No Water in my rivers!

[darkxess 60]

LoL this is stupid! its been asked before I know,.. and ive messed around with my terrain.pbl for ages now STILL with no water! this is different to my other projects too,

this is a WHOLE desert map with a big river running through it, not like an Island which is easy to do and have water around it. So, here is my question, how to get water

through a river which is on a whole flat desert map? I have tried everything! now im wondering if I changed a color on the Mask for water, is there such thing? ive never

seen one on the mapLegend so im thinking not.

I wouldnt be asking if there are other ways if I really didnt need help, this is just stupid now as I really have tried everything and still, nothing!

Bush, if you do end up reading this which im sure you will do, this is the same one im doing which you helped me with earlier importing the image to the L3DT so that I could edit the rivers!

so im wondering if there is still a way using that also? with L3DT.

Thanks guys.

[kimmo 10]

but do you want to modify the map in 3d?

man i have 1 question for you :

How did you import the map. Png and then to see it in 3D?

[bushlurker 45]

You can either dig down until you hit water, or use the pond objects - which are tricky...

Water is always at 0 meters - always, so you need to dig your river down below 0m... you can do that in L3DT or - if you've already dug your river, you might be better shifting the whole landscape up or down until it's at the right height for the river to be flooded...

You could do that either with the .pbl file or by adjusting the min/max heights in L3DT - remembering to keep the proportion the same...

B

[viper[cww] 14]

Have you tried using a hose?

Sorry I just had to.... :D

[mugaben 10]

As bushlurker says.

I think something like this:

If its like:

min -110

max 100

If you chop of 10, you need to take it from the max.

min -120

max 90

Thats how I think its done, Ive never had to do it yet so correct me if im wrong.

But yup, water is at 0m and below. It will appear automatically.

Ponds (water objects) is not recommended, especially not for rivers or bigger areas. Works okay for small ponds and swamps, but the waves follows your movement and thats doesnt look so good.

[darkxess 60]

Sorted it now, took me hell of a long time and change test, change test, change test... lol thanks guys.

[icebreakr 3100]

Good. It can be hours if you have a lot of objects already put down. I usually COPY, delete, alter terrain and then paste in in absolute height. Bridges need to be checked then.

[darkxess 60]

Luckily I had not put any bridges down yet! lol I know what a pain they are... I am leaving them until last. One thing I am having problem with now is top left side

of the map is a little higher then the bottom right side part, this is due to the terrain and so the rivers in the top left part needs to be deeper! this is the only way to fix this right?

The reason im asking, cause otherwise you get where the level of the map is just right! but then one river is with water and the other isnt! lol... bloody pain it is

[=kct=blackmamba 44]

look at it like this the water is at sea level so if the upper side of your terrain is higher indeed u have to make those just as deep as the river at the bottom of your map best approach would be export map as image and open in photoshop.

select a new layer.

paint the river parts on this layer, save the layer.

merge visible, save.

and load back into visitor look if the river at the bottom is just slightly filled with water, or atleast to a level u are ok with.

take a look at the upper river banks if they are not ridiculous deep if they are to deep or the water level is to deep open the river_layer u just made and give the rivers a lighter grey until u get the overal depth right.

now fade the edges a little so the river banks look nice with the rest of the greys. now u have your rivers only u have to look if the rivers at the upper side look good cause of the hight difference.

good luck...

[Sabot And Heat 10]

@BushLurker

You can either dig down until you hit water, or use the pond objects - which are tricky...

Funny you should say that.

What tricky-ness might they have in store? I'm currently building my Da Nang River Valley, Vietnam map and was having great fun putting rice patties in. But, I'm running into a major freeze up while in Arma 2 OA...on the map...near the paddies. Any ideas?

Thanks ahead of time.

Edited August 29, 2011 by frostybowman
clarification

[bushlurker 45]

The pond object is just... awkward, really... it doesn't like being rotated, or resized... it's tricky to keep a lot of them in place...

I've never heard of it causing FPS problems though... What "plants" are you using in the rice paddies - if any?

I had FPS complaints with CWR2 Everon's "hayfields" and I couldn't understand why... it's just clutter - same as the grassy fields all around - yet a few people have reported heavy lag when near them... I can only guess it must be the clutter model I used for the "hay"... maybe your problem is similar??

B

[kimmo 10]

Bush Finish your GUIDE ????

[Sabot And Heat 10]

@ Bushlurker

The P3D I chose was the 'wheat' from the plants_e folder as my rice.

Just an FYI, I have started a methodical build on my paddies. I install six pond objects/paddies, then I export to PBO an test for freezes. With these controls I'm certain I can figure out the issue (crossed fingers.) If I develop any legitimate theory I'll pass it on.

Thank you for your response too. It's nice having our Arma community to interact with.

Take care.

(P.S. I noticed the resizing also changes the pond water wave effect speed. Which in turns looks like garbage.)

Edited August 30, 2011 by frostybowman
Insert post script

[bushlurker 45]

"wheat" from plants_e?... hmmm - never thought of that - my problematic "hay" was Arma 2 "grass dry long" or something... no ponds involved, so it has to be the clutter model in my case...

Process of elimination approach should reveal whats causing slowdowns, then it's just a matter of finding a substitute or going easy with that model I guess...

No - the pond object doesn't like being resized in Visitor, as in - scaling, but it's possible to make different sized ones in O2 - ie: crop the actual model to different sizes... that seems to keep the wave action the same - you've reduced the model "plane" rather than "scaled" the larger one...

I made ponds in a couple of sizes that way for CWR2 and they worked OK, though I used them mostly for "water in fountains" and other obscure stuff nobody really noticed... Now I come to think of it, I might not have noticed if the wave action had gone dodgy on the cropped ones since they were just little single-use jobs, rather than tiled in a big area...

You do have the "snappable 50m pond object", don't you? - I think it's on my little website (resources & tutorials section)...

*edit* - it wasn't - is now...

lining 'em up is a lot easier when the pieces snap together - though you'll still need to > select em all > set overall height (scripts - set absolute height)...

B

Edited August 30, 2011 by Bushlurker

[Sabot And Heat 10]

@ Bushlurker

I'll check out that snapable pond object. That's sounds interesting and exactly what I need. Thank you.

I'll keep you posted.