Road Painter 2

[bushlurker 45]

I've had a few people asking me recently about these "roadgaps" problems... deFRAGer's thread is a typical example, as well as numerous other posts here it seems...

I was chatting to deFRAGer on Skype recently about his

I have got lots of ~2 metre gaps in my roads, as well as hairline ones.

problem, as well as a couple of other small issues...

Since he was struggling badly with this "large random gaps" issue, and had been for a while, I suggested he take a look at Homer's previous RoadPainter 1, which I'd used extensively myself without problems...

Curiously, he encountered exactly the same random large gaps in his road that he'd been having with RoadPainter 2!

I'd used RoadPainter 1 a lot without any problems, so we started looking elsewhere for the cause...

Eventually, after much checking and confirming of basic structure and parameters, we discovered that his "Base Texture Layer" size was set too low...

This is one of those dodgy BI "default values" which are set to incorrect values by default... Another classic example being the default inclusion of "*.wrp" in BinPbo's "list of files to copy directly"

For anyone who's unsure it's this parameter here...

First thing to notice about this parameter is that it's tied to your heightmap cell size (and, indirectly, your Sat & Mask size too)... In the example above I've got a simple 1024x1024 heightmap with 5 meter cells, giving a mapsize of 5120 meters. (Though you can't tell from the picture, I've also set a basic-sized 1m/px 5120x5120 to be the satellite image size...

When you highlight "Base (active) and hit "edit" you'll see the popout window on the right - the popdown menu will offer you a range of sizes - based on multiples of your heightmap cell size... In this case the cell size is 5 meters, and this parameters default value is that size - in this case "5m x 5m"...

This is wrong! - And it'll cause multiple problems unless you change it!

Since my heightmap cell size is 5 meters, the available sizes on offer here are - 5x5m, 10x10m, 20x20m, 40x40m, 80x80m, etc, etc...

Notice I've set this parameter to 40m x 40m - now look at the "Main" parameters window above... see the "(Valid)" flag next to "Satellite Segment"??

You should set this "Base Texture Size" parameter to the Highest value you can, without it causing that "(Valid)" parameter to become "(Invalid)"...

It's VERY important that this Base Texture Layer size be BIGGER than your heightmap cell size...

Resetting this parameter to proper values fixed deFRAGer's "big road gaps" problem completely, so - for anyone with a "big gaps" problem, can I suggest you check the Base Texture Layer size on your terrain - make sure it's higher than your heightmap size, preferably "several notches" higher if possible... see if it fixes your "intermittent big gaps" issue...

PS - Remember! - If you change this parameter you MUST reimport your Sat & Mask layer afterwards, and resave a .wrp before doing any binarizing...

B

Edited February 15, 2013 by Bushlurker

[Wilsdorf 1]

I have some trouble when I want to smooth road. When I import the .xyz into visitor, my map is completly out of scale with my previous map.

[mentlyill 1]

Can somone please give me a step by step on how to get the roads that i paint in roadpainter transferred to the map editor. got a few already existing maps i want to add some new roads and towns to. give them a "new life"

Paul

aka

mently^ill

[dragonsyr 21]

paint your roads and smooth if you want. export the roads and if you use smooth export the xyz terrain.

open visitor and use import script tool from the drop down menu.

select import objects script and pick your export file from painter.

if you use smooth import to your map the exported xyz from painter.

edit: in visitor , you must add all the road pieces as artificial objects and not as road networks..

after that you can import your roads from painter

Edited April 16, 2013 by dragonsyr

[vonlinchen 10]

I am having the same issue as Soldier, When I go to smooth the terrain no blue dots appear and the terrain doesn't appear to be smoothed.

Anyone have any idea why the dots arn't showing up?

I can place roads and I can see the circle of red dots on the roads just not the blue ones when I open the smooth tool.

EDIT: Ok so I've found that the smoothing does actualy work. It generates the yellow line showing the new path of the road but it vanishes within a few seconds. Still no blue dots though :S

This is very difficult to see how the terrain smoothing will look :/

Edited June 28, 2013 by vonlinchen

[Turk72 10]

hey Homer Johnston i cant seem to get the roads onto visitor 3 for some reason!!!