The ultimate Visitor?

[Geordie 0]

I was just thinking about what the perfect Visitor would be.

- 3D real time terrain editing similar to L3DT, with terrain tools (brushes)

- Layered (stage) system similar to L3DT, handy for creating satmap & terrain mask, water table etc.

- Single click 'change the season' render button, with paths to custom texture files. (winterize the map instantly?)

- Texture editing functions, basic sizing and basic image manipulation, in separate window

- Object veiwer for checking out P3D's, list all P3D's and select to view in seperate window.

- Ability to import more than 10 objects at a time (an entire CA folder would be ideal.)

- Create a variable ramdisk on program start, so you can go in and add/remove things??? Maybe visitor could monitor the ramdisk for any changes and update in real time?

Just some thoughts.

[shezan74 11]

- Ability to import more than 10 objects at a time (an entire CA folder would be ideal.)

Nice thoughts :) could be of inspiration for more tools...

the "more than 10 objects" i think it's not a limit but a program glitch.

[beton 2]

Ultimate visitor?

- close your eyes

- think what you want to create

- put left thumb into usb port

... viola island finished...:p

If it was so easy it would not be any fun would it? noone of us would visit this forum anymore...:)

[ZeroG 23]

The tools to make it easier are already there!

[Geordie 0]

The tools to make it easier are already there!

But Visitor can't run the functions I mentioned from within the program, they are all external programs with thier own memory space and scratch allocation, more importantly their own commerce and licensing not benefiting BI.

It would be ideal to have all them functions available in one program would it not?

My 'hint' was that Visitor could be expanded (for profit) outside the ArmA universe, Imagine how many clients would seek such features! (us too ;))

regardless, It's fun to chuck stuff up in the air.

@beton....USB.....LOL

Even the most uber package would still have folks scratching their heads, everyone would still be here, hehe

Edited December 20, 2010 by Geordie

[shezan74 11]

My 'hint' was that Visitor could be expanded (for profit) outside the ArmA universe, Imagine how many clients would seek such features! (us too ;))

I think BIS should focus on his main goal: providing even better ArmA engine developments.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel, to work with GIS data, where other softwares are dedicated to this, do this well and will be everytime ahead from the tool.

If some effort should be made, i think it's better to have them focuses on the program specific features for map makers, leaving the generally available functions to the wide range of choices we have on the market (and for free)

my 5 cents

[[aps]gnat 28]

At least a program that could "inject" stuff into a PEW via some functions might be handy .......

"Find all X trees on the map and give them a random lean of between 0 and 3.5 degs"

[hellfire257 3]

The ultimate visitor would be one with 3D real time editing and various brushes for textures and height map adjustments.

Something that would be like this.

http://www.petrolution.net/images/article/maped.jpg

I wish. :)

[beton 2]

Well ... ok...

one thing i´m really missing the most at the moment is the lack of heightmap editing in visitor. There are some things to choose from but they don´t really work. If you use them there are two possibilities of result... nothing or a destroyed heightmap.

So once again if somebody has skills in scripting.... give us a script to apply blur to a part of the terrain which was edited by hand before. This is something we are really lacking. It is no good if you have to edit your landscape vertice by vertice but have no tool to handle a number of vertices in a reasonable manner at a time. It always annoys me when i model vertices by hand and there is no possibility to smooth them to make them fit to the sorrounding terrain again.... if we had all of the tools already available plus this... accessible from visitor or buldozer that would be great..

Thats just my point of view.... as it was mentioned in another thread there are many islandmakers with different needs.

[shezan74 11]

in spritz island i've made this way:

i've created a nice heightmap, then i've saved the heigths (max and min) and enhanced by 20% or so in pbl file.

i have applied the terrain smoothing from A2, that usually reduces height to 20-30 ft.

After this i've applied the maximum height using V3 heightmap options to the final value. This made a nice effect, without "zig-zags" and squared blocks.

I'm a little bit confused with terms but the way should be clear... :)

[Geordie 0]

I switch from L3DT to visitor, back to L3DT to fine tune, It can be a pain sometimes.

It would be nice to place rail/road objects and then use an 'embankment' brush to raise the the objects evenly on both sides, or lower them with a 'revetment' brush, even at angles.

You could even have a 'trench' brush or 'eroded river' brush, even a 'cliff' brush too (like L3DT)

Better yet, have the objects themselves able to manipulate the terrain, Drop a peice of road and lower or raise it, the terrain does exactly what the road is telling it to do, The road does what you tell it to do, if that makes sense (layers of code?)

Anyone ever seen softwre do anyhting like that?

[dougboy101 0]

id be happy if the functions were multicore, when you first import a tex and sat mask, it takes a fricken long time, binpbo binarizing also takes hours, this would shave so much dev time on the trial and error phases!

[icebreakr 3157]

Yup, trial & error is the 80% time-waster when working on BIS product mod... even mission making ingame is the same story ;)