Some images are missing from this tutorial.

Part3 Base satellite picture to Sat_lco.png Visitor RC3

Ok going to explain how to create an island out of just 1 picture, the bigger the picture the better.

You could just take a picture like it is now, but this will only create 56 Kb 1268 x 803 pixels picture.

This is not what we want, first measure the island with the google earth ruler tool.

I measure about 9329 meters from North to South and about 5344 meters from West to East.

So it would be really nice to have a BMP picture of that island that measures 9329 X 5344 pixels.

This picture we can then glue into a 10240 X 10240 pixel picture.

If you just zoom in enough until about a height of 800 meters in google earth you will see the most detailed level of free google earth, you can now start taking pictures of the whole island, you probably need to take about 150 pictures and then you have to glue all these pictures together, there's different ways of obtaining the really high detailed pictures.

This is one of them.

For now I have downloaded the picture for you, I’m really sorry this is not the highest zoom level possible, Its also gone be smaller then we actually want.

This is a small project and I want to have results in 3 days , so for now we settle with this.

Again there's more ways to get your hands on high detailed satellite pictures, and even then, do we need the really high detail?

For now don’t ask, here is the picture for this project:

ftp://ftp.fraghaus.com/arma/satpics/bigmap.rar

Open the BMP up in Photoshop or similar program.

Goto Image > Image size

I choose to type in the Width of 5344, as you see it gives a Height of 8016 then, while we had measured 9329 ????, well again this is just a weekend map and its just to show how it is possible to make an island for Arma.

If you take some time for it you can do the measurements more precise, for now just stick with it, don’t bother.

When done just save this file to the Source folder of our created new island.

Now create a new Photoshop Picture (10240 X 10240 pixels)

Save this file as a .PNG file to your Source folder.

So in your source folder you now have this.

Now open up the BIGMAP.BMP in the same photoshop window as you now have the Sat_lco.png opened.

Now drag and drop the BIGMAP.BMP over the Sat_lco.png

Now delete the bigmap from here

Now Flatten the image

If you have this, click save.

make sure the Sat_lco.png is ok and looks like this

If you have this or similar you can remove the bigmap.bmp from the source folder, this just for not getting confused.

Ok we have created our RAW Sat_lco.png .

We are long from ready, but for now this is it.

The next part will explain a bit how to touch up the raw Pic in photoshop and how to extract a TERRAIN.PNG and a MASK_LCO.PNG out of this SAT_LCO.PNG.