclass to enough tiles to completly cover your island. This will cause the island to have the Savanna_Grass texture by default without the need for a polygon. In other words, your PolygonHole will cut out the water and reveal the underlying Savanna_Grass landclass.

Then just draw your beaches and other polys and they will show on top of the underlying landclass. Unfortunately, the landclass polys will not blend or dither with the underlying landclass or adjacent polys but it usually still looks pretty good.

This approach has worked well for an island project that I am currently working on.

-Don

 

[BJamieson]

I think if you start changing Terrain.cfg then your scenery will not look right running on other peoples FSX who have not changed their terrain.cfg

So it's probably a bad idea to change Terrain.cfg

Could you create your bush strip by first drawing the Grass area using 2 polygons making sure you leave a hole in the middle for the dirt strip. Then draw the dirt polygon in the hole?

That way you don't need to change terrain.cfg

Absolutely don't want to change the terrain.cfg. No problems there - especially with the service pack coming out soon.

I think there may be a bug in how the 'system' evaluates and then manufactures these different layers...

I got it working once, since Doug's post, with dirt strips - but when I tried to put my airstrips into a folder - so I only do a single tag... It failed to draw them correctly. And I am such a num-nut I cant get back to the 'successful' layout that was built correctly.

Curses... There must be something I'm missing - it cant be just 'luck' that you rely on here ?!?!?!?!

 

[BJamieson]

I think if you start changing Terrain.cfg then your scenery will not look right running on other peoples FSX who have not changed their terrain.cfg

So it's probably a bad idea to change Terrain.cfg

Could you create your bush strip by first drawing the Grass area using 2 polygons making sure you leave a hole in the middle for the dirt strip. Then draw the dirt polygon in the hole?

That way you don't need to change terrain.cfg

Ewwwwwwww...

This island is about the size of Wales !!!

I used a Wacom tablet to draw the 'circumference' and got to about 3 seconds between each 'point' being collected by the polydraw routine - presumably because there were about 25 gazillion points being drawn.

OK, OK - if I knew then what I know now, etc...

 

[BJamieson]

That one's a coin toss. See MatthewS advice about placing the dirt polygon in a hole in the grass polygon - it's what you want to do.

-Doug

So, am I right in thinking 'a hole in a hole in a hole in a hole' type scenario ?

Thank M$ for 'copy & paste'

 

[BJamieson]

One way to accomplish this is to create a landclass.bgl which defines the underlying landclass as Savanna_Grass. You can use a utility such as Ez-Landclass to do this. Make sure you assign the new landclass to enough tiles to completly cover your island. This will cause the island to have the Savanna_Grass texture by default without the need for a polygon. In other words, your PolygonHole will cut out the water and reveal the underlying Savanna_Grass landclass.

Then just draw your beaches and other polys and they will show on top of the underlying landclass. Unfortunately, the landclass polys will not blend or dither with the underlying landclass or adjacent polys but it usually still looks pretty good.

This approach has worked well for an island project that I am currently working on.

-Don

Am going to give this a go since it was what I 'thought' I wanted to do - if you see what I mean... The island is Savanna by default, and any areas I subsequently make get drawn as sand, rock, mince, whatever...

Cheers for reading this lot... I'm sure that I have just put summat in the wrong place...

 

[MatthewS]

So, am I right in thinking 'a hole in a hole in a hole in a hole' type scenario ?

Thank M$ for 'copy & paste'

Yes... Imagine cutting a doughnut in half. You have two polygons for the doughnut (grass) and where the hole is place a third polygon (dirt).

 

[BJamieson]

Yes... Imagine cutting a doughnut in half. You have two polygons for the doughnut (grass) and where the hole is place a third polygon (dirt).

Oh Poooooh !

That seems to imply that your three shapes :
1/2 doughnut (grass), 1/2 doughnut (grass) and circle (dirt) are at the same level, as opposed to

level one: large circle (grass)... which is underneath...
level two: small circle (dirt).

Soooooooooooo dont want to go chopping the islands up like that since I will have many seperate different bits of 'layer two's...



Thanks

 

[DougMatthews]

Oh Poooooh !

That seems to imply that your three shapes :
1/2 doughnut (grass), 1/2 doughnut (grass) and circle (dirt) are at the same level, as opposed to

level one: large circle (grass)... which is underneath...
level two: small circle (dirt).

Soooooooooooo dont want to go chopping the islands up like that since I will have many seperate different bits of 'layer two's...



Thanks

Not sure about what FSX KML needs, but as far as the underlying Shp2Vec compiler is concered there is no need to "cut the doughnut in half." You have the doughnut (an outer ring with a hole ring), and you have the other polygon that fits in the hole.

As far as "a hole in a hole in a hole in a hole," the most you can have is "a hole (or several non-overlapping holes) ring within an outer ring." Nestings deeper than this involve additional polygons.

-Doug

 

[MatthewS]

Not sure about what FSX KML needs, but as far as the underlying Shp2Vec compiler is concered there is no need to "cut the doughnut in half." You have the doughnut (an outer ring with a hole ring), and you have the other polygon that fits in the hole.

Do you mean polygon holes work with all landclasses? I thought it only worked with hydropolys.

That's excellent news... I will have to try it.

So what you do in FSX KML then is...

1) Create a folder in your KML

2) Put these polys in your folder (and in this order)

2.1 Grass polygon
2.1 Polygon tagged as "polygonhole" in shape of dirt strip
2.2 Dirt polygon

 

[BJamieson]

Do you mean polygon holes work with all landclasses? I thought it only worked with hydropolys.

That's excellent news... I will have to try it.

So what you do in FSX KML then is...

1) Create a folder in your KML

2) Put these polys in your folder (and in this order)

2.1 Grass polygon
2.1 Polygon tagged as "polygonhole" in shape of dirt strip
2.2 Dirt polygon

Will let you all know what happens this evening - with a couple more screen shots too.

Thanks for everyone's input.

 

[BJamieson]

Will let you all know what happens this evening - with a couple more screen shots too.

Thanks for everyone's input.

Just to follow up :

I was able to create a polyhole in the grass polygon, using the 'create-a-folder-and-put-the-shapes-in-it' method. So poly holes work in 'land' as well as water...

But thinking about it - I wonder if I'm creating too much work for myself by using this method - twice as many polygons to manage...

This can't be the way to go, and I think that since I have been using nested folders, that may be stuffing up what gets created...

It's almost as though the relationship of the various polygons gets broken by the folder structure ?

eg

In Google Earth:

Falklands (Top Level Folder)
|
|-Area 1 (polygon Hole)
|-Area 2 (polygon Hole)
|-Islands (Folder) Description is Landclass_Grass
| |
| |-East Island (polygon)
| |-West Island (polygon)
|
|-Dirt Areas (Folder)

...especially as the WIKI says 'to get a bush airstrip, make a big grass area, and a little dirt area on top of it'. There was nothing about making polyholes so the dirt would appear.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

May try flattening out all these sub-folders...

 

[MatthewS]

...especially as the WIKI says 'to get a bush airstrip, make a big grass area, and a little dirt area on top of it'. There was nothing about making polyholes so the dirt would appear.

That's great that the polygon holes work with all landclass polys!

The manual is wrong, I will need to update it

I guess I should add a property that can be set for each polygon, which would automatically add a hole. Would mean you could just set the property instead of manually creating a poly for the hole.

 

[BJamieson]

...I guess I should add a property that can be set for each polygon, which would automatically add a hole. Would mean you could just set the property instead of manually creating a poly for the hole.

Now I'm sure I have just suggested such a thing multi value tags - but this is (I now realise) only applicable to 'shape' and its hole...

So if there is a flag that can be added to a polyshape to automagically create the corresponding polyhole @ that folder level, and the polyholes get processed first, then bosh - Bobs your uncle, well mine anyway!

I have found that if you need to add a bunch of islands into an exclusion area, you need a bunch of polyholes. And their corresponding 'landfills'...

You need to list all the polyholes first, then the land fills can be listed almost random order.

But as soon as you want to 'augment' the basic landfill, you need individual polyholes - and again these need to be listed before their respective 'landfills'.

I can post an example of the west island kml if that would help illustrate it.

 

[BJamieson]

Promised to let folks see some progress :


Here is how I've organised my KML data :

KML Folder Structure


The top level folder is called Falklands, the first 4 'exclusion zones' are for
water, shores, roads & streams...

Exclude_Everything did not work for me.

I then 'flood' the area with water (Hydro_Polygons_Generic_Ocean_Perennial)

I then have a folder full of ponds - lots and lots and lots and lots of ponds.

I then have the island stuff you see here.


To create the shorelines, I could not use notepad to edit the kml file - I use xmlSpy instead.

If folk want to see how to use it, I can provide some screen shots. Hint - do not touch the coordinates section when there are 30,000 odd vertices, your 2Gb memory core 2 pooter will give up the ghost.

The bush strip thing in the wiki (as of 5th May 2007), would need two polyholes cut - one for the grass outer area, and one for the inner dirt strip. With all the folder hierarchy stuff happening too, that seems - TBH - too fiddly I think (and I blame Bill Gates personally for that!).

The 'end' result (so far)...

Low pass @ Foxbay

You can just see my house from there !!!


Im going to try Floyd312's suggestion - to use ez landclass, that will massively simplify the need for polyholes...