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Changing Scenery Landscape

After you have built your base scenery layout using SynthWizard, you might want to tweak the look of the scenery by adding, removing or modifying landscape features. You may, for instance:

All these, and more, are possible using TerraBuilder's powerful landscape building features.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Coming in for a final... OOPS! What kind of a runway is this? Actually, this is what happened when I misjudged the runway position and placed it on the side of a hill! You can still land on it, but make sure you put the brakes on or you'll roll backwards!

 


SynthWizard's ice effects in winter

   

 

Adding an urban area

Now that you have your base scenery, you may decide that you need an urban area (a small town) in a particular location in your scenery. TerraBuilder tools make it easy to change a chunk in the scenery grid from one type of landscape to the other. Here is what you do:

  • Choosing the selection tool button , select two or three chunks at the lower right (South East) corner of the scenery by selecting with the selection tool and holding down SHIFT key 1.
  • Choose Chunk Properties by selecting the Chunk Properties Toolbar Button .
  • A dialog page will appear with four sections (tabs). Choose "synthetic" tab 2.
  • A tree list will appear with all the available landscape classes. Choose "urban" class 3.
  • Choose apply 4 and the change will be accepted. The selected area is now populated by URBAN landscape class depicting a small town. All neighbor tiles have been matched so that there are no visible seams in the tiled landscape.

Optional step: (recommended for PRO users only)

  • If you select a SINGLE chunk instead of two or three as instructed above, the available landscape classes become expandable and you have an option of selecting a specific texture from all available synthetic textures. For instance, from the URBAN class, select various textures, and find the one that closely matches the surrounding chunks (that means, without visible edges) and closely matches the configuration of the town you like to insert. You must repeat this process for all neighbor tiles if you want to have smooth, seamless landscape transition. This is, however, fairly difficult and laborious process, unless:
  • PRO users only: select "neighbor matching" button 5. Now, as you select any tile, the neighbor tiles are automatically changing to match your selected tile.

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Inserting a lake

Let's create a small lake in the middle of the countryside:

  • Move on to lower left (South West) corner in the scenery and locate an area which is populated mainly by RURAL landscape classes.
  • Choosing the selection tool button and holding down SHIFT button, select 3 to 8 adjacent tile chunks in the middle of the area. The shape of your selection will broadly resemble the shape of the lake.
  • Choose Chunk Properties by selecting the Chunk Properties Toolbar Button .
  • A dialog page will appear with four sections (tabs). Choose "synthetic" tab.
  • A tree list will appear with all the available landscape classes. It, however, will NOT be expandable because we have made a multiple selection.
  • Choose "Water" landscape class by double-clicking on it. Choose "Apply".
  • That's It! TerraBuilder replaces all of the multiple-selected tiles with water surfaces, and matches all surrounding tiles to the surrounding landscape transition.
  • PRO users: If you are not happy with how the coastline looks like, you may wish to select single chunks and use "neighbor matching" option to replace the individual coastline tiles. Neighbors will be automatically replaced and matched to your selection, so that no seams are visible.

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select the chunks to replace with water...

... and the selected area is "flooded" with water, adjusting neighboring chunks to smooth coastal transitions

 

   

 

Clearing a forest

Let's now clear the portion of the forest and replace it with a lovely meadow on which we can land our light plane:

  • Locate the area in the upper left (North East) corner of the scenery which is heavily forested or wooded.
  • Choosing the selection tool button and holding down SHIFT button, select 3 or 4 adjacent forest tile chunks in the middle of the forest.
  • Choose Chunk Properties by selecting the Chunk Properties Toolbar Button .
  • A dialog page will appear with four sections (tabs). Choose "synthetic" tab.
  • A tree list will appear with all the available landscape classes. It, however, will NOT be expandable because we have made a multiple selection.
  • Choose "Grass" landscape class by double-clicking on it. Choose "Apply".
  • That's It! TerraBuilder replaces all of the multiple-selected tiles with a grass clearing, and matches all surrounding tiles to the forest transition. Now we have a grassy clearing, where we can land a plane.

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select chunks to clear...

... and replace them with grass clearing.

   

 

Modifying a texture

Now you have a lovely grass clearing in the middle of the forest. Wouldn't it be nice to have a small runway to land on? Let's make one!

  • Select one of the grass chunks you just created 1
  • Choose Chunk Properties by either selecting the Chunk Properties Toolbar Button , or left double clicking on the chunk, and selecting Chunk Properties from the pop-up menu.
  • A dialog page will appear with four sections (tabs). Choose "Texture" tab 3.
  • Use Save as Unique button 4 and save this texture in a "texture" sub-directory of your scenery directory. Give it a meaningful name, such as "RunwayL.bmp", and make sure the file name is not more than 8 characters, otherwise SCASM will give you an error.
  • Repeat this process by selecting texture 2 to the right of the first one and saving it as "RunwayR.bmp"
  • Select OK or Apply button 5.
  • These textures now become "unique" and not part of the standard SynthWizard Texture set. You can now edit them and use PaintShop Pro to draw a gravel or grass airfield strip and any other details you may wish to add.
  • Make sure that, when editing the textures, you always revert them back to 8-bit, 256-color indexed BMP format.
  • Save your project at this point, and next time you load your project into TerraBuilder, you will see your edited texture as a part of your scenery. You can also replace the textures that were saved with the two textures of the small airfield shown and included with this tutorial. If you distribute your freeware scenery, make sure you include this unique texture in the package. As this is a SynthWizard project, only these two textures will need to be distributed, since it is assumed that the user has all the SynthWizard textures already properly installed in the main "texture" directory of the Flight Simulator.

Note on texture painting:
To create the grass runway effect pictured here, I used Adobe's PhotoShop with a plug-in filter collection called PhotoTools, made by Extensis. The procedure is beyond the scope of this tutorial, but it is a very simple technique, requiring about 10 minutes of editing. However, you must be fairly familiar with bitmap editing techniques and the use of PhotoShop.
A very useful function to achieve nice 3D effects is called "emboss filter", and is available on Corel PhotoPaint  and some Adobe PhotoShop plug-in filters. It will produce a nice, "indented" effect to your landscape surfaces.

Warning: At the time of writing this tutorial, TerraBuilder does not handle seasonal changes on "unique" textures. Please do not use this option if you are enabling seasonal changes in SynthWizard (explained later in the tutorial). This feature will be available with TB version 1.96.3

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Select two adjacent GRASS textures where the airfield will be located...

...and save them as "unique" textures.

runwayL.bmp

RunwayL.bmp

RunwayR.bmp

Edit these textures in a bitmap editor by drawing in an airfield...

...and they become an airfield in TerraBuilder!

   

 

Inserting a FS Position (Go to menu...) location

This option is used to insert a pre-set location for your airplane in the scenery you're creating. This command is useful if you want to provide your users with one or several starting positions in your scenery (if, for instance, you have airports in your scenery, you would usually provide a starting position for each airport). Once you properly install the scenery, this location will be visible in the Flight Simulator's "Go to..." menu, under "add-on scenery". To insert a FS position in TerraBuilder scenery:

  • Right-click on the location where you want the FS Position to be located. In our case, let's position the plane at the south-west end of the runway 1.
  • From the pop-up menu, choose insert FS position.
  • When the FS position dialog appears, name the Position Group 2. Name it "SW tutorial 6". There can be only one Position Group name per scenery. This name will appear as a scenery description in the right pane of the Flight Simulator's Go To menu.
  • Name the position menu item 3. Name it "Grass Rwy 1". This is the actual name of the location that will be selectable from the menu.
  • Latitude, Longitude and Altitude of the location will be already entered. You must provide the heading of your airplane's initial position 4. Our runway looks to be heading at about 60 degrees. Enter 60 into this box.
  • Also, you may optionally provide initial navigational and radio settings 5 for you airplane's instrumentation. Leave this blank if unsure. This only means that your instrumentation will be set to default values.
  • Click OK 6. A position icon    will appear in the scenery display where the position was inserted.
  • You may insert more positions if you wish. Position Group name will be grayed out, (since there can be only one), and all the rest of the steps are as in the above procedure.

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Inserting a 3D object using Macro function

API format:

As of version 1.96.3, TerraBuilder recognizes and fully supports API type macros. These macros are used by Airport utility and are widely popular and available as freeware from various sources on the internet. API format macros distinguish themselves by having exactly 14 pre-set variables which have to be passed into the macro for it to be properly compiled. Four of these variables are user-defined variables and the macro author decides what, if any, assignment they will be given. If a macro is of API type (this is determined by API extension of the file name), TerraBuilder assumes that it conforms to this standard. Scenery designer is ultimately responsible for macro's proper implementation and function. This tutorial assumes that you have a library of API macros downloaded from the internet, or Airport 2.xx utility installed. If you do not have any API macro libraries, please skip this step and proceed to the SCA and SCM format section.

To insert an API macro into the TerraBuilder scenery:

  • Right-click on the location where you want the macro to be located
  • From the pop-up menu, choose insert macro.
  • When the macro dialog appears, choose Browse 1... button and locate API macro of your choice. Make sure to specify the API type of macro in the file selection dialog.
  • You can use Edit...2 button to open the macro file in Window's Notepad and view its contents and syntax. This is sometimes useful in order to familiarize yourself with the way the macro has been written or to perform some simulator-specific changes For instance, FS2000's new shadow functionality does not like macro's ShadowCall() instruction. You can disable that instruction using ";" character in front of the command. Make sure you save file after editing it.
  • When the macro is selected, the available parameters are displayed in the dialog 3. Some of the parameters that TerraBuilder knows about are already filled in: Latitude, Longitude and altitude. Others are set to their default values, and yet others are left at "0". Consult macro documentation to determine what parameters are expected under "user" fields.
  • Click OK button 4. A macro icon     will appear in the scenery display where macro was inserted.

SCA and SCM format:

SCA and SCM formats of the macros are formats that do not have any common standard of variable passing. They can have no variables or up to 30 variables (maximum allowed by SCASM) passed in. Therefore, it is important to specify how many and what variables are being passed into the macro so that it would properly function.

You can insert a *.sca or *.scm-compatible macro into TerraBuilder Scenery, but this macro must be formatted so that TerraBuilder recognizes it. See TerraBuilder documentation for more information on formatting the Macro files. This tutorial document contains an Airport 2.xx API macro Pylone2.api that has been converted, modified and renamed to Pylone2.scm for the use in TerraBuilder. Please study the original macro (found in the Airport2.xx API directory) and compare it to the included modified macro to see how it needs to be modified. Note the line under the "; The following line is required by TerraBuilder:" text: this is the format line that tells TerraBuilder what variables are where in the macro. Also note that ShadowCall instructions have been disabled, AND that the second Area() block has been added instructions to handle elevations (this was erroneously omitted in the original macro)

  • Right-click on the location where you want the macro to be located
  • From the pop-up menu, choose insert macro.
  • When the macro dialog appears, choose Browse 1... button. For the purpose of this tutorial, browse for and select the macro Pylone2.scm included with the archive. Make sure to specify the "scm" type of macro in the file selection dialog.
  • You can use Edit...2 button to open the macro file in Window's Notepad and view its contents and syntax. This is sometimes useful in order to familiarize yourself with the way the macro has been written or to perform some simulator-specific changes For instance, FS2000's new shadow functionality does not like macro's ShadowCall() instruction. You can disable that instruction using ";" character in front of the command. Make sure you save file after editing it.
  • When the macro is selected, the available parameters are displayed in the dialog 3. Some of the parameters that TerraBuilder knows about are already filled in: Latitude, Longitude and altitude. Others are set to their default values, and yet others are left at "0". Consult macro documentation to determine what parameters are expected under "user" fields.
  • Click OK button 4. A macro icon     will appear in the scenery display where macro was inserted.

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Creating hills and valleys by modifying altitude map

Using TerraBuilder's unique altitude map editing feature you can Modify Altitude Map to alter the scenery appearance. Once you have an altitude map loaded, it is possible to edit any altitude point to change its height, or even to delete it. Also, it is possible to insert additional altitude nodes in order to further improve the resolution and definition of the terrain. Before you proceed with the above operations, make sure that altitude label display is active.

To edit an altitude node:

  • Left-double-click on the altitude record you wish to edit.
  • From a pop-up menu, choose "Edit altitude"
  • A dialog appears with an old value. Edit (change) this value to the desired value. Click OK.
  • Changed value is now this record's new value.

To delete an altitude node:

  • Right-click on the altitude record you wish to delete.
  • From a pop-up menu, choose "Delete altitude"
  • This altitude record is now gone from the display.

To insert an altitude node:

  • Right-click on the position in the scenery where you want to insert an altitude record.
  • From a pop-up menu, choose "Insert altitude"
  • A dialog appears with a blank edit box. Enter the altitude value in meters at this location. Click OK.
  • This altitude record is now inserted at the chosen location.

Using this technique it is possible to edit the landscape form by changing localized altitude nodes to better and more precise describe the landscape. For instance, a low-resolution, coarse altitude map (DTED) might miss a deep river bed. That is, the locations of two opposite altitude records might fall on either side of the river bed, thus not showing the drop in altitude at all. You might want to insert extra altitude points in the location of the river bed so that this location describes more precisely the landform in the nature. 

It is also necessary to increase the grid density at such locations so that the denser grid can take advantage of the denser altitude map.

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