Terrain Builder, unstable and unusable at high res

[paranoid_giraffe 14]

Although I am a noob to making terrains, I have been somewhat familiar with the work flow for using TB for a couple months. I still don't understand all of the texture sizing and what they mean, but this program crashes more than a drunk old lady. It has crashed today probably a few hundred times. 

 

I am trying to make a 20km x 20km terrain using a geotiff (8192x8192) that I converted from a .ter in QGIS, originally exported from World Machine. I have no problems using lower resolution data, but what is the point of making a nice looking terrain if your height map is a blocky low res mess? TB crashes when I load the program, it crashes when I rebuild my terrain, it crashes on the final step of trying to generate layers, it crashes when I save, it crashes when I move the mouse, it crashes when I try to reimport sat or terrain maps, it crashes when it tries to generate a .t4w file, and it crashes when it generates a .wrp. Keep in mind, this is all before I've even added any objects. If I am lucky enough to make it through without crashes, then mikero's tools hang indefinitely while trying to binarise (yes, I left it go for 3 hours before I decided I wasn't being impatient). None of this happened when I used 4096x4096 resolution for scale testing.

 

Are there any good practices to use to avoid such frequent crashes? How do you make large worlds with a good resolution if it crashes on high res data? 

 

For reference, I used to use a i5-4670k and 16GB of DDR3 RAM. The program never seemed to use much CPU power or memory anyway but I recently upgraded to an i7-7700k with 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and have seen absolutely no improvement. Has this program always been this unstable and difficult to use? How do the devs even use it to make a map when hardware is capable of handling a heavy load but the software doesn't work? Is this my fault or TB?

 

This software is incredibly infuriating and inconsistent to say the least.

[W4lly63 82]

i think iisnt 8192 the problem .... im using the same computer type  

only one difference i have imported geotiff in L3DT Pro and exported as  asc. 

and using  this mapframe settings without problems

 

 

[RoF 241]

You have to set TerrainBuilder.exe in the arma 3 tools folder to XP mode, for it to be stable.

 

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-windows-vista-compatibility-mode/

 

Dont worry about the vista bit, its same on all windows

[paranoid_giraffe 14]

3 hours ago, RoF said:

You have to set TerrainBuilder.exe in the arma 3 tools folder to XP mode, for it to be stable.

 

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-windows-vista-compatibility-mode/

 

Dont worry about the vista bit, its same on all windows

My goodness, you have saved me from a lot of stress.

 

Should I run pboproject in compatibility as well? It's still hanging after attempting to binarise

[RoF 241]

54 minutes ago, paranoid_giraffe said:

My goodness, you have saved me from a lot of stress.

 

Should I run pboproject in compatibility as well? It's still hanging after attempting to binarise

 

No pboproject is fine how it is. Try clearing the folders in P:\temp and re exporting .wrp. If that don't fix it, there could be something wrong with you map setup...

[paranoid_giraffe 14]

Instead of hard crashing and closing, TB is now just freezing instead. 

This is what I found in the Arma3Tools.rpt, snipped to the time I was using the TB program. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. This is after I set it to compatibility mode, Windows XP SP3

2017-07-20 10:08:23,949 [INFO]: p:\steam_appid.txt exists and looks good. AppID=107410
2017-07-20 10:08:23,951 [INFO]: FileName adjusted - TerrainBuilder.exe
2017-07-20 10:08:23,951 [INFO]: filePath validated
2017-07-20 10:08:23,952 [INFO]: process ready to be started
2017-07-20 10:08:24,762 [INFO]: Unable to retrieve all process info: Access is denied
2017-07-20 10:08:24,763 [INFO]:    at System.Diagnostics.ProcessManager.OpenProcess(Int32 processId, Int32 access, Boolean throwIfExited)
   at System.Diagnostics.NtProcessManager.GetModuleInfos(Int32 processId, Boolean firstModuleOnly)
   at System.Diagnostics.NtProcessManager.GetFirstModuleInfo(Int32 processId)
   at System.Diagnostics.Process.get_MainModule()
   at Launcher.runInternal.StartProcess(String fileName, String workingDirectory, String arguments)
2017-07-20 10:08:24,763 [INFO]: Process started: TerrainBuilder.exe

Any advice to stabilize this program would be greatly appreciated. 

 

EDIT:

 

I've gotten it stabilized for the most part using the windows compatibility troubleshooter, but it still won't binarise for some reason

[W4lly63 82]

i had same problem WITH TB FREEZEE

create new different folder for  P drive 

load new P drive

use mikero arma3p for extraction

when ask about buldozer from original arma3 directory : yes

put link of TB (arma3tools directory)  from folder on desktop

DONT use arma3tools but open TB from link

open preferences  of TB and insert this settings http://pmc.editing.wiki/doku.php?id=arma3:tools:buldozer 

second line ... first is for object builder....

 

[RoF 241]

6 minutes ago, W4lly63 said:

when ask about buldozer from original arma3 directory : yes

 

 

You don't even need to say yes, that's just the way its worded.

 

@paranoid_giraffe, try xp service pack 2 mode, seen a couple of people on discord saying they use that mode! Are you sure you have all you map samplers settings right and correct coords an image sizes etc

[paranoid_giraffe 14]

1 hour ago, RoF said:

 

You don't even need to say yes, that's just the way its worded.

 

@paranoid_giraffe, try xp service pack 2 mode, seen a couple of people on discord saying they use that mode! Are you sure you have all you map samplers settings right and correct coords an image sizes etc

I've gotten it to stop freezing, etc, and I can rebuild and generate layers without freezing or crashing. These are my mapframe and file properties. 

 

1. rasternew.tif 
   1. 8192x8192
   2. 16 bit
   3. 132 MB
2. mask_Ico.bmp
   1. 8192x8192
   2. 24 bit
   3. 197 MB
3. sat_Ico.bmp
   1. 8192x8192
   2. 24 bit
   3. 192 MB

I even schwacked a few km off the sides to make it a nice round number for cell size ratios for testing. Still doesn't binarize, but everything else is fine. I delete everything in P:\temp, I manually clear the layers folder before making new ones, and I export a new .wrp every time, but it still hangs. I don't know what would have changed, because a few days ago I was iterating through terrains fine until I decided to switch to 8192x8192 resolutions. I even have pics to prove it worked on different resolutions. I am at my wit's end

 

[RoF 241]

I know 8192x8192 use to be buggy, maybe it still is at that cell size :-/

 

For future reference, its better to have a tile size of 512x512, it helps reduce the bug with the sat map at the bottom of maps. That and I find its better for surfaces.

Texture layer should be 32x32 or 40x40

[paranoid_giraffe 14]

35 minutes ago, RoF said:

I know 8192x8192 use to be buggy, maybe it still is at that cell size :-/

 

For future reference, its better to have a tile size of 512x512, it helps reduce the bug with the sat map at the bottom of maps. That and I find its better for surfaces.

Texture layer should be 32x32 or 40x40

Rebuilt and layered at 32x32 with other res's at 4096x4096 and it works fine. I'll try to rebinarize at the higher res but wait a long time

[paranoid_giraffe 14]

I've tried several times with several different settings and I cannot get it to binarize with 8192x8192 data. Is there some other setting I can tweak besides the mapframe properties?

[rossoe 46]

I have been having exactly the same problem with 8k, it's been a very painful experience. I've been working on it for 7 months and now have work arounds but could not find rhyme or reason as to why it's unstable, I can make one edit and it fails to load BD, revert to last working HM then make pretty much the same edit again and BD works - essentially I can only make small edits in BD then test re-loading BD, if it loads I then save off a HM and carry on with another edit. if BD fails I just revert to previous working HM and edit again, I have a massive change log of HM's and save off loads of them. Re unstable behavior in TB, I get around this by only ever showing the surface mask layer in TB, just to get my position when placing camera - then I turn it off again. until I did that TB would crash within a short space of time, and BD would freeze after about 2 mins of use. my map is 40960 and cell size is 5m. 'bludclot' on discord seems to have a good way of workflow to use lower grid size and then upgrade to 8129 at the end of the project?

[W4lly63 82]

23 hours ago, rossoe said:

........ a good way of workflow to use lower grid size and then upgrade to 8129 at the end of the project?

 

yea is possible this way ... but...

for me instability depends on something else .. as I said above use 8192 without problems but .....

windows 7 64 only (windows 10 always freeze) and i work on 2 different computers, installed with the installation P procedure I explained above and compatibility mode that spoke ROF ...

on that with i7 3930k quad channel I can always work for hours doing anything and never freeze ..

while in i5 4690k it just freeze on certain operations but rarely and only if I modify the ground never with objects or layers etc ..

so the influence of hardware on stability is certain .. also because i did not use 2 different installations but i had cloned HD from i5 to i7

[Cole Slaughter 2]

+1