Editing the Coastlines Tutorial

  • This tutorial assumes some knowledge in using Nick Hod's "AeroScenery". I'm no expert by the way and the little knowledge that I have gained has been due to burning a lot of midnight oil and drinking lots of tea, very British.:)

    La Gomera Island I have used for this tutorial.

    My settings in "AeroScenery"

    On completion of the image downloads you need to open your photo editor, I use the FREE Paint.Net which works perfectly OK.

    You then import the "stitched images" from the download map folder created by !AeroScenery".

    Then the editing begins.


    Set the colours to edit to R=10, G=20 and B=30.


    Unedited Images.


    Using the paintbrush these are the edited images.


    The above shows the process of editing and on completion save the changes.

    Once you have edited all the images of the download you can then process the scenery in "AeroScenery" using "Run GeoConvert".

    To save hard drive space I delete all the files leaving only the "geoconvert ttc" files in the map folders.

    Best wishes, Michael :)

    Edited 6 times, last by IZ0JUB (January 22, 2020 at 11:33 AM).

  • IZ0JUB May 11, 2019 at 10:10 PM

    Changed the title of the thread from “Editing the Coastlines in "AeroScenery" Tutorial” to “Editing the Coastlines Tutorial”.
  • Michael, you are my hero!


    Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.
    This is help for self-help!

    Confucius says: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for one day. Teaching a man to fish and you feed him for his life".

    Thank you for all your tireless work here.

    Kindest Regards,

    Jakob.

  • Micheal, can thank you for this. Can you share a bit of knowledge around OSM. I see that your toc files from the Canaries are much smaller than those i create. I tried to get Cold Lake done yesterday, ends up in being 3.3 GB for a couple of trees ;)

    X-Plane 12.x | DCS 2.5.7 | War Thunder | Aerofly FS4

    Win11-x64 | Lenovo Legion T7 34LMZ5 | Intel i7-10700K @3.6GHz | Kingston FuryX RGB 32GB DDR4 PC3733 | 6TB SSD Samsung 850 Pro | 3TB M2 PCI 4x | Gigabyte RTX 3070 Ti Vision OC | TM Hotas Warthog | Saitek Combat Pedals | Reverb G2 V2 | Lenovo Legion Y25g-30 360hz

  • Upper: 54.7500

    Lower: 54.2159

    Left: -110.7230

    Right: -109.3881

    X-Plane 12.x | DCS 2.5.7 | War Thunder | Aerofly FS4

    Win11-x64 | Lenovo Legion T7 34LMZ5 | Intel i7-10700K @3.6GHz | Kingston FuryX RGB 32GB DDR4 PC3733 | 6TB SSD Samsung 850 Pro | 3TB M2 PCI 4x | Gigabyte RTX 3070 Ti Vision OC | TM Hotas Warthog | Saitek Combat Pedals | Reverb G2 V2 | Lenovo Legion Y25g-30 360hz

  • Here my favorite settings for the coastlines: I use RGB 10, 20, 30 - its more like the IPACS-Ocean ( it's the same, only one step brighter - i dont found the original color ) but in the distance, it fuses very well with the original ocean. :)

  • One remark here for all - If you download Grid 9 and grid 13, you got to dow the work in both tile sets- this is how i screwed my Norway images ;)

    I used grid 13, ZL18 for the airports, grid 13, ZL17 for the Islands and in the end grid 9 for the whole area. I edited only Grid 9 :(

    Coastlines screwed

    X-Plane 12.x | DCS 2.5.7 | War Thunder | Aerofly FS4

    Win11-x64 | Lenovo Legion T7 34LMZ5 | Intel i7-10700K @3.6GHz | Kingston FuryX RGB 32GB DDR4 PC3733 | 6TB SSD Samsung 850 Pro | 3TB M2 PCI 4x | Gigabyte RTX 3070 Ti Vision OC | TM Hotas Warthog | Saitek Combat Pedals | Reverb G2 V2 | Lenovo Legion Y25g-30 360hz

  • If I have understood you correctly, you fill the whole picture with "sea" color. I've done it differently so far. I deleted water content in order to preserve with the resulting transparency the original sea with its colours and patterns. However, with this method I have sharp borders between the AeroScenery water and the original Aerofly water.

    Before editing:

    After editing with GIMP:

    In Aerofly FS 2:

    What do you think?

  • I usually paint the whole water and only leave a bit of coastline unless coral water, where i leave a bit more coastline. I was nit sure about the transparency. A few test I did left me in the believing thats transparency does not work properly.

    X-Plane 12.x | DCS 2.5.7 | War Thunder | Aerofly FS4

    Win11-x64 | Lenovo Legion T7 34LMZ5 | Intel i7-10700K @3.6GHz | Kingston FuryX RGB 32GB DDR4 PC3733 | 6TB SSD Samsung 850 Pro | 3TB M2 PCI 4x | Gigabyte RTX 3070 Ti Vision OC | TM Hotas Warthog | Saitek Combat Pedals | Reverb G2 V2 | Lenovo Legion Y25g-30 360hz

  • I usually paint the whole water and only leave a bit of coastline unless coral water, where i leave a bit more coastline. I was nit sure about the transparency. A few test I did left me in the believing thats transparency does not work properly.

    Thank you for your explanation. Could you please kindly show one picture with your costline and the transmission from your painted tile to the "original" Aerofly water?

  • Thank you for your explanation. Could you please kindly show one picture with your costline and the transmission from your painted tile to the "original" Aerofly water?

    Yes, i can:

    ( Ruegen, Eastsea )

  • R:7

    G:23

    B:46

    I use

    X-Plane 12.x | DCS 2.5.7 | War Thunder | Aerofly FS4

    Win11-x64 | Lenovo Legion T7 34LMZ5 | Intel i7-10700K @3.6GHz | Kingston FuryX RGB 32GB DDR4 PC3733 | 6TB SSD Samsung 850 Pro | 3TB M2 PCI 4x | Gigabyte RTX 3070 Ti Vision OC | TM Hotas Warthog | Saitek Combat Pedals | Reverb G2 V2 | Lenovo Legion Y25g-30 360hz

  • R:7

    G:23

    B:46

    I use

    Thank you! I just checked my south french coastline. Terrible <X!

    The standard colour of the sea is not uniform in southern France. There are colour variations from turquoise to dark blue. It will probably be difficult to create a homogeneous coastline. The Bing photos also show large colour differences at the transition from land to water, which change abruptly.

    Maybe I'll just leave it as it is and fly over land. ;)

  • Thank you. Looks great! I don't see any transitions. Wow! How did you manage that? It looks like the water has structure.

    There is no waterstructure. Its only jpeg-compression. ^^ I use for RGB: "10, 20, 30". " 7, 23, 46" is to blue fro me. "10, 20, 30" its more like the original oceancolor. Try it self! :S

  • I found a way to work on my coastlines without too much work and time. I open the PNGs in Photoshop and use the Paint Bucket Tool (Füllwerkzeug) for colouring the water until the coast in my water colour. With only few clicks, I colour the whole PNG.

    PNG before colouring:


    PNG after Photoshop:

    In the Sim, it looks like this:

    I coloured all the water PNG, even these small PNGs without content to get a homogeneous water color at the coast. If the grid ends to close to the coastline and the border to the original water disturbs, one can create a Zoom Level 12/ AFS Level 9 grid with the neighboring water area and colour it.

    This method brings the chosen water colour to the shore, which might be seen as not realistic, but I like it more than my earlier results. The tolerance setting of the Paint Bucket Tool is 32.

    (Very) quick, but not dirty ;)

    Here another example:

    Old method

    New method

  • I used to do it this way when I first started many years ago, but, the art package that I used on some occasions bled into the land so you had to re do it with the paint brush anyway, making more work.

    The ONLY problem I see is that the bucket feed fills up to the coastline destroying the natural colours of the shoreline water.

    Everyone has different takes on it, if your happy with your results that's fine.

    Welcome to the addiction of scenery making.........................................

    Cheers Michael.

    Best wishes, Michael :)

    Edited once, last by IZ0JUB (June 7, 2019 at 8:54 PM).

  • The ONLY problem I see is that the bucket feed fills up to the coastline destroying the natural colours of the shoreline water.

    I fully agree! My (new) method is a fast solution for impatient scenery creators. ;)

    Welcome to the addiction of scenery making.........................................

    It is really an addiction. 8)

    Edited once, last by Lucky1960 (June 7, 2019 at 9:25 PM).