State of arma 3 tools - july 2015

[Snake Man 407]

Back in september 2014 when I did VTE ArmA 3 Preview latest update, I had to do it with arma2 tools because arma3 tools were to quote pettka himself:

very broken

Now I'd like to hear from you guys some update for july 2015, how is the situation with the tools. Here is few specific questions / remarks:

- terrainbuilder satellite "tartan" / overlap issue on arma2 terrains. appears to be arma3.exe bug!? <- said to be fixed in v1.46 but its not?

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=23685

http://i.imgur.com/LufQ9Ff.jpg

- arma 3 tools conflict with arma 2 v2.5.1 tools of which binarize starts to give errors once arma3 tools are installed.

- terrainbuilder is buggy overall, feedback tracker and forum posts are filled with these kinds of posts / info

- http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=20199 arma3tools broken in every manner hehe, also comments have instructions for bat use

- buldozer? -exThreads=0 has to be set explicitly. Otherwise the engine determines what is most suitable to your system. without this config buldozer is sluggish or something?

- terrainbuilder can we even import 40960 x 40960 resolution satellites?

In nutshell; is arma3 editing with these tools viable at present time? Any info on the state of arma3 tools would be much appreciated.

[Richie 330]

Tartan bug was sort of fixed in 1.46, some terrain sizes had issues, reports are that this is now totally fixed in the current dev build :) so in 1.48 it should be fixed for all.

Terrain builder i've not had any issues with, next update will allow you to use settings you want and not get the misleading 'Satellite does not exist' error, BD i rarely use and only for checking roads link correctly, I use Neos MapBuilder for all my object placement.

The rest i either don't use or haven't tried.

[wantafanta 13]

ive gotten 40960x40960 satellite imagery to import.. i split it into 4 20480x20480 tiles and saves em as a .bmp instead of a PNG. dont know if it will actually build yet since im working on a different project but ive almost had it with terrain builder. ill probably just stop working on my map until we see some improvements to the tools (to be honest, i get quite envious when looking at the VBS3 dev ref and seeing that they get an actually functioning version of visitor with working clutter thumbnail previews and all that jazz, not to mention the landbuilder modules)

[Tom_48_97 523]

I had the intention to reply to your PM today but since there's this topic, let's go :)

(in brief, short answers)

- terrainbuilder satellite "tartan" / overlap issue on arma2 terrains. appears to be arma3.exe bug!? <- said to be fixed in v1.46 but its not?

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=23685

http://i.imgur.com/LufQ9Ff.jpg

This issue has been fixed in the development branch (1.47+), meaning it'll be soon in the main branch, just a matter of time :)

For the record, I updated the ticket you mentioned :rolleyes:

- arma 3 tools conflict with arma 2 v2.5.1 tools of which binarize starts to give errors once arma3 tools are installed.

Like we already said, BI Tools and Arma 3 Tools are not compatible and shouldn't be installed in the same computer.

- terrainbuilder is buggy overall, feedback tracker and forum posts are filled with these kinds of posts / info

All I can say is Terrain Builder is under active development, so, the situation will get better and better. I will share more information later, but yes, we're aware of the issues and yes, it's planned to fixed them.

- http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=20199 arma3tools broken in every manner hehe, also comments have instructions for bat use

Regarding this kind of issue, this is not as simple, in many cases, it's because of the OS itself. For example, the batch scripts cannot run properly when the env var PATH is incorrect, which appeared to be one of the top causes. For what I've seen, the cause is different in pretty much every cases.

- buldozer? -exThreads=0 has to be set explicitly. Otherwise the engine determines what is most suitable to your system. without this config buldozer is sluggish or something?

BuldozerConfigurator generates the appropriate command line for buldozer ;)

- terrainbuilder can we even import 40960 x 40960 resolution satellites?

Regarding that, I'm not a terrain artist but it seems very big and could be hard to maintain, polish and also about the masks etc.... Do you really need such size? Edited July 2, 2015 by tom_48_97
same computer, not place :)

[badluckburt 78]

- terrainbuilder can we even import 40960 x 40960 resolution satellites?

I don't know if it's possible to import it as one file (very few programs handle images with that many pixels) but you can chop it up in tiles and import it that way, 4 tiles of 10240x10240 should already be small enough.

[Richie 330]

- terrainbuilder can we even import 40960 x 40960 resolution satellites?

It took a long long time (14hrs) to import but i just added a 57,344x57,344 sat.png in 1 go :) http://i.imgur.com/cP7uckP.png

So 40,960 should be possible, i see no reason why not if bigger works.

[Snake Man 407]

Like we already said, BI Tools and Arma 3 Tools are not compatible and shouldn't be installed in the same place.

Same place? You mean same directory or same computer?

Obviously I had the tools installed to separate directories. You only had to install (and run once I recall) the arma3 tools when the good old arma2 binarize started to puke error in the logs.

Assuming you mean same computer, then this is very unfortunate attitude from bis, making modders choose between engine versions. Seeing how arma3 as a whole is currently, I'll choose arma2 any day of the week.

[badluckburt 78]

It took a long long time (14hrs) to import but i just added a 57,344x57,344 sat.png in 1 go :)

Just in case you didn't know, every image format other than PNG imports a lot faster :) I personally use BMPs as they seem to be the fastest.

[Richie 330]

Just in case you didn't know, every image format other than PNG imports a lot faster :) I personally use BMPs as they seem to be the fastest.

For a normal terrain i would but a sat @ 57,344x57,344 in .bmp would be massive, using .png was a nicer file size and i left it over night, good tip though, thanks :)

[Uro 220]

terrainbuilder can we even import 40960 x 40960 resolution satellites?

Regarding that, I'm not a terrain artist but it seems very big and could be hard to maintain, polish and also about the masks etc.... Do you really need such size?

I'm working with 4x20480 images tiled 2x2 giving me an overall Sat/Surface mask of 40960 - The reason being its easier to edit 1/4 of my masks and refresh from sources to the applicable area of terrain and it is much faster than re-importing or refreshing a 40960x40960 single image.

As already mentioned in this thread working with large 40960x40960 files in image editing software is cumbersome due to the massive image size..import times in Terrain Builder are longer too.

Regarding filetype I save my images as TIFF's over BMP or PNG. I use ZIP compression on the TIFF's while saving to shrink the filesize down.

@tom_48_07 - RE: http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=23685

The issues I referenced on the FB tracker - tartan map and mapframe/default satellite file doesnt exist error have been squashed with the latest dev branch versions of Arma3 and A3Tools - I now have a much more workable sat/surface tilesize of 512x512 and TB is accepting my tiled sat/surface images at thier full size - getting my sat/surface masks down to 1m/px - with no tartan :D

I'm willing to pay the price of long build times with these settings (many many tiles!) due to the extra levels of detail my terrain now has and the extra flexibility I have with the much smaller tilesize :)

Please pass thanks onto everyone involved in fixing these major issues for us - I look forward in seeing what future updates to TB will bring to the table :)