Using Colour Imagery on GE terrain snapshots.

jwallis

Hi
I am trying to retexture some GE terrain with colour imagery that i captured screen shot at the same time i did the terrain.
Its seems that the software is engineered to make this difficult to do. ie why do they just have B&W GE snapshots in the first place?
Does any one know a way around this. I have tried but the multifaced nature of the terrain seem to make it difficult to apply a new image.
I even went to far as to replace the image in the temp directory (where the b&w images are stored) with an image of exactly the same dimensions. It applied but the mapping / positioning was out enough to make it useless.
This should be a simple procedure to fix but i have been trying for ages to retexture and just cant do it. Restricted??
Any Hints....I think i hear the footsteps of Gaeius ...

Gaieus

@jwallis said:

Any Hints....I think i hear the footsteps of Gaeius ...

Hehe...

This is a fairly easy thing to do... So basically you have done the prerequisite already; took the GE Snapshot (which comes in B&W due to some licensing reasons) AND without moving the camera in GE (and hopefully turning off all visible, disturbing layers like YouTube video thumbnails) saved a colour vaerion of the view from File > Save > image...
This will be the exact view as your import to SU.

The easiest way to swap the two images is to open your material browser, go to "In model", find your B&W snapshot, select it, go to the edit tab and below there is a possibility to reload the image (so no need to fiddle around in the Temp folder)

Although there is a "step by step" tutorial on how to add the colur image over the SU Help Centre, that's an extremely cumbersome (and inaccurate) way to do it if you also want to correctly position your colour image and further modify your terrain.

All you have to do is to turn this image currently applied on the snapshot and terrain into "Projected" so that whatever modifications you may want to make in the terrain, the image won't get mismatched. These are the basic steps;

Right click and "Unlock" both the terrain and the snapshot groups
(they come in locked - when you click on them, a red bounding box appears and prevents them from editing).
Now double click on the (flat) snapshot group to edit it,
right click on the (now already accessible) face > Texture > Projected.
Now sample this texture with the Alt+Paint bucket tool
(it will turn into a sampler or eyedropper - and will not only sample the texture but all UV data like "projected" in this case, too)
Now open the terrain group and simply apply the sampled (and projected) material onto the face inside the group.
Done.

Easier and quicker to do than to write down the steps.

leedeetee

Great stuff, Gai.

Up until three minutes ago I was still doing this the long, cumbersome and innacurate way. You learn something everyday.

jwallis

thanks again Gai. You totally rock the casbah.
I still have the issue when i replace the image on the snapshot material it does not match well. It seems to change the scaling by an increase of approx 20%.
My work around is to File -> Import image...use as texture.
and apply to the snapshot and then use the technique that you described below.
When you (or anyone else) do the image swap do you get an exact match (ie B&W-->colour) of textures as would be expected?
You would expect this as they are the same image size and aspect ratios.
anyway sorted for now but still not as seamless as i would imagine.
thanks again.

Gaieus

Hm. That 20% difference sounds really weird. To me, it seems to be an exact match.

alpro

Mine never seem to be the exact same size so normally I just follow this go 2 school tut, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZWYtDDbSFY

Mike