New to the Arma dev community...questions

[Swan-UK 2]

Hello Everyone!

Before I get on to my questions I will introduce myself a bit. I am coming here with flight simulator scenery development experience (payware), so it seems a lot what we have to do to build terrain in Arma is fairly similar to how we do it in FS which is a good thing. I have been playing Arma series since day 1 and always had an ambition to make my own map, this grew when DayZ came out but basically I was a bit petrified in having to go back to the drawing board to learn how to develop addons for a platform other than FS, I said there are some similarities which is true, although some snippets of things are incredibly awkward! but hey, I am not expecting to come  here with FS experience and being able to walk through everything with ease to get what I want in Arma 3.

After months of watching and reading  tutorials on top of studying existing files, I have started to (finally) create my own map. The map is 40960x40960m, satellite is 40960px.. so 1 px/m covering my home city of Leicester to it's real scale. So far I just have a few roads and forests placed, works in-game not a problem and I must say looks fantastic and feels it on my own personal achievements!

So for my questions, I have not really seen a post which answers exactly so I will ask here

 

1.) If my satellite photo is 40960px, does my height map and surface mask need to be the same?
2.) Since I am building my home city of Leicester, you will find it is almost at the heart of England.. so not an island - I am using 30m SRTM data, I am aware Arma only supports water at absolute 0, but is there a work around so I can have in land rivers, reservoirs and canals?
3.) My modeling software is Autodesk 3ds Max 9 and Autodesk 3ds Max 2015, are there available SDK's so that I can model and export models right out of 3ds max that will be compatible for Arma?
4.) My colleague who works with me on my FS scenery products said I am an absolute maniac to be making the city of Leicester in full scale for Arma 3, does he have a point? :D
5.) If I have already created my proper terrain in Terrain Builder (which I have), can I simply edit the satellite and mask images and have them updated or will I need to re-compile all again?

That's all, (for now), I apreciate you taking the time to read this post and hopefully be able to answer my questions

Best Regards
Darren (Swan)

Edited March 16, 2017 by Swan-UK
Added question 5

[m1lkm8n 411]

1. Technically no. While your total terrain size and masks can differ in your case with such a large terrain it makes it quite harder to do so. So for instance let's make the terrain size smaller. Let's say you had a total terrain size of 20480x20480. If you were to use a sat map and mask of 40960x40960 that would give you a .5m/per pixel resolution as aposed to what you have of 1m/per pixel a 1:1 ratio. 

 

2. Yes. You can use a water object to place water above sea level. The only disadvantage is that the water shader used for the object does not play well with the new volumetric fog. If you look at my YouTube videos you can see how to create these objects. 

 

3. This one I can't really speak too. Hopefully ones else can pop in and answer this question. 

 

4. We'll it depends. It takes quite a while placing objects. But if it's something you are dedicated to do it can be done. I however generally recommend as a first terrain to start small. Something around 5kmx5km. You can always add on to the terrain and make it bigger later if you find you do like creating terrains. 

 

5. Any changes to the sat map need to exported and converted to paa files. I tend to keep my terrain images separate from my wrp for this reason. So I can just export the image convert and create a pbo without binarize fooling around with thr wrp again since that usually is not effected by just editing sat and mask images. 

[musicshaggy 10]

3. You have to define LOD's, Shadows, Collisions in Object Builder (Oxygen) by yourself, also you have to write down a cfg for vehicles.

[RoF 241]

You won't be able to make Leicester 1:1, there is way too many buildings! But what you can do, is add parks in to space it out a bit. Or if you are going by the sat map, add a house for every 2 -3 houses on the sat map. Arma is all about sacrifice lol

 

I hope you make it, we need more UK maps

[Tankbuster 1747]

You could model Claudio's tears with particles!

[Swan-UK 2]

5 hours ago, RoF said:

You won't be able to make Leicester 1:1, there is way too many buildings! But what you can do, is add parks in to space it out a bit. Or if you are going by the sat map, add a house for every 2 -3 houses on the sat map. Arma is all about sacrifice lol

 

I hope you make it, we need more UK maps

I don't plan to make it 1:1, that is impossible but I am sure I can do the houses etc as most buildings around here are the same, so 10 or 15 different house models.. each with 5 different textures for variation, I am used to sitting for days on end placing objects so I don't think this will bother me, it's some what easier to what I normally do :D.

M1lkm8n - Thank you very much for answering these questions, so if I make changes to the sat or mask I just hit the "generate layers" button again in the samplers page?

MusicShaggy - Noted, though I don't plan on doing any vehicles, just strictly buildings, can 02 imports .max or .3ds files?

Tankbuster - No comment, haha!

[RoF 241]

There is a discord for terrain makers, it's a good place to get quick help. The link is in my sig, also there is a huge amount of info on the pmc wiki now, all written by snakeman who lives on Discord

 

Good luck with your terrain

[m1lkm8n 411]

Well when you make changes to the sat/mask you need to refresh the images from the source and then yes click generate layers