FSX Watermask not quite working?

[lordofwings]

OK, I think I have done everything by the book with SBuilderX but might be missing something. I have done photoreal (recently) on land but this is my first of an island.

As you can see in the attachment my scenery is made of two photoreal tiles that can be appreciated in the photo. These are BMP files. I edited both BMP files to make the watermask as follows:

First I opened the BMP image and created a new layer. On the new layer I drew the contours of the island in BLACK. Then I filled the land part with WHITE and filled the water part with BLACK. Having done that in the new layer I removed the background (the photoreal layer). I saved this new image in TIFF format with the same name but with a _W appended, i.e. Photo01.BMP became Photo01_W.TIF.

I recompiled the whole thing and deployed it and as you can see the islands show well (except for a minor FSX default landpart that needs to be removed. However, I see that even though I used a water mask, the FSX water shows through but it is shaded in a darker color.

What am I missing here? I thought it was enough to just fill the whole water area with a BLACK (solid) color. I was however expecting it to show full transparency so that the FSX default water color will be appreciated.

How can I get rid of that shade?

 

[hcornea]

You are confusing a BLEND mask with a Land_Water_Mask

The effect of the LandWaterMask is to apply the water effects layer (as per the slider set in FSX) over the top of the photoscenery.

This is in fact excellent, as it allows you to produce photoreal reefs etc.

You need to:

1. adjust the water colour to be closer the FSX default colour
2. add a soft (feathered edge) blend to gradually blend your photoreal water to the default water surrounding

Alternatively, you could use a hard edged blend mask that runs along the coastline (the same as your LandWaterMask) .. but IMO this would not be as nice.

 

[lordofwings]

Thanks for the insight on this operation. Since color replacement is difficult with so many shades of sea color in the same image, I decided to instead color the water mask using the FSX unreal/surreal blue color and then apply it to the original photoreal image in an Additive blend mode.

I don't have time to test the results today but I will keep you posted. I hope this makes it look more FSX-real though I have no idea why ACES chose that aweful color for the whole ocean rather than for reefs.

 

[lordofwings]

Back on the computer I have tried a miriad of colors resembling that FSX blue with both Additive and Glow blend mode and it is never quite the same, the square is always visible in one way or another.

Since I don't want to be found next century still trying to find THAT color in paint, mask, compile and try cycles isn't there something else? For example, would it be possible to get rid of the water part in the BMP so that FSX simply puts its own water rather than watever is found on the photoreal tile?

 

[Dave Torkington]

Since I don't want to be found next century still trying to find THAT color in paint, mask, compile and try cycles isn't there something else? For example, would it be possible to get rid of the water part in the BMP so that FSX simply puts its own water rather than watever is found on the photoreal tile?

Hi lordofwings,

Yes, as hcornea mentions above, you can use a blend mask. There's an excellent SBuilderX tutorial by Luis Feliz Tirado that covers photoreal stuff. You'll need a paint prog. [looks as though you have already] that can handle layers for creating your blend mask.

See the section 'Channel_Blendmask' and creating a multi source inf file.

Get the tutorial from Avsim - search for 'make_photo-real_ground_textures_in_fs_x.zip'

If you haven't already, take a look at the PTSIM forum for great advice http://www.ptsim.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=22

Hope this helps - If I can do it, anyone can!!

 

[hcornea]

If you use your LandWaterMask in Photoshop as a Mask for a colour adjustment layer, you can adjust the water independently of everything else.

Compile, capture a screenshot from Top-Down view and adjsut the colour sliders.

You can similarly add a Levels Adjsutment if required.

Think "qualitatively" ... needs a bit more red, a little more yellow, a little too bright and adjust accordingly.

It is amazing how close you can get the colour with this.

Then add your "soft blend" .... photoreal water can look awesome if properly blended, remembering of course that the water colour often lightens close to an island as the water becomes shallower.

 

[robystar]

Hi,

Not sure what program you are using but suppose it is e.g. FSEarthtiles ( although I do not think that matters).
The secret is in the blend channel. You can do a lot of things with it by blending water, scenery etc. It is just a matter of giving the right greytone to it (which means transparency when translated to the blend mask).
For your water color, I would suggest you use the "water configurator" program that can be found on a.o. AVSIM and Flightsim.

 

[lordofwings]

Thanks a million HCornea, Dave & RobyStar you made my day! I have been working for days doing piecewise refinements on several sceneries (I guess I have some sort of attention deficit LOL) and took an interest in doing these islands, one of which has a very important VOR for the area.

My current toolset is SBuilderX 3.13, Paint.NET, GIMP and FSX Planner. FSX KML is out of the equation already.

I tried all sorts of colors adjustments to no avail. However, I didn't get it quite right. Perhaps one of the problems is that the color of surrounding water in these islands is very very dark in the satellite imagery (probably due to low sun conditions). So at least in this case it seemed that it was better to blend out the entire water mass in the photo tile rather than adjusting it. The blend mask as pointed out was THE solution, THANKS!

I will now attempt to use SBuilderX to add some much needed vertical profile to the main island because it looks flat and it isn't.