Using a Digital camera, Photoshop, and FSDS Pro you can easily create Photo-Realistic Textured Polygons By: Jordan Moore jordansmoore@yahoo.com The screen shot from FS2000 you see above is part of a scenery project for the tiny town of Navajo, Montana. In fact its really not a town (even though it exists on most maps of the area) its just a few houses and buildings where I grew up, and my parents still call home. In fact, they're probably in the house by the airplane right now! The image clearly shows how normal digital photos (shown as insets) of the houses and buildings around Navajo were used to create scenery objects that very accurately represent their real-life counterparts. In the following tutorial I hope to show how quickly and easily this can be done.

1. Before you begin... In order for this tutorial to be helpful, you will need to know how to use FSDS Pro, Photoshop (or other high-end image editor), and have access to high quality image files of buildings and/or structures. This tutorial has a limited scope, and can not begin to explain every small detail of the operations of these programs. 2. Getting the right picture This step is not as hard as some might make it out to be. The key is to get well lit, even-toned, pictures from straight angles. Directly from the front, sides, and back. Avoiding strange angle shots will save you much time later. The measurement of the shot doesn't have to be perfect, however you might want to note the actual size of the object you are photographing if true scale scenery is your ultimate goal. Often when you are using macros from other designers, you'll find that true scale is often over-looked. Below is one of the pictures my father took of a garage. I have opened it for viewing and editing in Photoshop. 3. Preparing the image to be used as a texture This is where you can put some extra time and effort in depending on how far you want to take the craft. With an image like the one we have here, very little is needed to improve the quality of the end product. As you'll learn however, often the pictures have imperfections, or obstructions that will require some photo editing to correct. Because I had my father email me the pictures of the farm, and because he didn't truly understand my project, I had many imperfections to deal with. That's part of the fun I guess. One of the nice things about these textures, is you can always improve them later if you decide to take better pictures. Below, I have now cropped all of the uneeded portion of the image, and have resized it so that it will fit inside a 512x512 canvas with a black background. The black background is not mandatory, but its pretty popular among texture designers. FSDS needs the texture to be 256x256, 512x512, or 1024x1024. I've found 512x512 to work well for most objects of normal size. If the object you will be rendering is very large, you might want to use a 1024x1024 image, but of course the larger the size, the higher the resolution of the original picture should be. Remember, down-sizing doesn't hurt image quality like up-sizing. Rule of thumb: a smaller texture of high quality is better than a larger texture of low quality. Say that three times fast. No really...I mean it, Right now. 4. Save your texture image Save this image in the .BMP format into your favorite texture directory. If you are working on a scenery project you can put it directly into the "texture" directory under your project folder. Photoshop will save the .BMP format in 24bit Windows style mode by default. Later we will use FSDS to convert to this image to the 16 bit mode that FSDS would rather deal with. To avoid the hassle, in Photoshop you can convert the mode of the image to 256 colors first. Simply use the Image->Mode->Indexed Color options and set the number of colors to 256. 5. Open a simple polygon in FSDS Use FSDS to open or create a simple "house" shaped polygon. Remember to keep the shape only as complex as the object you are rendering. The simpler the object is, the quicker you can apply textures and the quicker FS2000 can draw it for you when you are flying. You'll notice the house shaped poly we are using here has no uneeded points, lines, or sides. Of course you can use additional polygons to add items such as porches, awnings, and tv antennas to your house but simplicity will help keep your scenery fast (frames per second). 6. Select a surface to apply a texture to Because the house is a single "part" in FSDS, it is easy to select. After accomplishing that, use the polygon mode (instead of part mode) to choose the surface of the house poly to work with. The image below will show which surface has been selected. All of this should be familiar to you, if using FSDS is a new subject for you, I would suggest playing around with it separately first. Textures aren't going anywhere soon, so you can come back to them next week. You'll be a FSDS ninja master by then right? 7. You are almost there... Right click on the house show above to bring up the work menu and choose "textures". That will present you with the following pop-up (shown here). Select "Custom Texture" and then click "Texture Properties". 8. Open and Convert your texture image If you didn't convert your BMP file to 256 colors using Photoshop before saving it then you'll notice a warning about using 24 bit textures, and the "Convert 24 Bit Texture" button will be available on the lower right of this "Open" popup window. Click that button and follow the simple steps to convert your .bmp image into a 16 bit version. It will prompt you to save a copy of the 16 bit version of the image. Save this in the same location... FROM NOW ON WE WILL USE THE 16 BIT VERSION. Notice the files in the example below. You can remove the 24 bit versions if you like, if you accidently use one, it will look fine in FSDS, but when you load up your object in FS2000 those textures will be missing. After selecting the new 16 bit version of the texture image file, click "Open". 9. Setting the texture dimensions Ooooo....this step sounds hard....but it's not. Notice how FSDS has drawn in a thin rectangular selection shape for you...This shape has two important purposes. First... it shows you the true shape of the polygon surface you are going to be applying the texture to. Second, It allows you define exactly which portion of the texture image should be applied to the polygon surface you have selected for texturing. You'll end up experimenting with this step a lot in order to get your texturing mojo. Time Saver: If you use your texture as a backdrop in FSDS to guide your design. Your final polygon will match almost exactly to the texture you are attempting to add to the polygon now. When it comes to making structures this can be very helpful. Also it is important to note that it is not necessary to do only one small section of the polygon at a time, you can also use FSDS to add textures to what FSDS sees as the "front", "back", and sides of the entire house shaped object. For simple shapes this can sometimes save you a ton of work. Experiment! 9a. Before Selecting... Note that the selection area is by default the true shape of the surface right now, the more you have to change it to achieve the next step, the more FSDS will have to distort the texture when actually applying it to the poly's surface. For this example we have a pretty close fit, but for a real project I would go back and flatten the house polygon just a little to be slightly more rectangular and less square. 9b. After Selecting... We are simply changing the shape of the thin rectangle using the 4 corner points (click and drag) to outline the exact portion of the texture that corresponds with the polygon surface that will be applying that portion of the texture to. Then clicking "OK". 10. Just like that!!! Is it really that easy?...YES it is. Now think of all the cool things you can do. You can make custom airport signs! You can recreate your local air-park...the list goes on. And the great thing, is that you are actually using LESS polygons, and the photo-realistic textures will bring details to polys that we could never render by creating more polys. Effects like real shadows, and reflections of the sun on glass will look fantastic. 11. Add your object/macro to your FS2000 scenery project After creating your object (now using photo-realistic textures hopefully!) use what ever process you would normally use to add your BGL and/or macros to your scenery project. Make sure the 16 bit texture image files you created are available in the "texture" directory of the scenery project. Good Luck with your textures. Feel free to email me with questions, comments, and corrections.