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Showing results for tags 'high resolution'.
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tutorial How to Make High Resolution Region Screenshot
Propfam posted a topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
Hello, There's nothing wrong with Region Census/in-game screenshot of the region and it has been used for long time by dozens of city journalist. However, if you want to see your city in closer and having city signs, this is for you. Requirements The game and your chosen region of course. Photoshop, GIMP, Affinity, Paint.net, etc. Choose whatever image editor you have. 3 hours+ of working time. Preparing the images needed I'm going to use EPIC technique by @CorinaMarie to make a consistent and centered screenshots. Find the central coordinate of the tile. I'm using medium tile. So, the coordinate would be (1/2x16x128, 1/2x16x128) equals (1024, 1024) Pick the zoom you want. I personally choose zoom 0 because Not requiring much time stitching the tiles. More importantly, to avoid precision lost. I don't have a macro to do let's say zoom 5 in precise manner. Center the view using the EPIC technique. Capture your tile using your tool of wish. Repeat this process for another tile. Stitching the images Open your Photoshop. Open your city images. Select the city edges using Polygon Selection Tool. GIMP users, use Scissor Selection Tool. The tile is now selection. But, it's not perfect. We'll fix it later. If there are areas not selected, add them by selecting the one step icon from the original icon in the toolbar and do step 4 except this time for those areas. If there are areas that unnecessarily selected, throw them out by clicking the two step icon from the original and do step 4 except this time for those areas. The city edge is now selected. Now it's to inverse that selection. By clicking Select -> Inverse. GIMP user, click Select -> Invert. The selection is now inversed. Delete areas within the selection. The areas are now gone. The next step is to deselect. Now, there's no selection anymore. Repeat the same for other tiles. Create a document with size of (game width resolution x number of horizontal (small, medium, large) tiles) x (game height resolution x number of vertical (small, medium, large) tiles). Make sure to choose only one type of tile measurement. If you wish to calculate different tiles, pick one tile size and then adjust the other sizes with some ratio. For instance, you settle for large tile, then the medium and small each account for 1/2 and 1/4. This time we're focusing on 2 tiles. The document is created. Copy the first image. And paste it in a new layer. For GIMP users, don't forget to anchor the floating layer first to the new layer! Transform it to top left. Do the same with the second image. Except this time, you have to align it properly. Zoom to see is there any misalignment. Try to wiggle the position a little bit till the tile is aligned perfectly. There are now 2 aligned tiles. If your canvas is large enough, you can repeat this process for other images. Since we only need 2 images, we decided to just crop right away. Crop the image using the Crop Tool. The image is now cropped. For those of you who have these maps like me, you can add more cities to your maps by resizing the canvas and modify the tile images using the above method. Final touch I personally done with that image. So, I export the image to PNG using Save for Web. But, if you wish to add some effects, I'll cover one of them: background. Open Background3D(your preferred zoom level).png in the game's Plugin folders, not the Documents'. The background image is now opened. Copy that to the map. Put the new layer below all existing layers and turn off the existing layers to see the background. GIMP users, And don't forget to anchor the image! Otherwise, you can't advance to the next step. Transform your background. For GIMP users use Unified Transform Tool. Skew your background by right clicking and click Skew. GIMP users, the function is located in the same group as Unified Transform Tool. Hold the icon down and select Shear. Skew it 22,0 degrees (roughly the skewing degree of SimCity 4). For GIMP users, unfortunately you can't specify degrees directly on it. You have to make a guess your skew will be 22,0 degrees. Right click than select Scale. Again, for GIMP users, located in the same group as Unified Transform Tool. Scale the object. Right click and click Rotate. Then, rotate it till 12,5 degree (again roughly the rotate degree of SC4). Again, GIMP users can find it in the same group as Unified Transform Tool. Click other tools and click Apply. GIMP users only need to press Apply in the transform dialog. Now activate all other layers. Your region is now backed by a background. You can take a step further by blurring the background, for instance. I wish I can make clouds and flares but Photoshop doesn't allow me to do so because my new layer above is empty. With some creativity, you can complement this technique with I hope this tutorial useful. Thanks for reading and trying!- 14 Replies
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