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Howto:Regional texturing: Difference between revisions
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By the way, do not aim to remove all vector seams - some of them are there in reality, for instance patches of managed forest in central Europe are characterized by very sharply pronounced boundaries, and so are suburban regions. Aim to de-emphasize only those that have no equivalent in reality. | By the way, do not aim to remove all vector seams - some of them are there in reality, for instance patches of managed forest in central Europe are characterized by very sharply pronounced boundaries, and so are suburban regions. Aim to de-emphasize only those that have no equivalent in reality. | ||
=== Random vegetation, buildings and objects === | |||
Inside the <material> tag, it is also possible to declare random vegetation, random buildings or random objects. The difference is that the former two are supported by dedicated shaders which makes their rendering rather optimized, whereas random objects are normal 3d models without dedicated optimization. In general, random vegetation or buildings can hence be drawn in much higher numbers. | |||
The detailed syntax to generate random trees, buildings and objects is beyond the scope of this article, it is explained in the technical specifications of the materials definition in [https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/fgdata/ci/next/tree/Docs/README.materials README.materials] | |||
The object placement can be made non-random by specifying an <b>object mask</b> (i.e. an additional texture that tells how objects are placed). This allows to place trees on a specific part of the base layer texture if that part shows trees. The green channel mask is used for random vegetation placement, the blue channel for buildings and lights. and the red channel controls the rotation of buildings (0.0 is North, 0.5is South). Fractional colour values can be used to give a probability of placement. | |||
Often, there is a tough choice to be made between placement masks and procedural texturing, because the placement masks are not compatible with the procedurally generated shapes. Placing 3d trees and buildings where they belong on the base texture looks stunning from close-up, but if the area to be covered is too large, tiling may spoil all the visuals. In general, a good idea is to choose placement masks where the landclass patches are small and tiling is not a problem, in particular for urban, suburban and possible small-scale agricultural terrain, use procedural techniques instead where areas covered by the same landclass are large and tiling is an issue. | |||
Also note that the appearance of a large number of buildings does not need to be created by random building placement but can be alternatively done by the urban relief effect. | |||
=== Assigning effects === | === Assigning effects === | ||