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-martin-

Creating a professional Satellite Mask

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Hi Guys,

So I've reached the stage on my island were I need to focus on making my satellite map more better looking, because I'm making my island in stages for example I made a certain area like 3 villages and then fill the are up on the masks and import it and so on...

I know that this isn't the best approach but it suits me the best, that's how I like to get it done. Anyway back to the topic.

I would like some tips form you more experienced artists out there on creating a nice satellite map and I also have a little problem.

1) The problem

The problem I have is that when I export the island in to an .EMF image at the same resolution as my masks which is 25600x25600 the .emf image has this blue kind of edge around it so when I place the image on top of the mask it doesn't fit exactly. I remember Bushlurker from the forums once told me how to calculate how much of the blue edge to cut off to make it fit but I deleted that message by accident so can someone explain again, possibly calculate it for me please?

2) Roads

I noticed that on some island and the BIS island the roads are also drawn on the satellite map so that when you fly with an air plane to the point where the road segments disappear you could still see the roads, when I have the EMF and Mask aligned correctly it isn't such a problem to see where the roads are but is there any other more precise way to see for example turns or buildings like in the old WRPTool?

3) Finally any tips and tricks you might have learnt over time?

Edited by -Martin-
Fixed spelling

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Regarding 1), check the instructions in the wiki for removing the blue edge on the exported image - if you have Photoshop, changing the canvas size is an easy way of doing this once you've figured out how wide the edge is.

As for making the satellite mask, I haven't really reached that stage yet on any islands, but I had/have two plans: either copy and paste bits out of real satellite images and then use a lot of the PS repair brush, blur tools and airbrush, or manually draw in the features by starting with a base tiling texture for each area and then modifying it with the airbrush, grunge brushes and so on.

You can also do it the easy way and just get your ground detail textures, tile them at a very small size and mask out the appropriate satellite areas, and this works fine, but you may find it doesn't look as convincing ingame since real terrain is more varied than that.

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Everything cctoide says is spot on...

Read the Wiki - the bit headed "Export of project printout "...

Basically, you calculate your "BlueEdge", export the image at Sat_lco size PLUS BlueEdge, then crop the edge back off in Photoshop or whatever, leaving an image the same size as your Sat_lco - they should overlay fine...

Once you've got that working you can do stuff like... change the background display colours in Visitor to something like pure white, switch off display of everything except your roads network, then export the image - do the BlueEdge crop thing, then you can transparent out the white background - leaving a road network - at the same res as your sat_lco... shade it grey and overlay it on the Sat_lco - load that back into Visitor...

In-game, you'll have a grey road network that will show up at distances beyond where the road tiles disappear...

B

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Thank's for the help guys :smile: I finally got the emf to fit on my masks.

As for the roads I copied them the the original Chernarus satellite map, it looks really nice nice now.

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