quincy 10 Posted May 28, 2011 is there a tool to some how convert my sattalite image to a mask or is it all done by free hand painting. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
beton 2 Posted May 28, 2011 Hi Quincy both your sat_lco and your mask_lco are made with Photoshop or Gimp etc. You can make freehand painting or anything you like. I would suggest you begin with reading the stickies on this page... they explain prettymuch everything or at least most of the things you have to know for the start. Otherwise you will return with one question a day which will sum up to 356 days until you see your map the first time. :) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quincy 10 Posted May 28, 2011 i made maps before lol i just never had to mask 1 till now. how would i do it in gimp do you know? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Robster 11 Posted May 29, 2011 (edited) If you have never done a mask before... then follow the advice from Beton, cause you have to identify your color mask, mess with mapLegend.png file and a lot of other explanations... Anyway, imo the most easy way to make a mask with the Gimp is using index colors over your sat pic... this works most of the time for sandboxes like maps... otherwise you have to paint roads, airport and other artificial objects to avoid grass growing inside a house, for example, Try with no more than six colors to begin -you can choose your own palette: choose plain RGB -just like black (RGB code 0,0,0), blue (0,0,255) and then go for mixed ones yellow, gray, etc- and don't forget to restore RGB colors before saving your png 16 bits file ... always use the extension _lco as it used according BIS standards... It is important that your mask matches the corresponding data stored in your layers.cfg file... specially the RGB colors for each texture... Once you have used index colors you can be sure that no other colors will be there and thus you may trust that textures will appear where you want them to appear... otherwise textures may be misplaced or lost... For easy color recognition you may use the app Texview that get installed with Bis Tools 2, sending your recently created mask there (click over and send to... etc)... Another wonderful app you may use for these purposes is World Tools from Shezan... there you have to go to forest generator, load your mask and then analyze image... it will tell you how many colors are there showing a list with RGB color codes specifically used ... These are the basics... then you can begin to use layers with the Gimp, in order to customize your textures. i.e.: sands near river or sea coasts, rocky textures near high hills, a mixture of both for desert and dunes, and so on... Saludos! Cheers! Edited May 29, 2011 by Robster Share this post Link to post Share on other sites