Building a lake in SBuilderX

[falcon409]

I have had several suggestions on building a lake using SBuilderX. . .none of them work (for me).
I have done a flatten of the general area (Yellowknife) and I have drawn the poly to the shape of the photoreal image, made it a hydro poly (lake perennial), gave it the altitude for the area based on TCalcX, compiled and loaded into the sim and there's nothing there. This is based on a tutorial by Luis. What am I missing here?

[Meshman]

Well, as mentioned over at the Dev site, photo 99% of the times will show over vector based scenery. But I do think you're closer than you know to achieving what you want, I think?

You've done a blendamsk before, now it's time to do a water mask file. These allow the glittery effect of water to show through the photo work, or reside on top of the photo work and do the same as if it was plain, ole water.

Water mask is opposite from a blend mask, all black gives the effect, all white doesn't. So the lake area is black, the land area is white. I'd have to go back and check Luis' tutorail to see if SBX allows the water mask file to be incorporated into SBX or if it need to be manually added to the .INF file.

[falcon409]

Well, as mentioned over at the Dev site, photo 99% of the times will show over vector based scenery. But I do think you're closer than you know to achieving what you want, I think?

You've done a blendamsk before, now it's time to do a water mask file. These allow the glittery effect of water to show through the photo work, or reside on top of the photo work and do the same as if it was plain, ole water.

Water mask is opposite from a blend mask, all black gives the effect, all white doesn't. So the lake area is black, the land area is white. I'd have to go back and check Luis' tutorail to see if SBX allows the water mask file to be incorporated into SBX or if it need to be manually added to the .INF file.
But wouldn't that work only if there was already water in the default scenery (which there isn't)?

[Meshman]

You mention introducing a new water poly, have you moved the photo file out to see if the water poly shows in the default terrain?

[falcon409]

You mention introducing a new water poly, have you moved the photo file out to see if the water poly shows in the default terrain?
lol, NOPE! lol, that would have been the thing to do before I dumped all that work in favor of simply doctoring the water areas on the photo to look like water. Wish I had thought of that. I may go back and try a small area and see what I get at some point, but for now I've moved on to object placement.

Thanks