Dependancy: texture - cell/grid size

[Nephris1 10]

As ido my first stepts in visitor atm, i dont want to step in each trap i could.

So after my terraingot textured right now i got the feeling thtthe textures look a bit blurry or unsharp.

Of course a terrain looks completely different with objects on it etc

But are there any dependancies in which cases texures could look blurry or unsharp?

[bushlurker 45]

Close up ground textures should look fine close-up - or else theres something wrong somewhere...

Ground texture at distance - on hills, etc - is basically your Sat_lco...

To look decent this should be 10x the resolution of your heightmap, so...

1024x1024 terrain = 10240x10240 Sat_lco...

Going much under 10x will start to look bad - going much over it is a diminishing returns situation - the distance won't look that much better - but filesizes will rise exponentially...

A screenshot always helps with these sort of posts... ;)

B

[Nephris1 10]

Reactivating my initial started thread....

I created my terrain from

a heightmap with 1024x1024

sat_lco 10240x10240

mask_lco 1024x10240

the visitor settz

terrain grid size 1024 x 1024

terrain cell size 10m

terrain size 10240x10240

satellite grid 96

texture size (texure layer) 80x80m

After i created all the layers the textures and there transitions look very weird.Is it possible that i this strange transitions arnt correct coz i wasnt 100'% correct in glueing the satmap tiles?

http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/2989/texti.jpg

What is the maximum number u can use as basic texures on one terrain?

Edited November 10, 2010 by Nephris1

[Nephris1 10]

I probably posted my question not clear enough.

What causes wrong transitions on the textures, like u can see on this screenshot

[bushlurker 45]

Looks like badly stitched satellite image tiles to me... you'd need to find that spot with the texture file loaded into photoshop or something - zoom right in and see if it looks like that...

You have to be pixel-perfect with this stuff - remember 1 pixel on the sat-layer = a whole 1m on the ground...

B

[Nephris1 10]

Yes, you are right i was a bit sloppy i guess un glueing the tiles again.

Is the unsharp texture "normal" from that height or do i need to take care for sth here also?

[bushlurker 45]

Hi Nephris...

Its all down to resolution I guess... with the 10x thing mentioned above you'll get 1px = 1m... thats not too bad at a reasonable distance like hills, etc... the idea being that - before you get too close and it starts to look like a photo thats been zoomed in too close - the detailed ground textures kick in and give you better "closeup" detail... thats the theory anyway...

In your pic... well - I guess thats what it's gonna look like at that height, yeah... "disguised" and dressed with visible objects too, don't forget - so it won't look quite so bare as it does now...

Its always best to start with the highest res pic possible and reduce, rather than the other way about, of course...

B

Edited November 12, 2010 by Bushlurker

[Alliexx 10]

Hi there,

this doesn't look like a Sat_lco picture problem but more like a wrong setting in visitor for the Texture layer.

http://yfrog.com/4btexturelayerj

Something in here, the texture size.

Your 80*80 ?? fool around with those settings, or check your sat_lco and mask_lco sizes.

Well if it is your sat_lco in that bad shape, then indeed you need really high resolution pictures without any stiching noticable when zoomed in very closely, if you have a sattelite picture with a resolution of 1 meter(very high resolution, higher is even possible these days), then 1 pixel represent 1 by 1 meter in "real" game life, so even a dirt effect of 1 pixel will be very noticable ingame !!!, even a not good brushed foto, with maybe only 1 part of a letter from an overlay text on the foto will give you ingame a part of a letter on the ground of a couple of meters :)

Later,

Allie

Edited November 12, 2010 by Alliexx

[Nephris1 10]

Thx for your input.

What i ve done now, is to download again a sat image via google satelite maps downloader and created a bigmap automatically.The zoomfactor of the tool was 17(if anyone knows sth about it...?).

I ll post an extract of it, just to be sure the zoom is fine enough.

I ll then use again

a heightmap with 1024x1024

sat_lco 10240x10240

mask_lco 1024x10240

the visitor settz

terrain grid size 1024 x 1024

terrain cell size 10m

terrain size 10240x10240

After the textures got generated i ll post here again,to see what happened.

[Nephris1 10]

Before i give my next attempt a try, i ve got 2 further questions.

In what depth should be the sat_lco saved in bmp format?

16, 24 or 32?

What do u do with the houses, thatu can definately see on a sat map?

Simply choose a region without houses?Or photoshoping or keep it as it is and set in visitor also a house on it?

[Alliexx 10]

Hi Agian,

Well that is the thing with making an island out of a satellite picture, the detail will be visible ingame.

It is now your turn to figure out how to convert your map to a nice image.

You can use photoshop or any other program to edit the sat picture, you can only know what to do by trail and error runs in visitor.

So the first time it might be whise to make a small test island for yourself, because converting and getting the textures in bulldozer can take quite some time if your sat pictures are very big.

I have once read that to make the island of arma2, the sat_lco picture they worked on was GigaBytes big, my picture of a 20 by 20 Km island is about 400Mb.

I think i had the google map downloader on 19 or 20, about a Sat picture resolution of 1 meter(1 pixel is 1 by 1 meters) so sizing your google map image is important too, i just used averages with the distance tool in google earth.

By the way, i'm not removing everything from the sat map, some houses wont be a problem because they disapear underneath placed objects, or they are just not really a problem when u see them ingame.

Making the sat_mask_lco is a bigger problem, you want for instance some texture underneath roads, well you are able to export an image of your roads system and then overlay that over your sat mask image, this way you are able to exactely draw the right texture color underneath the road network. The obly problem with this is that the exporte picture is not exact in size as your sat pic, this is due something called "blue Edge", i have still not figured out what pixels are where and what to remove, but u will figure this out if your at that point, i just try some averages again, however this does not give me the level of detail i need to nicely have the road with on all sides the right amount of texture exposed from underneath the road. ... bla bla, you'll see.

ehh im not sure about the depth setting, try 32, for sure 24 is ok.

Later,

Allie

Edited November 13, 2010 by Alliexx

[Nephris1 10]

Hi Allie,

thx for ya reply.

I now also used the google satelite downloader...and jesus yes, after returning from dinner, the downloaded folder was about 15gig big...and it wasnt finished...lol

However, i then changed a few settz and got a satelite image that hit my deisres of the "Seeloer Höhen" (east germany).

At the end i got a sat_lco of 10240x10240 and also a mask_lco of that px

Well neverthelss the sat_lco has a size of 141mb, which is imho quiet a lot.

Do u think it is over the top?

Is it normal that i ant see the textures in visitor wheni klick the fourth button from left in visitor (which is called "textures")

Edited November 13, 2010 by Nephris1

[hotzenplotz 138]

Hello. How does this works when the- terrain grid size- is 1024x1024 - terrain cell size- is 20.0(mtr) terrain size 20480.0x20480.0 What should be filled in by- satelite grid current- and by game- satelite segment-.

the surface textures are also not looking good

I work with 8 diferent Colours

Greez Hotze

Edited November 14, 2010 by Hotzenplotz

[Alliexx 10]

Seeing the "textures" in visitor has to do with picking a background picture.

So to see your sat picture in visitor you need to set a background picture.

To see it in bulldozer you need the whole sat_lco, mask_lco and legend.png, then let bulldozer convert all and all is ready.

Hope this make sence

Ehh, you can never go over the top, its just personal taste, if you are happy, its all good.

About using 8 different colors for mask, i dont know how many colors you can use, i do know that you can not use to many at once in 1 segment of the masks that are created when converting with bulldozer.

Please check forum about howmany different textures you can use.

I'm sure you can NOT have 8 colors(textures) close to eachother !!

Later,

Allie

---------- Post added at 07:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:09 PM ----------

The terrain picture can be 1024, when your sat image is 10240, the terrain.pbl will have a multiplier then, like this:

class cfg

{

PNGfilename="enteb.png";

squareSize=10.000000;

originX=0;

originY=0;

minHeight=-32;

maxHeight=400;

};

squareSize=10.000000; 10 X 1024 = 10240

later,

Allie

[hotzenplotz 138]

Thank you for the tips, eight colours are on the mask and the textures are also indicated on the island, Only here and there not because where they belong.I think it is a Gride size or overlap problem?

Greez Hotze

[hotzenplotz 138]

Ok , i am using seven colours now . I just had to change the overlap segment to 80.

I am Happy looks fine

Greez Hotze

[Nephris1 10]

How do i have to enter the values in case a terrainwould be 10240x5120 ?

I am asking for the following values of visitor:

1.terrain grid size

2.terrain cell size

3.terrain size

4.segment size

?

[hotzenplotz 138]

Oh sorry for late answere, 1 = 1024x1024

2= 20.0

3= 20480.0

4= 512

[Nephris1 10]

Thx for your answer m8.

Will try that settz.

Up to now i always used n^2 to experiment ang get expieriences in Visitor.