would photo matching the original plane’s image over the model’s materials be the best place to start?
What are you trying to accomplish with Match Photo? Its purpose is to match camera angle and field of view so a model appears to fit into a scene depicted on a photo. It doesn’t match colors or “degradation” or other “organic” display attributes. I don’t see how that is relevant to your stated objective.
-Gully
Could be if you can make an exact match of the placement. If you do get the scale and positioning correct, the projected texture will only look right from straight above. It won’t look right with an oblique view.
Perhaps you could explain what the use is for the result. Maybe that would help get you the guidance you need.
If it was me, I’d retouch the image to remove the original plane as was already suggested. Then you can position 3D models which ever way you want on the taxiway and have proper shadows for all of them.
An image like the one you showed is not suitable at all for Match Photo.
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The use… in this example, I need to make someone look at a picture from google earth of an airport and make it look like there are multiple copies of the same plane all over the place. the copies need to look like actual planes on the imagery look so as to fool the observer into believing they are part of the imagery.
Photo matching is out… Got it. So… how do you give a 3D object the features of a 2D image of the same 3D object. This is a close example of what I mean. How do I do that effect but using the original plane’s image over the entire model.
I like your example, it gets real close to imitating the original, but how do you do that and make the shadow look real?
This is so far the best I have been able to do, not bad but it needs to be better. All I did was take a super close shot of the original plane and used that as the material for the model. It kinda works, but natural color change over distance doesn’t happen. it is just whatever single color I used.
I think that looks great, considering the tools you are using (SketchUp is not going to do things like the reflections on top).
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Thanks. is there a way to spread the image of the original plane over the model so that all the natural glints and the like stay. Kind of like how the iceland air plane has its material done. I can do that on each piece of the body, but don’t know how to spear it across multiple surfaces.
I would just do a 2d cut out of the plane, add a vertical 2d profile down the middle and make it a face me component. This would make it look exactly like the original and it would show a suitable shadow from the cross section construction. Obviously Face me won’t work if you have them too far from a look down aspect.
This is a super quick example, but it is an option…
I ended up doing exactly what @Box suggested. Imported an image from Google Earth, unlocked and opened the image. Drew a line around the plane, then copied it and pasted it as a separate surface outside the original image. Then I lifted the “plane” a few feet off the ground, turned off lines, and turned on shadows.
You can change the darkness (shadow window) and the time/date to make the shadow look more similar.