Blender for terrain editing

[lecholas 2]

I'm not sure if anyone noticed it but there is an interesting article in BlenderArt magazine (ISSUE 39: SPIRIT OF EXPLORATION):

http://blenderart.org/issues/

It is written by Miroslav Horvath (former(?) World Design Lead at BIS) and concerns using blender as a tool for supporting terrain editing process for BIS games. Some ideas aren't new for me (as sculpting terrains - a very interesting attempt can be found here: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?125952-Grebbeberg-WIP-terrain), but of some I have never thought of (eg. texture paint - the satellite one - directly in blender; I wonder how strong computer one has to have to do this - I had troubles editing more complicated 10240x10240 sat masks in a 2D graphics program; the technique is similar as here, I suppose:

).

I've also found a movie about this:

(it really starts about 8min 15sec)

I hope someone will find this as interesting/amazing/useful as I.

[gnarkilz 10]

I'm a huge blender fan, thank you for sharing you find, I never made any such thing for ArmA2 but it's never too late to have an attempt at it.

Also blender has a addon , in the user preferences > addon panel that is meant to do terrain, it's pretty cool. I can see it working really well. Blender is easily, my favorite 3D graphic design software. Best of all it's free and can compete with software that will cost both arms and both legs lol. One other feature is Blender has it's own game engine in it, though I never messed with it and is irrelevant to ArmA 2's game engine.

Blender is perfectly designed for such task though as you can import/export height maps, or create the terrain right there in the program using the addon provided that you just need to activate in the user preferences. I can't see any reason Blender would cause difficulties to achieve anything you want to do with arma 2, it just goes about the order in which you do it. I am a n00b at terrain and everything, I admit that no problem. But I really back Blenders capabilities, because I use it daily almost to do 3D Design. Knowing what I do know, you shouldn't need a lot of power to do the task. If you can run ArmA2, for sure you can make a terrain and use the mixture of the bi tools and Blender to get the desired out come. Just for power of your computer. Blender is better then any program that cost thousands of dollars in my opinion.

Just research some more on the process of it. As I said I am a noob, I just know Blender because I use it for other reasons. Which I have been wanting to learn things for modeling game objects, worlds, weapons, you name it and ArmA 2 is a perfect

Again thanks for the share :)

Cheers, I hope you find the answer you are seeking, Its 342am , I need to go to bed, sorry if anything i have typed doesn't make sense. lol.

[[aps]gnat 28]

Thanks lecholas, interesting

[defrager 1]

Sooo.... Who has contact with Miroslav Horvath? Sounds like that tool he is creating/created would be awesome.

[[aps]gnat 28]

*cough* VBS Commercial (expensive) software *cough*

[mir_o 85]

Hi guys,

It's nice to see that my Terrain Tool project found its way where it belongs(to Arma/VBS community) without any effort(so far) from my side.

I'm not sure if anyone noticed it but there is an interesting article in BlenderArt magazine (ISSUE 39: SPIRIT OF EXPLORATION):

http://blenderart.org/issues/

How did you find the article lecholas, Blender fan, ArmA2 Map Makers Channel skype chat member... ? ... just wondering :)

It is written by Miroslav Horvath (former(?) World Design Lead at BIS)

Yup, I left the studio over year ago after the TakeOn Helicopters project was done, but I'm still with the "family" at BISim.

I wonder how strong computer one has to have to do this - I had troubles editing more complicated 10240x10240 sat masks in a 2D graphics program; the technique is similar as here, I suppose:

).

The approach in the video works, but it's very 'beginner-ish' to be used for the madness in Arma maps development :p

Of course, during sculpting or painting session I don't import whole map(heightmap and imagery) as it's not necessary, so I can edit a map without a need of powerfull PC.

I've also found a movie about this:

(it really starts about 8min 15sec)

It's a shame that the video quality from the Blender Conference is so fucked up, but I plan to release a showcase video this month. If you have a questions I mostly answer at "ArmA2 Map Makers Channel skype chat".

Take care pals

Edited January 13, 2013 by Mir_o

[daringd 2]

Also interested in getting my hands on this, everything is worth a shot, though I am assuming that lack of links or directions to the tool indicate it's probably going to cost. I'll sit and patiently wait for updates. *sits and watches closely*

Daring

[[aps]gnat 28]

Whoah, the man himself !

If you have a questions I mostly answer at "ArmA2 Map Makers Channel skype chat".

Thanks, good to know.

[daringd 2]

Gnat;2277909']Whoah' date=' the man himself ![/quote']

Always cool when that happens!

D

[lecholas 2]

Hi guys,

It's nice to see that my Terrain Tool project found its way where it belongs(to Arma/VBS community) without any effort(so far) from my side.

So, is that a hint that the tools might be released in some form for the community?

How did you find the article lecholas, Blender fan, ArmA2 Map Makers Channel skype chat member... ? ... just wondering :)

Well, it's not easy to answer that ;) In short, it all started with OFP/Arma modding (still trying to help Topas and others in September 1939 mod), and now I work as a 3D GIS specialist (a junior one ;)) so I use combination of GIS and 3D tools on a daily basis (mostly ArcGIS, recently CityEngine, Blender as a support tool). Also, some time ago I started to learn python for Blender/ArcGIS/QGIS (I thought about attempting to write an addon for QGIS which would support the proces of creation of Arma maps - something like Shezan's briliant World Tools, not done from scratch but with the open source application as a basis... but I don't have time for this). And as a philosopher by education (sic!) I think, as one of my professors used to say, that there is nothing more practical than a good theory, so I like to read such strange magazines as Blenerart.

The worst thing is that my job is also my hobby so when I have some free time I spend it doing almost the same I do in my working hours...

Yes, I know that it was hardly 'in short' ;P

The approach in the video works, but it's very 'beginner-ish' to be used for the madness in Arma maps development :p

Of course, during sculpting or painting session I don't import whole map(heightmap and imagery) as it's not necessary, so I can edit a map without a need of powerfull PC.

So, if understand correctly, when you finish editing a part of a terrain in Blender then you 'patch' the original rasters (height or sat/mask) in correct places?

It's a shame that the video quality from the Blender Conference is so fucked up, but I plan to release a showcase video this month. If you have a questions I mostly answer at "ArmA2 Map Makers Channel skype chat".

Good to know. Thanks.

[mir_o 85]

So, is that a hint that the tools might be released in some form for the community?

I see no problem, depends on what you guys would like to have in tools. Terrain sculpting is on by default, Mask Painting is worth only if you have unbinarized p3ds, which can be imported into Blender, but someone might find Mask Painter usefull even without objects on the terrain.

...to write an addon for QGIS which would support the proces of creation of Arma maps..

what processes do you have in mind??? I use QGIS a lot it's a powerfull tool, but one thing I'm afraid is canvas drawing or in other words if you have a lot of shapes loaded it's being very slow.

My idea is to use Blender to load even shapefiles and use them for example to generate forest... I did this for my diploma thesis, all processing was done in PostGIS.

So, if understand correctly, when you finish editing a part of a terrain in Blender then you 'patch' the original rasters (height or sat/mask) in correct places?

yup ..exactly.

[lecholas 2]

what processes do you have in mind??? I use QGIS a lot it's a powerfull tool, but one thing I'm afraid is canvas drawing or in other words if you have a lot of shapes loaded it's being very slow.

My idea is to use Blender to load even shapefiles and use them for example to generate forest... I did this for my diploma thesis, all processing was done in PostGIS.

The idea behind this was watching movies and pdfs presenting the tools for VBS -

and TerraSim (I tried to convince my boss that one of this programs would be nice to have to make models for ArcScene... ;) ) and it can be described as using gis data (vector or raster, file or or service based) directly in one program to generate consistent (or 'correlated') data for Arma maps. The example you wrote about is one of the ideas - generation of vegetation based on vector land cover data (eg. with buffer-based definable areas for different density or preferably height of vegetation). Or an option to generate a defined vegetation type along roads, or other features from gis data. It could look like that: you define some settings for your vector/raster land cover layers, choose a raster source for sat mask (eg. WMS-based) and elevation model, draw a square extent and export the data package (sat and dem rasters, pbl file, maybe layers.cfg, txt files for vegetation import in Visitor3, rasterized vector data for the purpose of creating mask layer... A bit of automatization of the process which I used during the creation of my still WIP map:

.

The more difficult things would be creation of roads based on real vector data (by 'creation of roads' I mean: road objects network, raster mask for roads, maybe raster layer for blending with sat mask, vegetation along the road - all at once) or generation of other human made objects.

Ideally, all the source data (quasi-ortophoto, DEM, land cover, building footprints) could come from one origin - eg. laser scanning. This way it would really be 'correlated'... but that's not for QGIS (as a matter of fact it's more like for ArcGIS 10.1, but it could be too much even for that software).