Why Is My Coastline Doing This?

[Guest pfunkmusik]

 

It's only my .tga files. The .bmps look fine.

 

pfunk

[+JSF_Aggie]

Your alpha layer isn't right for the land-water transition tiles.

 

Look at the alpha layer for a land-water transition tile from one of the stock terrains.

[Guest pfunkmusik]

Your alpha layer isn't right for the land-water transition tiles.

 

Look at the alpha layer for a land-water transition tile from one of the stock terrains.

 

What file will I find that in?

 

And where?

 

pfunk

[+Wrench]

This is real similiar to what I ran into on some of the "custom" tiles I did for ASW and SoCal...

 

You need to extract all the **sea.tga tiles. Examine them in Photoshop (or whatever you use -- just make sure it handles 32bit w/Alpha.

 

You'll see how the alpha channel is "colored" (for lack of a better term -- perhaps it's Opacity would be closer)

 

What I did for my customs, is I just took the stock tile, added the "new bit" as another layer above the original R/G/B section, then erased it to match to coast contours

 

Also, make sure you double check the "HeightMapScale=" line in the data ini, and have a corresponding _hm.bmp to go with the land-sea tga.

 

Like below, from ASW:

 

[Texture095]

Filename=GrassField-sea-city25.TGA

HasWater=1

HeightMap=GrassField-sea-city25_hm.BMP <---

HeightMapScale=2.000000 <---

Color=0.357141,0.374967,0.364471

SolidObjectTexture=terobject_buildings1.BMP

AlphaObjectTexture=terobject_trees1.TGA

MipMapLevels=6

 

 

but more than likely, as has already been said, it's the alpha channel in the tga

 

EDIT: all the stock tile, bmp and tga are stored in each terrains' cat file ie: Desert.cat, GermanyCE.cat, etc

 

Wrench

kevin stein

[Guest pfunkmusik]

What should I set the opacity to in Photoshop?

 

pfunk

[Guest pfunkmusik]

And do I select the land to create the masking layer for the alpha channel or the water?

 

pfunk

[Guest pfunkmusik]

This is real similiar to what I ran into on some of the "custom" tiles I did for ASW and SoCal...

 

You need to extract all the **sea.tga tiles. Examine them in Photoshop (or whatever you use -- just make sure it handles 32bit w/Alpha.

 

You'll see how the alpha channel is "colored" (for lack of a better term -- perhaps it's Opacity would be closer)

 

What I did for my customs, is I just took the stock tile, added the "new bit" as another layer above the original R/G/B section, then erased it to match to coast contours

 

Also, make sure you double check the "HeightMapScale=" line in the data ini, and have a corresponding _hm.bmp to go with the land-sea tga.

 

Like below, from ASW:

 

[Texture095]

Filename=GrassField-sea-city25.TGA

HasWater=1

HeightMap=GrassField-sea-city25_hm.BMP <---

HeightMapScale=2.000000 <---

Color=0.357141,0.374967,0.364471

SolidObjectTexture=terobject_buildings1.BMP

AlphaObjectTexture=terobject_trees1.TGA

MipMapLevels=6

 

 

but more than likely, as has already been said, it's the alpha channel in the tga

 

EDIT: all the stock tile, bmp and tga are stored in each terrains' cat file ie: Desert.cat, GermanyCE.cat, etc

 

Wrench

kevin stein

 

Dude, I still can't get this thing to work. You're going to have dumb it down even further.

 

pfunk

[Guest pfunkmusik]

OK, I think I got it.

 

1. Select the part of the transition tile that you've altered, usually the land.

 

2. Copy it over to the STOCK .tga file and cover up the land you DON'T want affected by the water effect.

 

3. Save all layers as a .psd file.

 

4. I'm resizing (you don't have to) to 512 X 512 and saving again as a .tga file.

 

5. Move to the Terrain folder to test.

 

Wierd thing happened with the SEA tile (not a transition, the actual sea tile), I'm seeing gridlines along the edges of the tiles.

 

pfunk

[+Fubar512]

Do you mean the actual sea tiles, or the shader bitmap (or tga)?

[Guest pfunkmusik]

No, the tiles with water involved seem to be the only thing affected. Wrench's ASW terrain was rewritten and every time you do that, apparently, the water transition tiles (all terrain tiles with .tga file extension) get affected this way and you have to jump through some serious hoops to get it working again.

 

pfunk

[+Wrench]

Meaning, you can see the tile edges, where the sea/land tile meets the sea tile and/or the next sea/land tile to it's right or left?

 

That's also in the alpha...you didn't carry the part that semi-transparant (the grayish bit) all the way to the edge. Clone stamp works REAL for this. Also, make sure the 'ocean' color is the same for all the tiles. Had that issue with the cityport2 tile (from Vietnamsea -- the one with the docks built it). The VNSEA ocean is a different color than the desert one.

 

I'll try to do up some screenies, as soon as I can to illistrate what I was talking about.

 

wrench

kevin stein

[+Wrench]

Hopefully, this will clear it up some, and my explanations will make sense.

Mind you, I'm much more familiar with the desert and vietnam tile sets than I am with the germany ones, but the principals are the same. So, these are 'desert' based tiles.

 

ok, picture 1 "tiles-1" shows the bmp and tga for the 'grassfield-sea-city50' tile, as used in ASW (at galveston, btw) I have the alpha turned on over the R/G/B section, so you can see the opacity gradation. Oh, and the little black square? that's the _hm.bmp for this tile. I've found the fully black ones make for a 'hard' coastline that prevents items from sinking into the ground.

 

The second shot, "tiles-2" shows the tga with the r/g/b channels turned off. This REALLLY shows the opacity gradations. ANYTHING that is land has to be PURE BLACK in the alpha channel. You'll note the 'pebbly gray' texture of the ocean section of the alpha -- this is the part that give the 'sea' effect

 

the 3rd shot I've zoomed up the tga, so you can really see the varying opacity and the (for lack of a better term) texturazation of the gray ocean part. This is easily spread out to the edges with the clone stamp tool, to elimiate the possibilty of tile edges showing.

 

in this last shot, I've used the vietnamsc50.tga, as this has the docks built in, and zoomed up so you can see the difference in how the 'gray' part for the sea is rendered.

 

I hope this helps somewhat ... don't forget to have a correspendingly named _hm.bmp for the sea/land transition tile!!

 

Wrench

kevin stein

[Guest pfunkmusik]

Lucky you. You've got Quick Mask on Photoshop. I have Elements 7.0, which doesn't have that feature.

 

I had to cheat to get your professional-looking results...translation, I don't think my tiles will look as nice as yours. But I got it working.

 

pfunk

[+Wrench]

REALLY!!!??? Thanks! I never thought my tiles looked all that good....

 

Most of the stuff I redid for ASW was simply copy/paste and erase if needed!!

 

I've only used masks once or twice; with colorizing some photos for nose art decals, so I'm quite unknowing about their proper use

 

I've never worked in anything BUT PornoShop ... have 5, 6, 7 -but never use 7 as I don't like the menu system and it's 'screwing up' alpha channels. I applied a patch for it, but never got it working properly. So I"m staying with 6.

 

Wrench

kevin stein