Apply a landscape to a photo

[Allan Chesney]

I recently applied several landscapes to a photo of my house (before we moved in) so thought I would pass on a few tips that may help anyone doing a similar thing. See the Gallery for large images (http://forums.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,771) of several different landscapes to the shame photo.

How to do it / tips:
1)  If possible use a photo that is taken 'front on' - in other words the bottom of the house wall is horizontal, parallel with the bottom edge of the photo.  If you do not do this then you will have to slope the Terrain and you will then find the perspective will be wrong when you place things in front of the photo.

2)  Import the photo as a photoboard (File/Import/Photoboard Wizard)

3)  Change the default import size to the width of your house - in my case the house is 12 metres wide plus 1.5 metre 'footpath' at each side so I set the image to 15 metres wide and the height proportionate. (or you can import it and change the size later)

4)   In 3D, select the photoboard, right click, select Elevate and lower it through the Terrain by entering a negative number (in my case -3 metres) so that the Terrain lines up with the bottom of the wall on the photo.

5)   Start to add your landscaping.

6)   When you render it, position the camera directly in front to the photo at eye height - this will look normal. it you move it to the side or do an overview, it will distort the photo as it is flat of course not 3 dimentional. (See the images)

To get a more realistic look you may want to add your own photos of plants and trees as I have done with most of these, as you can take them at a higher resolution than the ones in TFP and get a better quality result. You need to 'cut them out' with some photo editing software and set the background to Magenta colour (Bright pink. Red = 255, Green = 0, Blue = 255) and this colour will become transparent in TFP. Save it as a BMP NOT a JPG as JPG can give you pink fringes. If you need to reduce the image in size do it BEFORE you change the background to Magenta or you will again get pink fringes.  Take the photo against a clear sky if possible and use the 'colour replace ' tool in the photo editing software to replace the blue sky with Magenta.

That is a quick explanation that will make sense to those familiar with photo editing. If you want to do it and need more detail, just ask.

Hope it helps any budding landscapers!

Allan

[Doug.S]

also watch for matching the light source (sun) in the original photo and the sun and shadows in the TFP views...so the shadows look realistic, otherwise mismatched shadows will look wrong.

[Allan Chesney]

Good point Doug, thanks for reminding me. I did mean to mention that in relation to the trees also. If you use your own photos save them back to front (mirror image) also, so they can be inserted when the sun is on the opposite side.

Allan