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FSX Grounpoly Transparency

K

klam

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53
Country
malaysia
Hey guys, I'm wondering how do you make the groundpoly(tarmac/apron) of an airport looks like the textures are not repeatitive? I mean how to overlay the photoscenery below the groundpoly layer?
 
Hi Klam,
For an apron textures that doesn't look repetitive use seamless tiled image of an asphalt or concrete or concrete blocks. Seamless tile doesn't mean that the texture won't be repetitive, you also need to make sure that texture is monotone rather than duotone.

To make apron/runway/taxiway nicely fitted in to the default or custom environment you need to make more realistic edges for the runway/taxi/apron layout that gradually blends with one or another object or both (Use Alpha Channel).. Every bit of pieces is separate polygon which will be a layer like one on top of another (Layers defined in Model Converter X). See this source that may be helpful too.
 
You'd need to put a shade of gray on the alpha channel of the overlaying textures and process them as DXT5. Darker gray = more transparent, lighter gray = less transparent. You may find you'll want to use varying shades of gray making the grass areas more transparent than the runways/taxiways for example. If you use PhotoShop pull up the channels palette (Window > Channels) and make a new "Alpha 1" channel, fill it with your desired shade of gray, convert the .psd to DXT5 .dds with Imagetool (or you can export directly from PS as .dds with the Nvidia PhotoShop Plugin).

Jim
 
Thanks Jim, but I need to know what method do you use to overlay the photoreal as Tic have mentioned? I'm little bit confuse about this.
 
You just make some new polys in gmax or whatever and use different textures to texture them. I'd guess that Tic sliced up the same imagery he used for the photoreal into 1024px chunks and applied it to a bunch of square polys overtop of his runways & taxiways. When you open the model in the GP wizard those textures will show up separately, you just need to adjust the layering so they layer above your tiling taxiway & runway textures. I think the default is layer 8 so put your overlays at layer 12 for example. Actually if you have any aspirations of P3D2 compatibility start at layer 16 and work your way upwards in increments of 4. GP shadows don't work correctly on layers below 16 in P3D2.
 
Thanks Jim, do you use Tic's method to do your groundpoly to reflect like in real airport or you just put the dirt/stains texture on top of other layer in your scenery? Just asking..
 
You can do both, put your tiling taxiways at layer 16, your photoreal overlay at layer 20, and more dirt/stains at layer 24 for example. Then you might come along and do another layer at 28 for your runway and taxiway markings, maybe even another at 32 overtop of everything else for baked ground occlusions from all your buildings. Vary the transparency of any/all layers by adjusting the lightness/darkness of the alpha channels in the textures.

The only GP I did was an ultra-high resolution synthesized 2cm affair where all the layering was done in photoshop and the textures were just tiled on planes in gmax. It did have lofted taxiway markings overlaying it and the runway was done with a tiling texture with some skid marks overlayed on top. It was a royal pain (seemingly endless copying and pasting, clone stamping, etc. in PhotoShop to synthesize the textures), if I ever do another GP I will use tiling textures with overlays.
 
Thanks Jim for the help here. I'm always want to learn more from someone experienced like you.
 
Oh I'm sorry that I forgot to capture that part, the satellite photo overlay to prevent repetitive texture.
But the main idea is the same as Jim said.
I use satellite photo but I desaturate it to be just back and white. Since the shading of the taxiway and runway does not need to be sharp and crisp, I rescale it to fit in just only one 1024x1024 (in case that you want to use it in FS9 version). Then I copy the texture, paste it in alpha channel and revert it. The dark area will be white in alpha. This will make the black stain become move visible and the white area/normal grey texture of the real runway become more transparent to make asphalt texture more visible. It is hard to explain and you need to try and see how it looks and come back to adjust how transparent the alpha channel (black) it should be.
I make a big polygon to make satellite photo fit in the reference plane.
Here is the picture of KLIA taxiway. The overlay satellite photo is just only a big polygon that cover almost all the airport.
WMKK08.jpg
 
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Hi Tic. On your overlay do you mask out the parts that aren't directly overtop the asphalt? I mean do you put black on the alpha channel over grass areas for example to make it transparent or just let it shade the grass too?

Jim
 
Yes, I do that too. Thanks for asking. The glass area in this layer need to be totally black in alpha, 100% transparent. So that the photoscenery under it will be visible clearly.
 
fsfox said:
Hi Klam,
For an apron textures that doesn't look repetitive use seamless tiled image of an asphalt or concrete or concrete blocks. Seamless tile doesn't mean that the texture won't be repetitive, you also need to make sure that texture is monotone rather than duotone.

To make apron/runway/taxiway nicely fitted in to the default or custom environment you need to make more realistic edges for the runway/taxi/apron layout that gradually blends with one or another object or both (Use Alpha Channel).. Every bit of pieces is separate polygon which will be a layer like one on top of another (Layers defined in Model Converter X). See this source that may be helpful too.
Click to expand...

Is it possible to make the "edge" on the main runway texture (maybe problematic for UVW Map) or is better to build a specific texture for this use and apply over a new polygon along the runway?
 
I think if you have the edge in the same material with the surface of taxi way, you might do that comfortably.
However, if you have a taxiway that turns 90 degree you can try it first. If the taxi way is not large, the texture might not be stretch too much and looks acceptable. But if you taxiway is somewhat 30+ meters, you will see the texture stretch along to outer edge and compressed on the inner edge.
It is depends on your decision actually.
 
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