Visitor 3 Quick Tutorial

[Allie 0]

Bad to hear Opteryx, hope to see you back on line soon mate.

Gonne be a real miss here on the forum, you have set of a lot of us island makers, gave us a lot of very good input on how to struggle our ways true visitor.

Really hope to see you back soon, i presume you still will have access to your PC, so i hope when your back you bring with you a nice Arma map mate

Later dude,

Allie

[Allie 0]

Thanks again mate.

Ok there are 2 different versions of visitor out there , get the latest one fist, be sure of that.

The whole lot.

Ok the latest version will do all the conversion for you EXCEPT the detailed textures in your DATA folder !

These you have to convert from PNG format to PAA format.

Tool to do that: Texview2, it comes with the latest download.

Then in same DATA folder you have RVMAT files for each set of textures, right?, inside these RVMAT files you need to change the letters PNG in each path to PAA, also check the paths itself !!!!!!

Then in you SOURCE folder find the LAYERS.CFG file, inside find the paths and names for the textures, same here, change PNG to PAA, and mind the paths themself !!!!

You dont have to change the PNG for the LEGEND.PNG, just leave that one alone !!

Only then you can go into visitor and import the sat and mask pictures

And then start bulldozer to convert and show you a result.

Really hope this helps, but be prepared, this island making for arma is not for quiters and pussys.

P.S. have all settings right ??, this just sample

http://img218.imageshack.us/my.php?image=settingsnc9.jpg

Have fun, later

Allie

[mechastalin 0]

Thanks. got it working with textures now.

Edit: Now I have a different problem, the island has textures in buldozer but not ingame.

[Allie 0]

What are you saying ??

It shows u textures in visitor but not ingame, ok this must be the way you pack it then, do you have other errors when loading your map ?

When packing your map you leave the data folder untouched, dont remove anything from here.

I allways packed(pbo) my island with kegetys pbo'er, but now i'm using the binpbo tool from bis, this one packs your map straight out of your working directory to a temp folder.

If you have no errors when starting bulldozer and textures show right i presume you do some wrong when packing your map to PBO format.

Letmeknow,

Allie

[-10thMT-Tack-Up 0]

Quote[/b] ]IMPORT AND PNG TO PAA CONVERSION

=======================================

So now you're ready to import your Satellite and Mask textures, this can be one of the more time consuming thing when working with Visitor, but with the given example here I'd imagine the process to rather quick.

#Step 1: Go to Tools--> "Import Satellite + Mask.." now you get the choice if you want to generate you layers RVMATs in binary or text, by default it should be set to binary, if not select binary and press OK.

#Step 2: Now you select what images you're going to use as Sat/Mask and your layers.cfg. open them up, in succession it should be:

nr 1: Satellite maps

nr 2: Layers.cfg

nr.3: Mask

Note- If this process fails somewhere along the line and Visitor crashes, it's most likely to do with an error in one of the texture paths or image size, check everything RVMATs, Layers.cfg Visitor settings and again texture sizes. Even the most minute error such as a missing " can crash everything, so be certain everything is correct.

So what do i do, i checked the mask and that is 2048 x 2048 and the sat is 580 x580. Is that the problem?

[luki 53]

Sat and Mask textures must have the same size

[-10thMT-Tack-Up 0]

ok changed them, however i still got that same error.

[fasad 1]

Tack-Up, check that your project parameters meet the requirements, specifically the values you've used in the satellite grid calculator. Rules can be found in the wiki.

[hypno toad 0]

Do we have to go inside every single RVMAT and reset the path to all of them, if so, I give up on this whole mapping thing. I am not doing to to like all 150 of them.

[fasad 1]

It takes about 10 seconds to replace the relevant text in all rvmats of your project in one operation with any decent freeware text editor.

[-IC-Wedge 0]

Quote[/b] ]hypno toad Posted on Nov. 25 2007,06:24Do we have to go inside every single RVMAT and reset the path to all of them, if so, I give up on this whole mapping thing. I am not doing to to like all 150 of them.

you should only have to change the RVMAT paths in the data foler not in the layers folder

if thats what your refering to if not then ignore me

[Banksy 0]

ok I have followed the tutorial word for word and tried this three times each with some form of result. I can see the map both in visitor and also buldozer, my problem is all I get in buldozer is white terrain, I have no errors when loading however I get no textures of any form in buldozer. I have also added the objects can place them on the map however when I start buldozer I get a box saying: -

Cannot load Texture

ca\plants\data\ban_4_lod_ca.paa

So help from here would be good.

So quick update it would appear that I get no colour in anything everything is white, plants, rocks, buildings etc.

OK got a little help found my mistake and also that the Layer folder for some reason didn't or won't save in my P:\mymap\data foler it just stores as P:\Layers, converted the *.png file to *.paa files (thanks to a guru with code) and low and behold got something other than grey/whit I now have the sat_lco as my texture, for some reason still do not see the BI textures in buldozer.

Ok then added the CA file to P:\mymap\data and extracted the various addon *.pbo's into it and followed the instructions to get them into Visitor (wroked) the problem is still only get white or black images of the addons and the same similar error code when it comes to starting buldozer, so once again now need help just getting this bit right or am I there already?

[Allie 0]

Pictures

This setting right ? :

The layers folder should be created inside the data folder, this is done by visitor when importing sat and mask_lco.png's

Change "tolafarush" for your maps name.

Later,

Allie

[Daniel 0]

EDIT2: Ok, new problem: I've made my island, it works fine in bulldozer with full texures. However, I don't get any terrain textures in game, with this error message:

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Dan

[Daniel 0]

Anyone know why i'm getting this error? It's a bit of a headache.

Cheers,

Dan

[[aps]gnat 28]

Going to need to see you directory locations for your project ("P:/......", "CA" etc) and an example showing us whats in your "data" directory, as well as an example of whats in your rvmat files there.

Can be complicated, but likely its the wrong directory references in your rvmat files.

[icecoolwrx 0]

i get the same error as [CAS]Daniel, about not opening the material files in the game.. then no texture showing. The material files look like they are scrambled:

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE"> raP       D   

PixelShaderID Terrain1

VertexShaderID Terrain

ambient

fff?

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 €?

diffuse

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forcedDiffuse

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emmisive

   

   

   

   

specular

   

   

   

   

specularPower      Stage0 w

  Stage1 ¸

  TexGen3 ù

  TexGen4

  TexGen0     TexGen1 †   TexGen2   Stage2 ˆ   Stage3 Â   Stage4   D   

texture mymap\data\Layers\S_003_003_lco.png

texGen   ¸

 

texture mymap\data\Layers\M_003_003_lco.png

texGen   ù

 

uvSource worldPos  uvTransform $

 

 

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texture MyMap\data\pisekplaz_mco.png

texGen     Â  

texture MyMap\data\pisekplaz_detail_nohq.paa

texGen

    

texture MyMap\data\pisekplaz_detail_co.paa

texGen

  D       

Proably why it cant open it?

[opteryx 1562]

You have checked the binarize rvmat's option when importing sat/mask. As to why you get no textures in game is probably cause you haven't converted your sat raster from png to paa. This is done automatically when starting Buldozer for the first time after sat/mask import (provided you have the newest tool suite release candidate).

[icecoolwrx 0]

ohhh that be why... I turned off the binarize for the pbo and now it works...was doubling the binarize??

Thanks for the great tutorial and reply!

[Daniel 0]

Cool! Things got a bit messy so i'll try through the tut from scratch.

[ProwlerWolf 0]

Thanks for the awesome tutorial Opteryx!

After about 6 hours and a few hair ripping moments I got it all right the very first time while reading through your tutorial and it looked good apart from the Sat_LCO being a crappy cartoony photshop job. I just need to figure out why the water level is not what I expect it to be when I am building the map and viewing it in Visitor3.

So I have a few questions.

The three tries I did after reading the tutorial came out with the water level being too high or too low in bulldozer. Sometimes I end up with a barren flat land with a few hills in the center or I get a smaller island then expected with my mountainous peeks poking out of the water like the tip of an iceberg. I am sure I am missing a step somewhere but can you give any suggestions for what to look for? I'll give it one more try from scratch and see what happens.

Today I also attempted to import a satelite hightmap from 3DEM and it appears to look perfect in Wilber's 2d pane as described in another tutorial, but when I attempt to import it into Visitor3 I get an error. A hint would be the 3d image in Wilber which shows the height of the image spiking. This is pretty advanced stuff I know but perhapse you had an idea of what I am doing wrong before opening it in Wilber. I thought the problem was in the Islandname.pbl which was supplied in the tutorial. Are any of the values supposed to be changed apart from the name of the island? What else would cause the island to spike in the 3d preview?

I will keep chipping away at these issues as it's only been 24 hours since I started working on this and hopefully I can get to work on a decent island with a much more detailed Sat_LCO and maybe some roads... placing objects down is easy enough but some things like making land flat for cities and airstrips is just way beyond my level of understanding.

I really enjoy figuring out these problems but I really could use some help here.

Thanks for helping me get this point though, you have done a great service!

[Αplion 1122]

@ProwlerWolf - here what I did.

Following exactly the instuctions of another post, I had my terrain extracted from 3DEM in .ter format.

After that, imported in Wilbur (as terragen file) and as it was looked ok I exported it saving as surface PNG.

I've create a .pbl file as described in Opteryx tutorial using the name of my previously created PNG from Wilbur.

I import it in Visitor 3 as also described in Opteryx tutorial and it was fine. Finally I've "played" a little with erosion in order to have more smooth terrain and after that ................ (see Opteryx tutor)

Regarding the height take a look in your .pbl file for min and max height values.

[ProwlerWolf 0]

Thanks for the help. I actually just found out what I did wrong as I was not putting the right numbers into the calculator in Visitor 3. which also solved my 3DEM troubles. All is good!

[Ike_fin 0]

Im trying to change textures on my map but even i double checked every step, i only get only one same basic green texture for whole map.

Any ideas whats wrong? I dont get any errors either.

[opteryx 1562]

Im trying to change textures on my map but even i double checked every step, i only get only one same basic green texture for whole map.

Any ideas whats wrong? I dont get any errors either.

You mean detail texture? If so, is your mask 100% correct rgb values correlating with the layers.cfg? Do you have more than 4 different surface types per segment?