Hi, I hope someone can help me...
I have created some photo scenery of some of the southwest of the UK for Aerofly using Aeroscenery. The photo scenery itself looks fine, but I am having trouble blending the coastline into the generic IPACS 'sea'. I have tried the mask method, but the transparency of the mask appears to only support black/white and not grayscale, so the results were terrible. I have also tried painting a single colour (e.g. RGB 10,20,30 and other values I've seen suggested) but again have had poor results. The problem seems to lie in that the 'sea' surrounding the coastline appears to be a very low res image and not one single colour that allows for a seamless blend when manually painted.
Has anyone here had successful results with trying to blend the UK's coastline seamlessly into the surrounding areas of sea? If so, would you be kind enough to share your method?
Thanks!
Blending UK Photoscenery Coastline?
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Hi Tailwheel,
I haven't painted UK coastlines, but many Caribic islands, and the technique I successfully used then was painting the sea up to far enough from the coastline for the default texture to be more or less uniform deep sea texture, i.e. miles away.
The first tricky part is to find a color locally matching the sea and how far from the cosatline the default sea is uniform enough for a seamless transition.
The second tricky part is to manually blend photo and color along the coastline. I used GIMP's airbrush with a large diameter to do this and came quite close to the land, because water photo usually has lots of artefacts, but this much depends on the place...
Cheers
Antoine
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Do you generate additional tiles around your islands that are basically just full of sea to aid in 'losing' the blend into the default IPACS sea colour?
Yes I do, and that's the key for a seamless transition.
Especially in the Caribic, islands usually cause benches of clouds spreading miles away over the sea in the default AFS2 ground textures, so I FSETed large areas in the sea around each island to erase those clouds too.
FSET - and I think Aeroscenery too - generate a default texture when no photo was available from the source, so this is easy to paint as deep sea, once you've identified the best color to do so...
Cheers
Antoine
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Ah great, thanks for confirming that process. I'll generate some additional lower resolution tiles then further out to sea and paint those in with a generic colour and see what results I get.
Thanks!
Worst case, if you cannot find any color universally blending seamlessly with the default sea from IPCAS, at least it will be less visible.
Good luck
Cheers
Antoine
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I have also tried painting a single colour (e.g. RGB 10,20,30 and other values I've seen suggested) but again have had poor results.
I use:
RGB = 0, 11, 24.
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I use:
RGB = 0, 11, 24.
I use 10, 20, 30 RGB and found this gives an almost seamless transition from my hand painted sea into the default FS 2 sea area.
Since the default IPACS sea texture is actually a very low resolution harmonized satellite picture, the deep sea color very much depends on the location, and a RGB setting that works beautifully at a specific place won't anymore in some other place.
For instance I had found RGB 0,11,24 to blend seamlessly in the caribic, but it was totally unsuited for the lake Geneva...
The only way to find the best setting is trial and error,,,
Cheers
Antoine
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Since the default IPACS sea texture is actually a very low resolution harmonized satellite picture, the deep sea color very much depends on the location, and a RGB setting that works beautifully at a specific place won't anymore in some other place.
Good point.
