Texturing: Image Colormaps

[B4rr3l]

Originally Posted by cataly

Look at this !

MountainsDogfight1 Map addon - Battlefield 2 - Mod DB

Articles - cataly63 - Mod DB



And the last amazing vidéo from Heli Copter, alias Bluehawk112



thx to him

Very nice bud, might give it a remaster version at some point, still growing my HD vegetation library

[Rhino]

Originally Posted by B4rr3l

I got that, but have never seen a map like that, every bf2 map I've saw was using painted colormaps.

That's because the biggest problem with using satellite images (actually aerial photos stitched together) is because they have the shadows in them (as well as all the buildings, trees etc), where for a game map colour texture, you don't want any shadows on them as the shadows are cast by the objects/lightamaps on the map, and as such, you just get a load of fake shadows everywhere that do not mix at all well with proper object shadows.

That Mountains map posted might not look too bad when you're flying up high over the terrain from a distance because that is where the actual images were taken from in real life. But as soon as you get close to the terrain, or worse are walking on it, all the fake shadows and trees/buildings etc on the colour map just look awful and they will look worse again if you actually mix them with 3D trees/buildings/objects and their shadows too.

There are ways of editing these images to remove their shadows and all the objects on them etc but it requires a lot of work by hand, and tbh, you're better off using a decent terrain painting tool to paint the terrain from scratch and then make adjustments to that by hand than trying to fix up aerial photos
But things like open, flat fields with no shadows from objects in them can be very useful to transplant into a colour texture as no painting tool can paint in all the where you get from tractors, animal movements (including things like rabbit tracks etc, not just where cows have churned up the mud at gateways etc) but getting it to blend in with your normal colour maps can be tricky too, but can be worth it.

[B4rr3l]

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]Rhino

That's because the biggest problem with using satellite images (actually aerial photos stitched together) is because they have the shadows in them (as well as all the buildings, trees etc), where for a game map colour texture, you don't want any shadows on them as the shadows are cast by the objects/lightamaps on the map, and as such, you just get a load of fake shadows everywhere that do not mix at all well with proper object shadows.

That Mountains map posted might not look too bad when you're flying up high over the terrain from a distance because that is where the actual images were taken from in real life. But as soon as you get close to the terrain, or worse are walking on it, all the fake shadows and trees/buildings etc on the colour map just look awful and they will look worse again if you actually mix them with 3D trees/buildings/objects and their shadows too.

There are ways of editing these images to remove their shadows and all the objects on them etc but it requires a lot of work by hand, and tbh, you're better off using a decent terrain painting tool to paint the terrain from scratch and then make adjustments to that by hand than trying to fix up aerial photos
But things like open, flat fields with no shadows from objects in them can be very useful to transplant into a colour texture as no painting tool can paint in all the where you get from tractors, animal movements (including things like rabbit tracks etc, not just where cows have churned up the mud at gateways etc) but getting it to blend in with your normal colour maps can be tricky too, but can be worth it.

interesting point. Have a look at Machuu Pichu in google earth

[Outlawz7]

To continue on the original tutorial in first post, there is a simpler way to split your colormap without using CMD.

Save your texture as colourbig.tga (the pixel size to map size thing mentioned in first post applies), make it read only (this is vital), place it in your TPaint folder and run TPaint. TPaint will split the read-only colormap instead of creating its own.

[Spyker2041]

Originally Posted by shribey22

Im stuck on the very last part. When I type in STUFF>bf2_tsplit.exe null colorbig.tga , my result says ERROR: reading colorbig.tga .... I take it that this means I converted something in my image wrong? I can open this .tga file on numerous programs and there seems to be nothing wrong with it. Using vista if that helps anyone too...

NEVERMIND! make sure your reference pic is the right size!

When I run tsplit null colorbig.tga my output looks like this
https://imgur.com/a/CqUC4yu

I have saved as tga 24 bit at 4096x4096 for a 1024x2 map

EDIT: Fixed by just starting from scratch.