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Blending ground polys

heclak

heclak

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32
Country
singapore
Hi people,
thanks for all the great information on these forums, certainly the treasure chest of scenery building.
I've gotten the hang on making ground polys and its really making a difference in the look of the scenery. However, they look detached from the ground, unrealistic. Might be the textures since they are not photos. But i realised in FlyTampa's Vienna, they have a texture for taxiway edges to help the poly blend into the ground. This certainly helps in improving the effect, but i'm having issues with accomplishing the effect. I noticed that this is true in the aerial photos i can find too, the surface is lower than the ground thus a slightly shadowed area between the transistion of the asphalt to the grass.

I used the same spline that i used to create my apron/taxiways and lofted a poly. much like the lofting method to create taxi lines. however, alot of detail is lost as this method stretches the texture and as such the details are stretched too. taxilines have simple textures too, so this is not an issue. is there away to over come this phenomenon? having more details means better blending and more realistic crooked edges. solving this problem would also allow us to create cracked taxilines like FlyTampa's Vienna which uses 1024x64 textures instead of a simple 32x32.

I also welcome anyone who has a way to blend polys or make them look more realistic. I would also like to know how to blend different shades of asphalt. As in real life, construction/renovation occurs and some surfaces are newer/older and shads are different. The hard transistion line makes it a little unreal.

Cheers,
Hector Lee
 
Hi,

They probably created a VTP2 polygon to surround the taxiway. These polygons will blend with the ground polygon.

You can use SBuilder or Ground2K4 to make these (among other programs).

Hope this helps,
 
Hector, if the polys were made using the fs2002 compiler and the famous Arno addcat tweak, then the blend was likely accomplished in the texture. One would make the texture with the edges partially transparent in a gradient from full off to full on, and then save the texture as a dxt3 format.

Cheers,
Bob
 
hmm... how would the VTP2 poly help blend the ground poly?

regarding the gradient in the texture.. would that be the taxiway texture or the taxiway edges textures? i have created a gradient in the taxiway edges texture and it works.. but not to my expectations. Its very stretched out so all detail is lost and i can do detail work like crooked taxiway edges, i haven't found a taxiway with a perfectly straight edge, it bound to have chips and stuff, and i would like to include that.
 
Its all done with the texture. Instead of making the texture contain just the tarmac surface, create it to include the grass on either side. This will allow you to use the texture to make the transition between tarmac and grass, meaning you can make it as bumpy or smooth as you like. At the edges of the grass I use a gradient in the alpha channel to blend it into the default grass.

In the attachments you can see the taxiway texture, the alpha channel (notice the gradient starts well into the grass area) and the finished effect.
 

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Tutorial on ground polys

I installed the twin gamepacks which seem to work perfectly, designed a tarmac and textured it no problem........I then modified my main asm file as the tutorial dictates. The tutorial stops there. :confused:

But what is the next step in the process? I have all my files, one modifed. I'd love to see that tarmac in front of my buildings.
 
thanks. is that the texture for the taxiway or the blend poly? how do you map it? i'm using a spline to make my poly and i uvw map it on. how do you do it so it follows the taxiway?
 
The blend poly and taxiway poly are the same thing. Its all done with the alpha channel. The texture is mirror tiled so you only have to draw the texture for one side and it mirrors across the other side automatically. If you look at the screenshot closely you can see dark lines in the tarmac where it has been laid. This is also done with a texture in a different layer using an alpha channel so it blends into the tarmac on either side.
 
How do you curve the blending texture as it turns the corner to join another taxiway? Straights are not a problem..it the joining of two taxiways and the curves that I'm not sure about....
 
CrashGate3 said:
The blend poly and taxiway poly are the same thing. Its all done with the alpha channel. The texture is mirror tiled so you only have to draw the texture for one side and it mirrors across the other side automatically. If you look at the screenshot closely you can see dark lines in the tarmac where it has been laid. This is also done with a texture in a different layer using an alpha channel so it blends into the tarmac on either side.
Click to expand...

Nice, just the explanation I was looking for!

How do you mirror it though? Do you select the entire taxiway poly and texture it, apply UVW map, and use some sort of mirror feature?

Thanks!
 
Hmm, I'm bumping up this one again as I couldnt find any answer to the question on how these curves in the taxiway are made. Ar they made by using the lofting method?

Per Arild
 
CrashGate3 said:
The blend poly and taxiway poly are the same thing. Its all done with the alpha channel. The texture is mirror tiled so you only have to draw the texture for one side and it mirrors across the other side automatically. If you look at the screenshot closely you can see dark lines in the tarmac where it has been laid. This is also done with a texture in a different layer using an alpha channel so it blends into the tarmac on either side.
Click to expand...

Hi, thanks for your idea . But can you explain it clearly about mirror texture to other side ??? Is it concern with mapping material in Gmax ??? :confused:
 
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