Making a good sat mask

Ive been trying to create a sat mask for a map im working on, and found it rather difficult and time consuming to get everything right.

Ive been taking images from google earth and  putting them together. What ive found out is that its very hard to get them to fit together properly. When im adding an image its very likely to get it right on one side but it will allways be abit wrong on the other side, alternativley its a big white piece where the image is missing.

Its simply so that its impossible to take one image of each area and them puzzle it together with the bordering areas. If  my islands size is equal to 50 images i have to get another 50 just to make it all fit together.

So what im wondering is, how do other people do to solve this? How do u do to get satelite images that are aligned to each other and dont take 10 trys on each image to get something that fits with the other ones?

There is no easy answer - I think we all have different ways of approaching the problem. You really need to have some "artist" skills to do the sat_lco.png.

Here's what I am currently doing (look at this thread for images: http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....=71461.

Instead of repainting sat_lco I am using the aerial photo and altering it to fit the map - necessary since ArmA roads are constrained to 10 degree rotational increments and real roads are not. Plus one needs to eliminate tree and buildings and their shadows, paint the roads for long distance visibility, etc.

I use the Project | Export Map as image tool, then convert the EMF file to PNG and import that as a layer into PSP8. Be sure to read the Biki on dealing with the "blue edge" or things will not line up properly: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Making_Satellite_Texture_and_Mask .

By turning vegetation, roads, and man-made objects on or off and exporting them, you can create multiple layers in your graphics editor and use them as a guide to retouching the sat_lco image.

Im trying to view that forum post of urs, but i get this message

Quote[/b] ]Sorry, some required files are missing, if you intended to view a topic, it's possible that it's been moved or deleted. Please go back and try again.

You are currently logged in as Brewster Bufallo

I tryed a few times but it didnt work. Maybe u can tell me the topic title so i can search for it instead?

I didnt get that about the roads either, has it got something to do with curves and bends of the road?

Im glad ur trying to help me tough, thanks for that

EDIT i didnt think of that first, but what u wrote at the end about the blue egde and that stuff was very intresting too

Topic is "An Alternate Method to Creating Height Maps" look half way down the page for the sat map image with the V3 roads overlaid.

The point about the roads is that you cannot make the roads in V3 follow real world roads exactly because the engine is limited to a rotation of 10 degrees. This is especially bothersome when the real road is straight as an arrow but not at the perfect angle for V3. So if you want to follow the real world road your V3 road is going to have a lot of zigs and zags to keep it close to the original. Then you have to repaint the sat map image because at mid to long range the road objects are not drawn by the program. Instead the player only sees the sat map image. If you don't paint the roads on the sat map they will simply disappear a few hundred meters away. This is especially noticeable on open terrain and when flying over your map.

The point about the roads is that you cannot make the roads in V3 follow real world roads exactly because the engine is limited to a rotation of 10 degrees.

I was able to rotate road-nets (step size of 1°) by using "setdir". The roads were diplayed correctly in Visitor3 and Buldozer, too (but not tested ingame).

So perhaps the limitation is only by the dialogue of Visitor3 (after setting a road to e.g. 15° I was able to rotate it in steps of 10° by using the dialogue : 25°, 35°, 45°, ...).

Master85

@Nicholas

Quote[/b] ]Topic is "An Alternate Method to Creating Height Maps"  look half way down the page for the sat map image with the V3 roads overlaid.

Thank you, i found it.

Quote[/b] ]Plus one needs to eliminate tree and buildings and their shadows, paint the roads for long distance visibility

Big thanks, ive learned alot from what uve told me. Ive still got a long way to go tough a 12,8x12,8 kilometer map wont make itself lol.

@Master85

That made me very happy=) Almost all of my roads are like Nicholas sayed 'straight as an arrow'.

I got some questions tough:

Does that mean that i first can put a road with a rotation of 50 degrees, and when i want to make one with 53  the original road will be rotated too? Or is it possible to have roads in all directions at the same time?

And how do i use 'setdir', i assume there is some kind of init field for each object? Im very inexperienced with visitor for the momen

Ive been trying to create a sat mask for a map im working on, and found it rather difficult and time consuming to get everything right.

Ive been taking images from google earth and putting them together. What ive found out is that its very hard to get them to fit together properly. When im adding an image its very likely to get it right on one side but it will allways be abit wrong on the other side, alternativley its a big white piece where the image is missing.

Its simply so that its impossible to take one image of each area and them puzzle it together with the bordering areas. If my islands size is equal to 50 images i have to get another 50 just to make it all fit together.

So what im wondering is, how do other people do to solve this? How do u do to get satelite images that are aligned to each other and dont take 10 trys on each image to get something that fits with the other ones?

hum.. difficult? no!

Time consuming? True.

In photoshop theres a tool ("Clone Stamp" + "brush with some fade") that can help you out and improvise these flaws/different collage.

I had the same problem you described in 1st post.. but with a little patience, time and skill you can simulate the terrain and you will not notice the difference.

I used 25 pics from goggle earth, each one with 1600x1200 resolution and built a map with 10240x10240 resolution.

And now i don't notice any terrain error.

I have a Question:

My Map Pic atm (fallujah.png) have 512MB.. with fair good detail, Is it too big?

Should it be bigger?

I must say that this pic takes ages to save

ps- i know i will have reduce the terrain for smaller resolution in future stage but with your experience will this map lag ?!

If you're taking overhead pics in Google Earth and stitching them manually you can make yourself a transparent overlay grid image.

This you can use to plot out a raster of your area, toggle it off when you're taking the pictures. Also, don't change the zoom level, this will make it very difficult to stitch the raster as the images would be out of proportion to each other.

Oh yeah, turn off 3d terrain too.....

I have a Question:

My Map Pic atm (fallujah.png) have 512MB.. with fair good detail, Is it too big?

Should it be bigger?

I must say that this pic takes ages to save

ps- i know i will have reduce the terrain for smaller resolution in future stage but with your experience will this map lag ?!

I wouldn't say that's too big, I've worked with an Afghan map and the source data was over 4 GB.

Quote[/b] ]I was able to rotate road-nets (step size of 1°) by using "setdir". The roads were diplayed correctly in Visitor3 and Buldozer, too (but not tested ingame). So perhaps the limitation is only by the dialogue of Visitor3 (after setting a road to e.g. 15° I was able to rotate it in steps of 10° by using the dialogue : 25°, 35°, 45°, ...).

Sounds wonderful but where & how do I implement "setdir" - I only see it used in mission editing.

Quote[/b] ]the shadows clearly have to go but you can keep the trees and bushes. Take a flight over Sahrani and u will see what i mean, bushes are clearly visible on the satmask from high altitude.

A matter of taste I suppose. Just because they're on the Sahrani map doesn't mean it's required.

Representation of objects such as roads, buildings and vegetation on the satmask does help continuity beyond maximum object rendering distance. Since the thread title is "making a good sat mask", I think adding these should be encouraged

I agree the sat map should contain as much detail as possible, It improves the viewing quality over distances i.e flying

Nice, some really useful stuff is starting to show up in this thead!

@Aussie

Quote[/b] ]I agree the sat map should contain as much detail as possible, It improves the viewing quality over distances i.e flying

Just what i meant!

@Bravo6

Quote[/b] ]I used 25 pics from goggle earth, each one with 1600x1200 resolution and built a map with 10240x10240 resolution.

25 pics, what size is ur island? My one is 12,8km at each side (163 sq kilometer) and ive calculated that i will need 64 pics.

Btw, have anyone got an idea if its possible to get rid of the google logo, as it is now ive got to take another picture of the are the logo covers int he first pic and paste it over the logo.

@Opetryx

I solved that by placing a map marker in the shape of a little box with a cross in it in each corner of the screen, then i can zoom into that are the next time i want to work on my sat mask and make sure to get the zoom right. I even made a grid in that way, and it worked quite well but i should had payed more attention to the exact alignment to get it right

Sounds wonderful but where & how do I implement "setdir" - I only see it used in mission editing.

A fast and dirty script for rotating one or more road nets:

Use at your own risk.

RoadRotator

Master85

@Aussie

Quote[/b] ]I agree the sat map should contain as much detail as possible, It improves the viewing quality over distances i.e flying

Just what i meant!

I ask again: will the map lag more ingame because of these extra details?

@Bravo6

Quote[/b] ]I used 25 pics from goggle earth, each one with 1600x1200 resolution and built a map with 10240x10240 resolution.

25 pics, what size is ur island? My one is 12,8km at each side (163 sq kilometer) and ive calculated that i will need 64 pics.

In goggle earth the map measure 10km per 10km.

I used 2km of altitude to take the pics. I tried 1km alt at first but i needed a bigger map then 10240x10240 for what i wanted.. thats why i used 2km alt instead.

I hope i can and know how to use this real values for ArmA, ie, what settings shall i use in visitor3?

Btw, have anyone got an idea if its possible to get rid of the google logo, as it is now ive got to take another picture of the are the logo covers int he first pic and paste it over the logo.

Yup, you can take goggles pics and delete all bottom part in photoshop. Thats why i did..

Quote[/b] ]Representation of objects such as roads, buildings and vegetation on the satmask does help continuity beyond maximum object rendering distance. Since the thread title is "making a good sat mask", I think adding these should be encouraged

OTOH having a bunch of darker spots visible 30 meters away caused by the sat image can be unrealistic. It's a balancing act between looking good at long range vs on foot. Since most of the time we are seeing things from ground level, I prefer to make this a priority. A matter of personal taste .

As far as detail goes, I'm all for it - all you have to do is look at the Schmalfelden thread over in the Addons & Mods Discussion to see where I am coming from.

Quote[/b] ]I ask again: will the map lag more ingame because of these extra details?

Not at all. It's the number and number of different types of objects (plants and man-made) which hurt, not the satellite image.

Quote[/b] ]A fast and dirty script for rotating one or more road nets:

Use at your own risk. RoadRotator Master85

Master85 -

This works great - thank you! A note to others trying it - if you attempt to edit the road after changing the angle using this script, V3 automatically forces the angle back to a 10 degree incriment. This is not a fault of the script. So make sure you note the actual angle before editing so you can re-apply the script.

HERE is a picture demonstrating the imagery coverage over the city center.

Opteryx do you consider that map a good mask?

Also would like to keep the text i posted before:

"does this project includes removing the cars on the roads?!

I know it takes time and pacience..

but its what Iam doing that atm..

Im really interested to know how is this detail when we are soldier in the ground..

can you post a pic to see the detail on the ground?

Will you be able to match the buildings with the pic? Will it lag alot since theres alot of houses? :\

It will be huge pbo file , correct me if iam wrong. "

ps- Sorry for last post in ofp thread about this subject.

Opteryx do you consider that map a good mask?

Do you mean is the mask on the map good? If so I would say, it works, but could use some further editing to make the satellite and surface types correlate better yes, but that isn't really observeable on the image shown.

Also would like to keep the text i posted before:

"does this project includes removing the cars on the roads?!

I know it takes time and pacience..

but its what Iam doing that atm..

Im really interested to know how is this detail when we are soldier in the ground..

Well that isn't really my business, as I've said, I only helped prototype the map. If I were to work further on this map I'd certainly dedicate a lot of time to remove unwanted things such as vehicles etc. however I'd wait for that after most of the city structure is done, then I'd be better to judge what to remove and what to leave since a lot would become obscured, effectively saving development time.

can you post a pic to see the detail on the ground?

No, I don't have the map compiled at the moment and the terrain is really flat as it's still in a proto state, so it wouldn't give you much helpful visualization either way.

Will you be able to match the buildings with the pic? Will it lag alot since theres alot of houses? :\

If we're talking default ArmA structures, no it wouldn't lag in that density, however once you start adding all those filler objects (trees/trash/walls/sidewalks/streetlights/etc) then you will certainly notice a drop in frame-rates, therefore I'd rather recommend using custom structures/objects for optimized performance.

A big urban environment in ArmA isn't that much unlike a forest, the more you add to the scenery the worse it's going to perform.

It will be huge pbo file , correct me if iam wrong. "

Shouldn't exceed the size of Sahrani (disk space that is..) provided there's not any additional addons baked into the PBO.

If you're really feel the need to observe a detail to sat transition on a urban terrain I could post some pictures of my current map, but that'll have to be tomorrow, now I sleep!

Quote[/b] ]Yup, you can take goggles pics and delete all bottom part in photoshop. Thats why i did..

lol wont make much difference, wont it? I still have to get another image of the same area and paste it to the first one. Its just two ways of doing the same thing im afriad

can any one tell me and inform me about the following:

I want to add 2 bridges to my map..

what must i do in visitor and in the mask to have the bridge fill the exact space and be leveled without flaws in altitude?

edit: Do i need to erase these bridges and give an different color (not water)?

I already saw some bridges that don't match the different parts because they are not leveled with same altitude.. what must i do to make them good?

can any one tell me and inform me about the following:

I want to add 2 bridges to my map..

what must i do in visitor and in the mask to have the bridge fill the exact space and be leveled without flaws in altitude?

edit: Do i need to erase these bridges and give an different color (not water)?

I already saw some bridges that don't match the different parts because they are not leveled with same altitude.. what must i do to make them good?

Just use the clone-stamp tool in Photoshop to fill in with nearby water or terrain, I'd rather recommend you fill in water with terrain texture so that you don't get accidental blue textures on terrain close to the water.

As for getting bridge sections to stand in correct elevation relative to each other, you'll have to enter their elevation manually by double clicking on them. Maybe you could edit some MLOD models to become selectable in buldozer and use them as placeholders on your P drive.

so let me see if i understood it right..

I need to have the same terrain color where real bridges are?

I can not erase the bridges and have water color instead?

Note: I want my bridges to have water under them (between poles).

enlarge

Opteryx any suggestion?

ps- i will remove all cars, add some shore land effects.

Bravo 6 have you confused making heightfield with making textures (or vice versa)?

Bravo 6 have you confused making heightfield with making textures (or vice versa)?

no.. but the tutorial im following i will have to change color or water and terrain.. and then im not sure if i need to delete in visitor these spaces.

and thats my dought.. Or im not making it clear enough?