Adding a Skyline

Skylines help your landscape designs look more realistic by surrounding them with scenery.

Add skyline
Check this option to add a skyline.

Skyline picture
Click the picture of the skyline to select a new one.

Size
Adjusts the size of the skyline, making it appear closer or farther away. Adjust the size as needed to best compliment your particular design.

Angle
Rotates the skyline, so you can align the desired features with your landscape design.

The following shows a landscape design with and without a skyline.

Adding a Custom Skyline (advanced)

You can create and import your own custom skylines using the following steps.

1.   Using Photoshop (or similar program), create two images, each 2048x512 pixels in size. The first image will be the main skyline image (which will appear in the skyline only once), and the second will be automatically repeated by the software as needed to surround the entire landscape.

2.   Remove the sky from both images.

3.   Create an alpha channel with white for areas that are opaque, and black for areas that are transparent.

4.   Save both images in 32-bit TGA format. Name the first image anything you'd like, such as "My Custom Skyline.tga". Name the second image the same as the first, except append "_b" to the file name, such as "My Custom Skyline_b.tga". Save the images to the following locations (create the folders as needed):

Image 1: c:\Program Files (x86)\Realtime Landscaping Architect version\data\sky\skyline\My Custom Skyline.tga

Image 2: c:\Program Files (x86)\Realtime Landscaping Architect version\data\sky\skyline\panels\My Custom Skyline_b.tga

Where "c:\Program Files (x86)\Realtime Landscaping Architect" is your program installation directory, and version is the software version number. On 32-bit systems, replace "Program Files (x86)" with "Program Files".

5.   Optional: If you want to create a custom thumbnail for your skyline, create a 112x112 image and save it in BMP format to the following location (creating the folder if needed):

c:\Program Files (x86)\Realtime Landscaping Architect version\data\sky\skyline\preview\preview_My Custom Skyline.bmp

6.   Stop and restart Realtime Landscaping Architect.

7.   When browsing for skylines, click the All button to view your custom skylines