World Tools 1.7

[shezan74 11]

Hi guys,

i'm crossposting on this forum (that is related to the program itself) to inform you all i've released a new release of World Tools with some features requested by Bushlurker and some bugfixes.

What's new on release 1.7

- Bug fixed: Remapping tool doubles the " character on output files

- Bug fixed: 8 bit indexed images used as mask for Forest Generator were not saved in project file

- Added: Now it's possible to generate and export a single color from world tools forest generator.

- Added: User defined templates are now exportable and re-importable into different projects. It's possible to create a user library for each terrain type.

- Improved: Forest generation placement precision has been reworked to ensure more precision on coastal areas

- Added: sqm file import/export to Visitor 3 is now able to deal with relative heights over the ground. This option requires a checkbox selection and the usage of a CUSTOM IMPORT OBJECTS SCRIPT that must be placed into Visitor3\scripts folder. File is available from the import/export form.

- Added: World tools checks for newer versions on startup and now shows up a version number on the splash screen

[icebreakr 3105]

Amazing work buddy!

[mugaben 10]

Wouldnt even try to make a map without it! :627:

[bushlurker 45]

One of those rare occasions where the happy icons get rolled out in force!... :bounce3:

New Worldtools!

This is turning out to be one of those programs that, every time you open it you get yet another idea! - and I've still barely scratched the surface of the actual "worldtools" section - I'm still discovering possibilities with the Forest Generator - which, I've discovered, doesn't need to be limited to forests! theres a world of possibilities in that "remap existing" facility alone... ;)

Thanks very much for implementing those suggestions I made Shezan!

Being able to export (and therefore re-import and remix) a colour at a time makes tweaking individual "specialist" colour areas (eg: rocks on beaches/trees within a certain range of water, etc) much easier, and the new ability to create "preset blends" of objects that can be loaded and saved on an individual basis means that effort spent on one "colour" can not only be transferred to another colour (possible before), but to a completely different project without having to "reinvent the wheel" every time... Fantastic!!!

... Now if only "import and export of template" worked in the "Remap Existing" dialog as well.....

Oops! - did I just suggest something else there?... hehe ... sorry... it's that possibilities thing again...

I'm spending far too much time making masks for this... but, then again... what's "too much" time??? - compared to how long it would take to do all of this by hand!!? Especially if you were to then decide it wasn't quite right, and do it all over again???!

With this tool I can try 6 completely different 800,000+ tree forests in a single evening - decide I don't like any of them and go make a more complicated mask instead... truly, truly brilliant!

Fantastic stuff Shezan! Thanks again!

B

Edited November 4, 2010 by Bushlurker

[shezan74 11]

With this tool I can try 6 completely different 800,000+ tree forests in a single evening - decide I don't like any of them and go make a more complicated mask instead... truly, truly brilliant!

I've had the same trouble as you, due long time spent importing 800.000 objects and then remove them again and again.

I'm thinking to have a feature that could export a "box" area instead of the whole map, to be loaded faster in V3... But it's not so simple, since i don't have any code snippet that does this on the actual program so i must write it from scratch in a highly-sensible area like forest generation...

But could be an idea...

[Robster 11]

Tante grazie, sei troppo buono‎!

But haven't tried it yet cause I'm too busy with previous mapping stuff... making clutter and mask to understand each other... now solving probability issues ;)

Edited December 4, 2010 by Robster

[ZeroG 23]

Shezan,

while I was doing the Tutorial, I had some ideas concerning the next steps for your tool. Today I found a site where there are so called shapefiles for roads and vegetation available for a lot of places in the world: SHAPEFILES

These,of course, can also be read by Global Mapper and could be also exported like the xyz files for a certain area..in multiple formats! It would be great if it was possible to export these files into your World tools and from there into Visitor3. Realistic road network and forests done!

Now if you have a look on how VBS2 does this with its landbuilder tool:

SHAPEFILES IN VBS2

LANDBUILDER MODULES

could you imagine to reproduce some of these features to use existing geoinfo data?

[shezan74 11]

I hope sometime in the future some advanced tools will be released to fellow customers of ArmA serie.

Anyway, in another form, you have the "shapefile" already available.

The V3 mask you're importing into World Tools is a shapefile, and could be used as shapefile to simulate the AdvancedShapeFile that you can find in VTK.

The main problem to use the shapefile directly is that World Tools doesn't implement a real world coordinates system, so it's not able to deal with files that works by XYZ coordinates not based on 0-10240 or anything else in ArmA2 format.

Actually you can use multiple masks on World Tools, one for houses, one for plants, one for rocks. The real problem is how to find and elaborate those shapefiles to have a GIF/PNG image, but should not be a real problem. The real problem is having global mapper, that it's not so cheap...

feel free to reply if i don't have correctly understood what you meant

[ZeroG 23]

As I am on a GM-less PC the next two weeks, I can't tell exactly...but I think you can export these shapefiles as pictures! The according data you find on that GEOFABRIK link I posted above. It contains the roads and forests that can be seen in OPEN STREET MAPS...and they are quite exact.

So..load shapefiles into the same square as done before in GM, export them from the same area into a world-tool readable picture format, by thus creating a mask..place objects according to it..and when you have them imported into Visitor, simply mark them all and drag the whole selection until it fits to background mask??! Easiest way??!:eek:

[bushlurker 45]

Yup... AFAIK open street map is vectors - you should be able to list the metadata - select only "Forested Areas" (for example), then copy - paste as new layer, and fill them all bright green... now you can close open street map layer and you have the forests in green - close all layers except that one and your "cookiecutter frame" - make the background black, select the cookiecutter and export a raster format using the "selected vector shape as export bounds"

... instant forests mask for World Tools...

B

Edited November 15, 2010 by Bushlurker

[stormridersp 11]

Its getting exciting! Great tool!

[oldbear 390]

First of all ... thanks to the "WorldTools for the Dumbs" post you released some time ago, I have manage to make the thing works for vegetation. So, many thanks for the tool ^^.

Next I will try to master the height dependent variations you have shown in a previous post ..., I will probably need some more explanations on this subject.

[bushlurker 45]

I've been having great fun with the Forest Generator part of WorldTools...

I'll briefly summarise some of what I've been playing with - see if it makes sense without getting involved in a lot of pictures...

Firstly - you need some layers... 5120 is the max size... theres some info available from Visitor we can use, so lets grab that first...

Open your project in Visitor - change the terrain and sea colours to plain white - turn off the display of everything except your road network so all you have is roads against a white background - save as a full project size EMF (+ remember to add pixels to allow for BlueEdge)...

Do the same again - just with artificial objects...

OK - two handy layers... we prep them by...

EMF > PNG

Remove the Blue edge

Select colour Range = White - hit "delete" = white background gone - now transparent...

Invert selection - feather or grow the edge by a pixel or two - fill with black

Thats our roads mask - we'll use this to make sure we don't get trees in the road...

Do the same with artificial objects - pad and fill with black...

Reduce both to 5120

Thats two Visitor mask layers - so far...

Back to Visitor for some more layers...

Next up we want a greyscale to use for height variation...

Set the colour range to be black for sea - for land... Contour interval = 50m, lowest land colour = 50% grey, highest land colour = white...

Make sure no objects, roads or anything else are showing...

Save that as a fullsize EMF as before...

* At this point I also saved a basic "sea areas" mask by making all land white and all sea solid black - save that too...

Convert the EMFs again, into photoshop or whatever, remove those blueEdges and...

With the "Sea Mask" I selected and deleted the white land - leaving black where the sea is - labelled this as Sea Mask - made a copy of this layer..

With the copy - colour select the black sea and "expand" - this time by a big 10 pixels - fill with bright blue... Call this layer "Seashore Blue"

These two masks will fit over each other... the effect will be to give a bright blue border on the land - 10 pixels wide... this gives us a "close to water" layer :) - shrink both of these to 5120 as well...

Finally, with the greyscale - remove blue edge and scale to 5120...

Now you assemble all these layers in the order below (top is top layer - just as in photoshop)...

Sea Mask

Artificial Objects Mask

Roads Mask

(these top 3 layers ensure we don't get trees in any of these areas)

Greyscale Heights (50% Opacity!)

Seashore Blue (50% Opacity!)

Forests Layer

White Background

(the only layer I haven't described making is the actual Forest Areas - I'll assume you have one for this and its bright Green with a transparent background)

Save this as a single layer 5120x5120 .png and load it into Forest Tools and analyse...

You should get...

Black - nothing assigned to this

Blue - "within 10m of sea" - use this for rocks or something, or - if you get a wierd purple colour showing in the list, then thats obviously "forest within 10m of sea" (Blue+Green) - vary the plants accordingly...

...Green

The semi-transparent greyscale banded into 50m ranges layer should have overlaid and shaded your original single green shade into several different tones - corresponding to height... from here on you can just vary the mix of plants as you wish... from willows & alder within 10m of water (coz they like it) to pmugo, deadtree and very small rocks at the highest areas...

and finally... various shades of white indicate all the other areas we're not interested in... like black - these can be hidden in worldtools...

Thanks to a recent addition to ForestTools (cheers Shez! ;)) you can now export those colours one at a time and import the mix into Visitor and take a look - make sure you're happy with each individual range... or import them all and see the overall picture...

A few easy masks, a few clicks and you have a believable looking 500,000 tree forest in place!

WorldTools!... don'tch'a just looooove it! :D

Anyhow - a brief summary there... this all assumes its a RealWorld location and you have existing forest data... For imaginary terrains you can get even cleverer with mask layers to make up for the fact you don't actually have a mask for naturally occurring veg... I'll save that for another time...

As a small P.S....

Since everyones checking out Expensive Software like Global Mapper at the moment - here's another one... ENVI

I'm not sure what the score is with these guys nowadays - you need to register just to see the sales pitch!

Back in my early archaeo-gis days I got a 30 day demo of this... I remember having to register and jump thru a few hoops to get it... claimed I was an "interested academic" or some other tickbox - wasn't called on to prove it tho... I remember they sent me a disc as well...

Then, on the Cyprus project I was working on there was a Aussie Sat Images guy - doing land classification for the Cypriote govt or something... anyhow - he snaffled the demo, was hugely impressed, blagged his budget guys and got the full program - thats when I got my now massively primitive and non-upgradable copy...

Basically - it analyses specially prepped satellite maps (ASTER L1B false colour composites, for example)... Its VASTLY complex - you'll spend 29 days of a 30 day demo just beginning to learn how to use it (if you can get one), but the results can be impressive... you "train" it with known areas and eventually it can look at satellite images and say - "thats grass", "thats concrete", "thats deciduous trees", "thats rock"...

An Automatic Mask Generator, in other words... - a NASA level one :D

B

Edited November 17, 2010 by Bushlurker

[Gnome_AS 10]

Quick thanks Shezan for an excellent tool! Finally got around to working with it seriously, and well ... it's an extremely valuable tool.

Still looking for a better way to mass update OA objects. But outside of that, it's great so far. The .sqm import rules. I'll post some pics soon, but managed to build an airport, dock area, and 2 small towns with fairly high detail in about 6hrs. All via RTE/WorldTools .sqm import. Which means I can now reasonably invest time in map making thanks to your tool!

:D

[shezan74 11]

World Tools 1.7.1 has been submitted to ArmaHolic guys.

What's new in version 1.7.1

· SQM / SQF now export absolute altitude of objects. This function requires a modified Visitor3 import script provided with the application.

· Added the ability to rename a forest color name to reflect the object type that the color will contain.

· Added more objects images to template object list (vegetation) [by ZeroG]

· Added a lot of new objects from Summerplants 1.0 [by Bushlurker]

[bushlurker 45]

Simply brilliant!

Love the new features... especially being able to name colours to correspond with vegetation types on the mask... a simple thing, but it makes it a lot easier to keep track of which colour is which - especially with a greyscale overlay giving several similar shades of the same colour... you figure out what a colour is once and name it - no further confusion... simple and excellent... :)

Thanks also for adding the Summerplants 1.0 pack to the default definitions as well!... making the pics for that made me realise we missed the poor old Carpinus/hornbeam tree completely when "greening" things... bugger - I'll fix that for the update... :o

B

Edited December 8, 2010 by Bushlurker

[ZeroG 23]

Wow B, looks like modern art :D

I even thought about getting detailed info on tree types in real life areas for my tutorial, but wasn't able to find it yet..you know something about datatypes that would contain this information??!

[hotzenplotz 138]

Looks amazing, I hope I get installed, no German Manual ;-)

Nice work.

Greez Hotze

[shezan74 11]

Looks amazing, I hope I get installed, no German Manual ;-)

Nice work.

Greez Hotze

"Keine gegenstaende aus den fenster werfen" and "rauchen verboten" are the only 2 complete phrases i know in german :)

And my english grammar is not so good too... :)

[Nephris1 10]

"Keine gegenstaende aus den fenster werfen" and "rauchen verboten"

Lol...have u been on our railways?

Sounds like "Deutsche Bahn".

I

[hotzenplotz 138]

"Keine gegenstaende aus den fenster werfen" and "rauchen verboten" are the only 2 complete phrases i know in german :)

And my english grammar is not so good too... :)

lol , I have the same problem with too Italenisch, although I work with many Italians. A few things I can speak but not write. ok tomorrow will try to install the tool world. That would a lot of work remove.

Greez Hotze

[stormridersp 11]

:confused:

I`m having problems with the new version of World Tools. The previous one used to load up fine, but now I get an error message when loading:

I have Windows7 64bits here if thats the case.

Grazie

See the end of this message for details on invoking 
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.MissingMethodException: Method not found: 'WorldTools.BE.ArmaObjects WorldTools.BL.ObjectsManagement.LoadArmaObjectsFromFile(System.String, Boolean)'.
  at WorldTools.MainForm.MainForm_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)
  at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnLoad(EventArgs e)
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl(Boolean fIgnoreVisible)
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl()
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmShowWindow(Message& m)
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
  at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)


************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
   Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
   Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4952 (win7RTMGDR.050727-4900)
   CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework64/v2.0.50727/mscorlib.dll
----------------------------------------
WorldTools
   Assembly Version: 1.7.1.0
   Win32 Version: 1.7.1.0
   CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Shezan74/ArmA2%20World%20Tools/WorldTools.exe
----------------------------------------
System.Windows.Forms
   Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
   Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
   CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
----------------------------------------
System
   Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
   Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
   CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Drawing
   Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
   Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
   CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
----------------------------------------
NLog
   Assembly Version: 1.0.0.505
   Win32 Version: 1.0.0.505
   CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Shezan74/ArmA2%20World%20Tools/NLog.DLL
----------------------------------------
WorldTools.Common
   Assembly Version: 1.0.0.0
   Win32 Version: 1.0.0.0
   CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Shezan74/ArmA2%20World%20Tools/WorldTools.Common.DLL
----------------------------------------
System.Configuration
   Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
   Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
   CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Configuration/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Configuration.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Xml
   Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
   Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
   CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Web
   Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
   Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4955 (win7RTMGDR.050727-4900)
   CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_64/System.Web/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Web.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Messaging
   Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
   Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
   CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Messaging/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Messaging.dll
----------------------------------------
WorldTools.BL
   Assembly Version: 1.7.0.0
   Win32 Version: 1.7.0.0
   CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Shezan74/ArmA2%20World%20Tools/WorldTools.BL.DLL
----------------------------------------
WorldTools.BE
   Assembly Version: 1.7.0.0
   Win32 Version: 1.7.0.0
   CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Shezan74/ArmA2%20World%20Tools/WorldTools.BE.DLL
----------------------------------------

************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.

For example:

<configuration>
   <system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" />
</configuration>

When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception
will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer
rather than be handled by this dialog box.

[bushlurker 45]

Wow B, looks like modern art :D

hehe... it gets more complicated every time I redo it.... thats me finalised now though... I was basically waiting for the "export single colour" and "name colours" options that Shezan recently added (thanks once again Shezan!!) before loading in all the layers and getting started on treetypes...

I even thought about getting detailed info on tree types in real life areas for my tutorial, but wasn't able to find it yet..you know something about datatypes that would contain this information??!

Well sortof...... it depends on the location I guess... there's probably good free data available for the USA if you look hard enough... other places, I dunno... In the UK theres an Ordnance Survey (Government mapping department) dataset available which is basically satellite-derived land cover - looks like an Arma2 mask_lco - all land surfaces are classified into one type or another from bare rock thru heathland to crop and field and trees by type - all in shapefile format with metadata! - lovely... £1000 worth of lovely, sadly... Scotland is £350...

Fortunately, governments are always writing reports, and they swap data between departments... after much searching I found a bunch of research reports by the Forestry Commission (another government department), who have a research department who got their hands on that data and did a report about tree coverage for Scotland...

They're not parting with shapefiles either - the data is used under licence, etc, etc - nor will they part with hi-res pictures... but their reports website has basic little crappy .gif bitmaps... so I grabbed them... :D

Heres one - actual size... 600x879px - a long way from 20480x20480...

I loaded them into the GIS and georeferenced them over a quick download of a landsat 7 basemap and cropped them back out using a square vector shape as full-sized 20480x20480 (but pretty blurry) bitmaps - now they overlaid my project stuff properly - then loaded them into photoshop, isolated the colours as individual layers with transparent backgrounds and then used another higher detailed "overall forested areas" mask as a clipping mask, to clip the blurry but essentially correct colour treetype data to the hi-detail but unspecified treetype mask areas...

hehe... did that make sense??

here's a quick picture...

The hi-res detail forested areas mask I used to clip the colour ones to shape was also derived from a digital version of a basic Ordnance Survey "streetmap" - bitmap tiles pieced together in the GIS and then cropped out and the forested areas isolated as a mask... pretty much the bitmap format version of the procedure you explain in your tutorial...

So despite banging on about shapefiles a lot, I only actually used one - my "forest clearance areas" layer - ripped that from openstreetmap .osm file pretty much exactly as you describe in your tutorial... :)

The rest is basically georeferenced "paper maps"(or the equivalent) plus some photoshop... Most decent GIS programs do georeferencing, though I'm not sure about MicroDEM, which is the only free software I can think of offhand... Global Mapper demo will do it... I'll maybe have a look at some of the free GIS packages around - see if theres one that would do the basic input, output and rectifying/cropping stuff which is all thats really required for our purposes...

With the liberal American attitude to data, its likely theres reports like this available for the USA too - probably other countries as well - in the case of the USA there might even be actual landcover shapefiles available - the best option... its just a matter of trawling the internet for the best data you can find for free, then adapting it to fit your project, then getting it into a mask format... how you do it depends on the data you can find I guess.... Always look for shapefiles first - they're easiest to use...

B

Edited December 10, 2010 by Bushlurker

[shezan74 11]

:confused:

I`m having problems with the new version of World Tools. The previous one used to load up fine, but now I get an error message when loading:

I have Windows7 64bits here if thats the case.

Grazie

Dll mismatch. Perform a uninstall of the application and then reinstall. Make sure to export your template objects file if you change it!

This will fix your issue :)

If you still have troubles pm me :)

[stormridersp 11]

Grazie Mille per il vostro aiuto!

Now I have 2 questions:

Ive tried exporting from World Tools my objects which represented tree lines, using objects (p3d) from OA. When importing into Visitor3 using scripts, add, import objects, I get a message informing that 5547 objects were rejected. Is that because my objects come from Arma2 OA?