Grebbeberg - WIP terrain

[DualJoe 10]

Well I'm finally getting some O2 exercise and slowly making progress with Lods and proxies.

Some things I've discovered:

- nested proxies don't work (proxies inside of proxies)

- proxy lods seem to be linked to the main object lods

- I haven't been able to get the geometry lod of a proxy working, which either means I'm doing something wrong or proxies don't have working geometry-lods

Finally I did a very quick stresstest with a little over 100 of them on Utes. Not once did I see a drop below my v-synced 60 fps and this is without properly configured and working resolution-lods and shadow-lods.

At least I'll know that if my map gets bad framerates it won't be because of this windmill.

Just thought of a way to check occlusion culling of proxies. I could make an object with a viewgeometry-lod but with an empty resolution lod. That way I should be able to see if proxies are culled before the main object is. Maybe even test if an object culls it's own proxies.

[Robster 11]

good to read about your advances and findings...

for massive objects keep in mind that these kind of tests should also imply rvmats, cause use of rendering stages add some kind of stress onto GPU

Saludeins alameins!!!!

[DualJoe 10]

Yeah after I worked out how the proxies and lods work in arma, I'll have an idea how to chop this thing up in parts. UV-unwrapping and materials only make sense after this.

I don't know how much gpu-stress the arma-materials will add, but I now know it can be around 100 times heavier than what I have now and still run fine.

[DualJoe 10]

Not much progress because of a busy weekend and some weird issue that would not let me connect to the community part of the bistudio site for a couple of days if I used my home broadband connection.

Finally got a call back from higher up the management of my ISP today, assuring me they have nothing to do with it and that it must be something with the website itself. Really, it really wasn't them, honest.

Anyway, by some strange unexplained coincidence right after their call, I am suddenly able to browse this forum and the biki again. Which means I can continue my study of BIS-magic. First result was that I managed to get geometry AND view-geometries working. I think it was some named property in the view-geometry-lod that made AI finally unable to see through walls.

I also learned something really important for figuring out why my proxies weren't working and that is:

Reading the logs that binpbo spits out! :936:

Turns out one little hidden face wasn't convex by the tiniest of margins. Now that the proxies are physically present, I'll try to get the thing to animate.

I've also been doing some more terrain-sculpting, the terrain in the video is from a couple of sessions back, but I doubt anyone would notice. Just in case some people think they can, here's an overview of the terrain I started with this morning.

.

It's been a while since I've looked at it from this far out and I'm a bit shocked myself. Can't believe I've hand-painted all that, more than once as well. All you people with access to high detail height-data of their areas feel my envy! While we're at it, feel free to point out the things I might have missed :p.

I've been getting requests from people wanting to test the current map, so I've been trying to work out a way to put up a rolling WIP online for the truly adventurous. I'm thinking about using google-docs/drive for that unless someone has a better idea.

First though I need to get a response from OFPEC so I can register a tag (if I can come up with one) and get a somewhat more official naming-scheme going than my current Test plus version number.

[DualJoe 10]

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Finally got some animations working, one little typo was eluding me for a long time. I just couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong.

Don't know how I'll have the players interact with this yet, but I'll worry about that later.
For now I can concentrate on cleaning up, finishing the LODS and starting with materials.

Another completely new arma topic to dive into. Edited October 5, 2012 by DualJoe

[Robster 11]

lovely :D

[DualJoe 10]

@Robster: Thanks

Because of all the cues in the arma-engine for windspeed and direction, I couldn't focus before I had the mill react at least somewhat to the environment. So I made this very quickly put together script:

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In the description of the video I mention the different stages tested.

It's a very crude script, which checks the windspeed and direction and compares it to the position of the sails. Within a certain threshold of windforce, it will make the mill turn at 3 different speeds, if a set angle between sails and wind is exceeded the mill also stops turning.

That last part can be very abrupt, which I may address in the future. On the other hand, I could leave the script as a basic example and just let people do their own thing.

Sadly there doesn't seem to be a way to adjust rotation-speed dynamically and smoothly for buildings, which is why I went for the 3 different speeds option. If lots of people find it too abrupt I might be persuaded to add a couple more steps/gears, but for now I didn't want an overly complex script and animation-config.

I don't know if it's possible to add scripts to objects in visitor, otherwise I'll just have to add mine in an example mission or something like that.

I'll also have to fix the flag issue, which is only an attachTo-object for now, this somehow also makes it very choppy. I wonder if I can find a way to just add an flag option to the model, make it work like with capture the flag on poles and cars. I think it would make a nice capture the flag map where you'd have to climb to the top of the church-tower or this windmill for the team-flag.

Edited October 7, 2012 by DualJoe

[DualJoe 10]

Feeling a bit under the weather and real life is slowly eating up more of my time, but ...

I did find time to dig a few kilometers of channels. The screenshot of the zoomed out view makes them look less detailed then they are, but admittedly these are just to mark where the channels should go and I'll have to go over them all again to fix them for AI and artifacts and such.

[larsiano 12]

Yes the weather is turning but it looks real nice here this morning. The map looks great and very detailed, it must be a ton of work, cant wait to try it. Now that the windmill is getting closer to perfection i'm wondering if you have enough 'Dutch' trees and other houses etc to fill in the blanks. Also about the windmill i see in the 'Wind speed and direction' video: a little flag that moves quite unnaturally compared to the movement of the blades? I think you've done a great job on the movement of the blades and turret. Maybe a small ' windmill startup script' can speed-up the blades to the low turn-rate making it look more natural even tough its very good as it is :)

[DualJoe 10]

@larsiano:

If you want to try it before it's done I can post/pm a link to my google-drive backup-version. Yes it is an enormous amount of work and no I don't have Dutch trees, plants and houses. For now I'll concentrate on a few landmark objects which really need to be merged with the terrain, like this mill, the church, the "stuw" and ginormous railroad-bridge and lets not forget the dug in bunkers. I may even have to make a number of re-textured roads, because I suspect asphalt just won't look right.

If the default arma-buildings won't work I think I may have an idea for rapidly creating a large number of different looking buildings by using a modular approach. I'll create a few base buildings with all the stuff needed to make a building function in arma, based on size/floors/nr of rooms. Next I'll only have to make / change the addon facades and roofs for some variation. Maybe people would be interested in contributing if they only need to modify/retexture small bits and pieces. If hidden selections also work on buildings, this could be integrated rather elegantly into arma.

About the flag, I mentioned the issue at the end of my post below the video. When I use attachTo to stick a flag onto the mill, it's animations become very choppy, but you can use it to see the winddirection and turn the "turret" into the wind. I haven't found a way yet to just attach a moving flag. Ideally I'd like it to work just like normal flagpoles useable in capture the flag style missions. After testing the mill on Utes I've discovered that the town of Rhenen alone is about the same size, so capture the flag with flags on top of the mill and churchtower should be quite feasible.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to adjust rotation speed dynamically. It's either one speed or none. The workaround I use is switching between multiple rotation animations with different rotating speeds. I was actually somewhat proud of myself that I got the different animations to switch seamlessly AND according to windspeed and direction.

PS

I was proud, until I showed it to some family members and I had some real nice reactions especially from my father like: It doesn't look right because the crankwheel doesn't spin when you rotate the head. Also when it storms the head should be turned perpendicular to the wind direction. They also mentioned the lack of smooth speed transitions when the thing comes up to speed and missing ropes, etcetera. Once they get going there's no stopping them.

Edited October 10, 2012 by DualJoe

[larsiano 12]

I'dd love to help and maybe i can find more assistance in the DAFmod team that would like to do this aswell. Just tell me what to do and ill give it a go!

[DualJoe 10]

Might as well do as I promised a few people earlier, with a big fat warning.

WIP - use at your own risk

Google drive link with fairly recent versions of this WIP. README-file contains some simple installation instructions. This is my online backup, which I have not prepared for public consumption, if you think this is messy, you should see what's inside my head.

Check the dates to see how recent the thing is you're downloading. Needless to say that more recent versions should replace older ones. I'll try to make sure to have the terrain and buildings of at least my recent youtube videos in there asap, but I'm not feeling well and my upload speeds are abysmal.

Edited October 11, 2012 by DualJoe

[DualJoe 10]

Here I was thinking I was very clever and doing something new by using Blender sculpt-tools for terrain editing. Then I see this video of the Blender conference that's going on right now.

Sniff, so much for being original. I wish bistudio would share the python-plugin and the shader setup. I would love to try their workflow, with the easy region selection and 3d texture-painting.

I know I have no right to be, but I am really gutted that it turns out Bistudio thought of this years before I did. I'm also envious of how nicely integrated the bistudio pipeline is with Blender.

[mondkalb 1087]

Just join the Terrain Maker's Skype group. There you can ask Miro (The dude in the video you linked) directly about his work and troubles with the Blender-Workflow. :)

[bushlurker 46]

Just join the Terrain Maker's Skype group.

...and the Modellers Group, and.....

Best idea ever DJ... A lot of the guys hang out on the Skype channels and it's far superior to PM's for ideas discussion, etc...

If you have Skype installed, add "bushlurker.com" to your contacts list and I'll make sure you're added in to all the appropriate Groups...

B

[DualJoe 10]

I don't have skype installed yet, but now it's the first thing on the list for things to do after dinner this evening.

[DualJoe 10]

Digging channels, digging, digging

Around 2.5k viewdistance, but when I look at the entire map it's a disillusioningly small area.

I keep getting reminded how this map isn't as small as I thought it was when I started. On the plus side this is the lowest level of detail I'll go, so there are signs of an end showing on the horizon. Now I know I can get a small stretch of 2 km with waterways done in an evening. To bad free evenings are hard to come by.

Btw, you can really see your terrain-detail settings on this map, those watery-jaggies in the distance will vanish with a higher terrain-detail-level taking your framerate with them.

EDIT

I keep forgetting to show the depth of the channels, I wanted them to be borderline wadeable.

Oh this brings me back, trudging through kilometers of this stuff, never before or since have I had blisters like that time, don't know if those still counted as blisters. What do you call the things you get to see after walking through your skin until you see something with a structure build up of loads of little diamond shapes? Ah dammit, never thought my feet would ache from making an Arma addon.

Edited October 15, 2012 by DualJoe

[maj_wodzuuk 1]

Anyone that plans on creating a mod based on the western campaign in WWII certainly could use this map. Its looking sexy by the way :P

[larsiano 12]

ah very nice maybe we can make a 'fierljeppen' (Dutch delight) mod:

the channels look very nice and natural. I was wondering is there any train track on this map? We could paint some if needed :)

[DualJoe 10]

There will be a railway-track which will run through the north-south slot in the hill and big bridge across the old-Rhine.

I'm hopeful the roadpainter-script can be modified for that. Now that I think about it, on the road on the left in the screenshot there was a tramrail. The track ran from Wageningen on the side of that road, right along the southern edge of the hill. So there could be a second track painted on this map.

Taking the fierljep-shot as reference, I only need some reed-clutter to make the channel look a lot more believable. Didn't Porto have some floating waterplants? Maybe those could be added as clutter as well.

[sander 14]

The terrain promises to offer quite a different tactical challenge with the waterways and relatively flat area. With regard to vegetation and other objects some areas in front of field fortifications had these cleared in 1940 to provide a better field of fire, though in other areas this was notoriously neglected, thus giving attacking German units an opportunity to use a covered approach.

Regards,

Sander

[DualJoe 10]

The different challenge was what I was aiming for from the get-go, which is also why I needed the extreme resolution. However I'm really pushing the technical limitations of the RV-engine with this one. Fingers crossed hoping that I'm able to pull it off.

There were numerous dubious decisions being made around that time. Indeed the shrubs which were planted for the sole reason to limit enemy advancement but had grown to block the view from the bunkers. Making some bunker completely ineffective just because they wanted to spare the environment, sounds very Dutch to me. It was by no means the only stupidity that was seen around that time. How about demolishing buildings for a defensive position, but leaving the building right in front of it intact to limit the destruction of civilian property. They were in their trenches with their faces up against a frigging house. German officers were baffled by the stupidity of that one.

Or how about building a bunker on the enemy side of a water-obstacle, instead of the defending side. Or even better the construction of a new barracks for the soldiers manning the defensive positions, not behind the line but on the side of the enemy. It wasn't enough to give the enemy an advantage they even gave them brand spanking new lodgings. Lucky for us our current government really seems to have learned from the past, now we can all sleep well at night knowing there's no chance of history repeating itself.

[DualJoe 10]

Had a couple of hours:

Either I'm getting faster at this or I'm starting to lose track of time.

Anyone tried the WIP-map on my google drive yet? I'd like to know what kind of performance people are seeing. It's one thing that it runs fine on my current average setup, but that's just one testcase.

[jakerod 254]

A note on railroad tracks. They are fairly easy to put together, that or I just got used to it after doing probably about 15km (if not more) on my one map. The present models lack the ability to go up hills. If it is a very very small grade you can probably pull it off but since you are doing custom models anyway it may be more to your liking if you make your own. I would recommend taking a look at how flat the land is that you are placing them on.

Do you happen to have a direct link to the file you want people to test? My computer is crap but I can take a look at it. I'm just not sure which you want me to grab.

[DualJoe 10]

On my google-drive there's a readme file saying which files to download, if there is any trouble.

These are the step by step instruction for people not too used to manually installing addons:

Instead of one big archive I've uploaded the separate building- and terrain-archives. (Terrain updates will happen sparsely in comparison, because even my mobile phone has a faster upload than I have on my regular connection)

So I advice to create a @JDP\addons folder (I don't have an official tag yet).

Download the buildings and teufelberg archives and extract them in that folder.

Optionally download my windmill test mission from the youtube-video and put it in your arma-profile missions folder.

Launch with an added @JDP to the "-mod="-list.

Remember this is a very very high resolution terrain so adjust your settings accordingly: Viewdistance and postpro above normal are especially heavy on this map. Also terrain-detail has a very visible effect on this map other than just the grass.

@Jakerod: Lucky for me then that the railroad-track is very flat, the vertical gouge in the hill (visible in the 3d-view screenshot above) was dug out especially for the tracks. I think I will have to make a railroad track at least for the bridge parts, because it will have to be crossable by AI as well. So I'll probably have to make a combined road/track object, for now I have no idea how to make either one, but I don't expect it to be more difficult than making a working windmill.

I'd be happy to know what kind of performance crappy computers get too. I'm testing with a 1m/pixel sat-texture for now, but may have to go lower res for performance reasons. Just to be clear the sat map is not 1m/pixel quality I upscaled it to test performance, I will paint a sat-texture after I'm done with the first complete heightmap. I expect I will have to tweak that one quite a bit for roads and such, but I'll worry about that when I get there.

Edited October 18, 2012 by DualJoe