Blendmasks

HELLO EVERYONE !

I need your help. I am searching for instructions and or a manual on how to create a blendmask for use in FS2004.

Thank you for your attention.

What exactly are you trying to do? What does this blendmask do?

Glad it's not just me, I haven't the slightest idea what he is talking about.

Hi,

Thank you for the response. I am trying to blend a photoreal backgroung image of an airport with the default FS2004 scenery background. I want to learn how to soften the edges of the image and let it blend with the default FS2004 scenerey. Thanks again for your time.

Hi,

Thank you for the response. I want to learn how to soften the edges of a photoreal image and let it blend with the default FS2004 scenerey. Thanks.

Hi,

Maybe this video can explain what I am trying to achive in FS2004. Thanks.

That's for FSX and P3D. Seriously, blendmasks are not supported for an FS9 photoreal, they weren't introduced until FSX.

The only thing you can do in FS9 is make a ground poly in gmax, sketchup, etc. You texture it with ortho-imagery and then you can use the alpha channel of your textures to blend around the edges like you're wanting to do. There's an upside in that it frees you of the 4.7m resolution constraint associated with an FS9 photoreal but in FS9 you're limited to 1024px textures so you'll need to tile a bunch of them together to achieve any kind of acceptable resolution. The downside is that the surface your ground poly sits on must be perfectly flat so you can't really do the airport surrounds, you pretty much have to stick with just the flatten poly the airport sits on.

Hello, Jim:

Thank you for your help. Actually, I have used FS Earth Tiles to create Photorealistic image background of the airport. I thought I could use GIMP or Photoshop editing software to manually blend the photoreal image with the default FS2004 scenery. But I dont know how to go about doing it.

I want to do something that will look like this:

http://www.ptsim.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=176&p=4095&hilit=

mask#p4095

Glad it's not just me, I haven't the slightest idea what he is talking about.

Nor me. I thought it was a senior moment...

I thought I could use GIMP or Photoshop editing software to manually blend the photoreal image with the default FS2004 scenery.

In an SDK supported FS9 photoreal you have one alpha channel and it's the watermask so anything you attempt to blend out will just turn to water. I don't know what we're looking at in the ptsim screenshot but I'll guarantee you it's not an SDK supported photoreal. Strange thread with no questions, no backstory, and no details of how it was done. I do know SBuilder9 was capable of making some kind of textured polygons so maybe that's what he did and maybe he was able to use the alpha channel of his textures to make part of it invisible. That's more like the ground poly I described than an actual photoreal but if it gives you the result you're looking for that's great. I've never done it, I'd suggest you attempt to contact the author of that post.

Hi,

I know of two ways to get what you want.

1. Manually blend the edges of the photoreal textures to match the underlying ground textures. This is done in a paint program after importing the image using a program like DXTBmp (because these textures are usually in a format most paint programs don't understand). Specify your paint program in DXTBmp, load the image into DXTBmp, Image/Send to Editor, edit the image in your paint program and save it, then back in DXTBmp Image/Reload After Edit, and save it. You may need to save it with MipMaps, I don't know - that' a checkbox at the right side of DXTBmp.

2. Use a ground polygon to blend the two, using the alpha channel to make the polygon partially transparent in spots. ModelConverterX can make ground polygons out of polygons created as an MDL or other object types in GMAX, Sketchup, Blender, or other such program. If this is near an airport, ADE can also create ground polygons from scratch (but you have to create the texture in both cases).

Hi,

Thank you for your suggestions. I will try it.

Hi,

Thank you for the response and suggestions. I just wanted to learn how to blend the edges of a

photoreal showing hard lines where the image meets the default scenery in FS2004.

Thanks again for your time and consideration.