Grebbeberg - WIP terrain

[DualJoe 10]

Merry Christmas everyone.

Wasn't able to do much work on this project, but I am making slow progress.

I have experience with 3d modelling, but I'm rather inexperienced with texturing and 2d-image-editing in general so don't expect rapid updates in the near future.

I've started work on some of the prominent structures like the large railroad bridge across the Rhine and the large Church tower. Both of them comfortably exceed the 50 meter size limit of the arma-engine which I'm trying to find a workaround for.

In my previous attempt at creating a large building (which I lost by mistake when installing an OS to the wrong partition) I used the following trick. I made a very simple invisible large structure with just the basic elements to get AI-pathfinding and such working. Next I had planned to fill the area with blocks of detailed models with all the rest of the required bits. As far as I was able to test( before I destroyed my work) this was working perfectly, but since I hadn't made all parts yet, let alone all the LODS I was unable to test performance and LOD-switching.

This time, I was planning on making partial destruction possible at the very least for the bridge, but also on the tower if possible. Also I like to make the thing as performance friendly as possible so I did some forum/wiki/google searching and saw something which I hadn't realized before. Proxies can also be used with buildings (actually they seem to be mandatory for destruction of buildingsections). At first glance this looks to be a much more elegant solution to my multitude of separate objects solution, especially for the bridge.

There are a couple of things I am not sure of. Are there limits to proxies in the form of maximum number, location and size? The bridge for example is a few hundred meters long, but with a lot of identical elements. I'll have to figure out how far I'm able to go with the proxies, for something this size and with this many elements.

Another thing I have to figure out is how LODs work with proxies. Do they work as separate objects or is the LOD-level related to the main-object. I'm hoping it's not the latter, so that when you're standing at one end of the bridge the area closest to you looks detailed while the far end should use lowpoly LODs instead of the other way around.

Anyway I haven't got much to show for now, I'm in the process of trying to figure out dimensions and shapes from old and/or distorted photos and trying to fit them in Arma-limits. I'm also working on a number of procedural textures to make my life easier while making the large satelite texture.

EDIT

Something like this:

Each different colored section will be an editor placeable object. Each of those objects consists of a number of proxies making up the whole building, 4 proxies for each side on the 2 bottom ones, 8 major proxies for the dark one on top. I also plan to use proxies for repetitive features like railings and ornamental stuff. Maybe it will be possible to let those ornamental feature disappear at a distance as well as being able to destroy them separately.

EDIT2

Oops forgot to post a link to the real thing

Edited December 26, 2011 by DualJoe

[DualJoe 10]

Plan for now is to have a base structure for each block which include the staircase towers and add onto that some external features as proxy-objects, like railings and such.

[domokun 515]

Although I'd like to help you I have no experience in map making however, I believe others could help you. So try contacting the more experienced map makers on this forum. I can think of IceBreakr, Bushlurker, Raunhofer, Old Bear, Minimalaco, MugAben... (I apologise for anyone else I may have forgotten).

I'm really looking forward to this as it sounds so different from the forests and undulating terrain that characterise most OA maps.

[DualJoe 10]

Indeed, having more people work on this would speed things up immensely, especially since I'm completely new to most of this. Bushlurker already helped me out on a couple of issues. One problem I see (apart from me not wanting to bother other people) is that my workflow seems to be a bit different from the others.

I think I'll post a link to the google docs directory where I keep a backup of my current WIP once I've got most 3d-stuff somewhat operational. Something like opensource development for the more adventurous. Won't be pretty at first, but I wouldn't mind getting some feedback.

Talking about 3d, I've made a little progress with the landmark churchtower.

I've made the spiral-staircases all the way to the top including windows(you can see them on the right side of the tower). They look close enough to the real thing AND should be traversable by arma AI (fingers crossed). Needs a little more work before I have the bare minimum to start testing if this works ingame. Well the outside at least, don't have a clue yet what I'll do for the inside of the tower.

[DualJoe 10]

Little update, getting close to solving this 3d puzzle, almost at the top now.

Won't be able to test it ingame for a while, because my windows 7 installation seems to have developed an error after a crash and I'm not yet prepared for a complete reinstall.

[DualJoe 10]

That's about it for the basic-model, well the exterior at least. Still needs some work on the interior like some extra floors and stairs, but I'll focus on getting this working ingame first. Considering the current low polycount and quick procedural texture, I think it'll look convincing enough ingame once I've done a proper unwrap and texture job.

Once I have this thing working I'll try the railroad-bridge, which is the one I'm most worried about. Haven't got a clue how bridges work in the arma-engine.

[purepassion 22]

Very impressive! I think you are doing a fantastic job :)

[=kct=blackmamba 44]

speechless great job on the terrain !!

good luck from a dutch fellow terrain builder :)

[DualJoe 10]

Haha, thanks for the encouragements.

Won't have any updates for a while, because I'm building myself a new pc. My parents pc has died and I needed to do a complete reinstall on mine anyway, so I figured I'd just give them my current one and build myself a replacement. Wasn't planning on this and I suspect I need a bit of time to get things setup again. Doesn't help that I couldn't find a store that had everything in stock. First time for me to have to wait a couple of days for the pc I've already paid for.

[DualJoe 10]

What the hell is going on?

I've always had rotten luck with pc's, but I've never had this much problems just getting the parts. Not a single shop had the items I need in stock. Finally found a company who said they could ship within 3 days and they did. Too bad the delivery took their sweet time and then just marked me absent without even bothering to drive up my street. I had to argue with the postal-company before they friggin bothered to try to deliver my stuff.

So two weeks have passed before I could even start installing my pc. Then I get loads of weird errors, crashes and glitches, but no error messages and memory checked ok. Took me another couple of days before I managed to even get a cpu-test to run and it immediately found errors in 2 cores.

Looks like it will take another couple of weeks before I have a pc, let alone getting some work done. In the old days delivery took days at most. Even with broken hardware and no stock it would take a week max to get a system up and running in a worst case scenario. But with all the recent improvements and internetshopping it seems we've progressed to needing months.

[DualJoe 10]

Finally! I have a working pc! And I also got the bistudio tools and such up and running again. Better late then never.

I'm slowly picking up this project again. For now mostly little tweaks, like trying to get rid off the land climbing shining waterlayer. Frustratingly I have yet to find a way to get rid of that irritating sea-water feature.

I'm also doing some experiments with the satmap-texture resolution. I'll try to get a nice balance between image quality and memory footprint. 16k resolution is out, causes way too much harddisk thrashing even with low viewdistances. I'm trying to home in on a sweet spot which I guess is somewhere between 8k and 4k.

For the buildings I'll have to figure out how to snap objects together to form one seamless structure. Also now that I've got a working O2 and buldozer, I can finally start putting the Cuneratower ingame.

That's the plan anyway, for now I'm mostly playing with my new toy and trying to figure out ways to maximize performance.

[DualJoe 10]

After a bit of a struggle with config-files I got something to show up ingame. Still needs a lot of work converting everything to O2. I've got a number of unexpected issues with flipped face-normals, somewhat random mirroring and no smoothgroups at all. At least I managed to get the scaling about right.

(@ more perceptive people) Yes I know the top part is rotated. I'm still working out all the quirks I get when converting to O2.

[bad benson 1733]

nice stuff man! lots of detail in that model. can't wait to see it ingame with textures and materials!

[DualJoe 10]

can't wait to see it ingame with textures and materials!

Same here, unfortunately there's still a lot of stuff I need to work out.

I'm still working on the interior, which is harder than you'd think, especially since I don't have any reference photo's to go by.

or if you prefer an online 3d-version

It's becoming a pretty complex 3d puzzle. I'd like this to be a fun building for multiplayer as well so I'd like to keep performance at a respectable level if possible. For now polycount is still pretty decent, around 40k tris for the entire thing, most of which I have yet to clean up (but I expect the addition of the interior will eat up that difference and then some).

At the same time I'm trying to use as many proxies as possible, mostly for partial destruction, but also in the hope it'll enable me to use the building as one whole instead of 3 separate ones. This also means I need to plan ahead where I want destruction and how I'll be able to handle it via proxies. Ideally I'd like to make one base damaged model and add the undamaged parts onto that in the form of proxies. Don't know yet if that will kill framerates too much.

As you can see from the previous screenshots I don't have any problems with framerates yet on my empty 2m resolution terrain with 8K satmap, hopefully I'll be able to keep it that way.

Edited February 10, 2012 by DualJoe

[DualJoe 10]

I haven't found a way to export smoothgroups from Blender to O2, so I'm doing the next best thing. I'm remodeling the entire thing without smoothgroups, smoothshaded with faked beveled edge look. Especially redoing the uv-map is taking a lot of time, but the base is almost ready for export.

You can see what it looks like in 3d here.

If anybody knows how to import smoothgroups from blender into O2, I'd be happy to learn how.

[hotzenplotz 138]

Oh Great , realy nice Work.

Greez Hotze

[topas 1]

Seems impressive and promising. Certainly one of the most original and interesting projects.

In my opinion nothing beats a real world terrain, so I'm very glad you have chosen an existing location to recreate.

I'd really love to see some 1940 action there one day, it may have been 'only' one week, but it should prove interesting enough to depict despite the fact.

Best regards and much success in your work on this one.

[larsiano 12]

Ow just found out about this tread this is great stuff! Me and my crew might also make some Dutch forces stuff so together with this the effect will be twice as good! Is there any Béta i can test?

[DualJoe 10]

Ah I'm back. So much to do and so little time to do it in.

Sorry for the delay, but I had too many projects running simultanously.

Off topic, but the main reason for my absence was that I was building this thing for my little nieces and nephew

.

Came out better looking than I had hoped when I came up with the idea and design.

Anyway once I've regained some energy and no other projects interfere I should be able to get cracking on this thing again.

@Iarsiano: Don't know if you're still watching, but no I don't have a beta yet. Wouldn't even call it an Alpha, without roads, trees and buildings as of yet. The iconic buildings I have to make are way outside of ArmaII-building-spec so I have to be very "creative" which takes a lot of time and experimentation. Just getting the things to look right is proving very challenging, let alone making them work right. As long as I'm working on this single handedly it may take a while before I get to beta stage.

Edited September 4, 2012 by DualJoe

[chrisb 196]

That’s really very nice, what screen are you using for the top there..

:)

[DualJoe 10]

A 23'' IPS from LG. Needed the wide allround viewing angles, because the players need to be able to view it ...erm... all around.

The smoked glass adds some very surprising effects to the already impressive screen. It seems to enhance the contrast and colors and makes some 3d games look almost real 3d.

The whole things looks a lot better in real life than in the video. It can be dismantled, but you'd have to look really hard where to start, because you won't see screws and such from the outside.

Edited September 4, 2012 by DualJoe

[larsiano 12]

This looks very nice and must give you more time to deal with your map while the kids are playing with this awesome toy. I was wondering if there is anything we can beta test for you or if you have any planns to add more Dutch objects etc that you can use help with. I would be glad to make you some houses (repaints) etc to lively up the map making it an easier job for you. I would also like to know if it is possible for us to add this to the Dutch Armed Forces mod currently under production under my supervision.

DAF mod: http://www.battlegroup-xtra.eu/index.php/16-ArmA-2/3321-Re-royal-netherlands-military-Landmacht.html#3321

Edited September 6, 2012 by larsiano
typo

[DualJoe 10]

Little late, but I'm away from home at the moment.

I don't mind if you add the map to the addon, but keep in mind that it's far from finished. The churchtower and railroad bridge are such big landmarks that I couldn't leave them out, but my focus is primarily on the frontlines. If someone wants to fill in the missing bits, saying I wouldn't mind would be an understatement.

Looking at the webpage the focus of your mod seems to be more present day. Maybe I can figure out a way to make the map modular. My focus is trying to recreate the WOII situation as faithfull as possible. However if the map could be used for other scenarios, I'd be willing to put in some effort to make that a possibillity.

[DualJoe 10]

What's up with those Blender-devs man! Their update speed is inhuman.

Before picking up the buildings it seems I'll have to reeducate myself with the new Blender. I could keep working with an old version, but looking at the release docs and images, I don't think anyone should pass up on those updates, especially BMesh.

[DualJoe 10]

http://imageshack.us/a/img689/2171/binnenmolenv001.png (301 kB)

Testing out new Blender tools, and the speed-up in workflow is very impressive.

Mock-up of the "Binnenmolen" the windmill perched on top of the old city-wall in the town of Rhenen (same town as the church tower and rail-road bridge). Modelled from this reference image

Edited September 18, 2012 by DualJoe
wrong imagelink