soldier2390 0 Posted October 8, 2012 Hello Community, I am working on a Map, and would like to put an airbase in a Valley, but that part of the Valley is not completely level..so how do I make a specific area on my Terrain flat?? Dave, Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bushlurker 45 Posted October 8, 2012 Hi! In Visitor under the same popdown menu as "Artificial Objects", "Natural Objects" etc, you'll also find an option - "Terrain Vertices"... Select that and you get a different cursor in the 2D view... Now you can select areas! (you can use <shift> and <ctrl> keys too - to add to or subtract from the current selection...) Select the area of your airfield, then go back to that popdown list and click the "Change height" button.... Now you can level that selected area in all sorts of different ways... while observing the results in Buldozer (sometimes a bit laggy with large areas selected)... *** Save your project to .pew in its current state and then make a backup of that file before you mess with these controls.... at first they can take a little getting used to... remember there's an "undo button", but you may find yourself wanting a "zero-state" .pew file to revert to until you get an idea of what you're doing..... B Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
soldier2390 0 Posted October 8, 2012 Hmmm I can not find the "Terrain Vertices" option under "tools\..." menu? Dave, Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jakerod 254 Posted October 9, 2012 Hmmm I can not find the "Terrain Vertices" option under "tools\..." menu?Dave, Picture Look at the picture above. That will show you where it is located. If that window doesn't exist then go to View > Panel of Objects Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
soldier2390 0 Posted October 9, 2012 ok thanks guys, but what do i do to make it go from flat...then fade down/up to match the terrain around it? because where my air field is its a slope so when i make it flat one end just slopes downward then is unnatural drop to the flat area, then on the other side it goes from flat to a shear drop off down to the rest of the ground! Dave, Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Robster 11 Posted October 9, 2012 To make slopes with constant deviation that blend smoothly with surrounding flat areas you will have to do it manually inside buldozer... - press H key to see an arrow that shows exact terrain vertice... - you can press S key to toggle into "land select mode" (so you won't be using "objects select mode" and no objects will be moved by mistake) - you can use U / I / O keys to move a vertice up 10 cms, 50 cms and 1 meter or more - Yo can use J / K / L keys to move a vertice down 10 cms, 50 cms and 1 meter or more If the area you want to shape is huge... then you should try some external tool just like Wilbur or L3DT (there is a working demo available)... using vertices selection tool you can select a square corresponding to the area you want to change... then use export terrain function in file menu... it will create a pbl file and a png file -you must indicate pbl height values as shown in gray above in the pbl pop up menu not the suggested values shown below- Then you can adjust heights using external tool to import png from Visitor and then reimport the very same png using import terrain tool in visitor file menu... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jakerod 254 Posted October 9, 2012 To make slopes with constant deviation that blend smoothly with surrounding flat areas you will have to do it manually inside buldozer... - press H key to see an arrow that shows exact terrain vertice... - you can press S key to toggle into "land select mode" (so you won't be using "objects select mode" and no objects will be moved by mistake) - you can use U / I / O keys to move a vertice up 10 cms, 50 cms and 1 meter or more - Yo can use J / K / L keys to move a vertice down 10 cms, 50 cms and 1 meter or more There is also P and ; which raise it by I want to say 5 meters but it might be 10. It's a pretty large jump. I very rarely use it. Then you can adjust heights using external tool to import png from Visitor and then reimport the very same png using import terrain tool in visitor file menu... If you're using L3DT you can also save it as an xyz and import that into Visitor. It allows you to skip the whole pbl stage. But you do have to reload buldozer if it is open. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
soldier2390 0 Posted October 9, 2012 (edited) Thanks guys your a lot of help..will try to out when I get home! EDIT: Ok..thanks alot guys I am slowly getting this to the way I want it! One more question, Is there some sort of "Smooth" tool? What I mean is, is there a way to take the manual made terrain(or well..terrain sections I edited) and "Naturally" Smooth them even more? Also I use Wilbur so can I do it in there and if so how? Dave, Edited October 10, 2012 by soldier2390 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Robster 11 Posted October 16, 2012 (edited) Yes, you can use Wilbur to smooth things... but notice that wilbur process the whole image at once... this means that if you change the highest value (top mountain/hill) or lowest value (deepest underwater spot/ditch/creek) in your terrain, it might affect your whole vertices because it's an image file and it's not directly related to values inside your pbl file... I mean, when you change something in wilbur, it won't change min and max pbl values... So, when you work in a relatively flat terrain you might notice that weird things happen when importing your changed terrain using wilbur... anyways, if you do not master Wilbur usage the best approach is to identify your max and min values areas and leave them alone, so you can work in any area with values in between without having undesired changes... A useful tool for matching your pbl values into wilbur is the span tool (Filter -> Mathematical -> Span...) so you can define min and max values (for these purposes try to use integer values in pbl and wilbur... probably they might change later but it's a good start with a draft terrain... Example: if your pbl says max= 256 and min = -2.75 then you could try the span filter just like max = 25600 and min = -275 (to keep in the integer side of numbers that wilbur likes) Saludos pepon! EDIT: Sorry, perhaps I forgot basics: open pew in visitor, then go to: project -> Export terrain into picture... -> then you save your pbl file as whatever name you want... if you want to keep a tracking record then you can name it as 01.pbl and so on... I use maximal and minimal heights as shown above in gray color... when I use below suggested values it doesn't work for me... so I write my values manually... these values can be changed inside pbl file later using any text editor (I recommend notepad++ freeware and setting C++ as default language for all bis stuff) Then you will get your pbl file and a png from your whole terrain (you can also export selected parts using vertices tool) that png can be opened in wilbur then use span filter to match pbl values as told before... when finished save as png 16 bits format If you want to start with a wilbur image and then make a pbl then go to Surface -> Map Info... to know your highest and lowest values, so when you save your png, you can change corresponding values in pbl... but I can't guarantee exact results everytime since visitor and wilbur seem to process height values in a different way... that's why that span filter is so useful "to talk" to visitor ... that's how a pbl file looks like (this example comes from taviana beta3) //and some comments not so obvious: class cfg { PNGfilename="01.png"; squareSize=50; // this is your cell terrain size, lower values increase terrain resolution but decrease final size of map originX=0; // this means that your selection begins on a corner on the x axis (all terrain was selected) originY=0; // this means that your selection begins on a corner on the y axis minHeight=-50.019199; maxHeight=1007.36; }; chabela! Edited October 16, 2012 by Robster Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bushlurker 45 Posted October 17, 2012 What I mean is, is there a way to take the manual made terrain(or well..terrain sections I edited) and "Naturally" Smooth them even more? once you've selected an area in Visitor and maybe levelled it all to "average height" or whatever - it CAN look a little "abrupt" at the edges - you can smooth that off a little with the same tool..... select "Erosion" instead of "Change height" in the "Terrain Vertices" popdown menu - while you still have your area selected..... Untick Final Blur!!!!! Then maybe run a few nGens of default erosion parameters on the same area - you'll see it "smooth" a little... For an additional effect you can reselect just the edge of your original area - where theres too abrupt a transition, and just repeatedly smooth just that section..... you can get fairly decent results with these inbuilt Visitor tools if it's small discrete areas like around settlements or bases you working on... For bigger areas you're usually better going external and using one of the Big Guns like L3DT or Wilbur.... B Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Greenberet40 136 Posted October 18, 2012 Another way See my video at 12:33 of time video hope this helps :D http://greenberet101.blogspot.com.es/ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
