Simple ArmA 2 Terrain Tutorial

[luki 53]

What the tutorial will deal with:

* Setup Editing Tools 2

* Preparing the Working folder

* Setup Visitor & The Landscape

* Binarizing your world properly.

* Adding Objects

* Add more Surfaces

* Base sample map for understanding

ArmA_2_Terrain_Tutorial

PS: Plz only serious Q&A inhere. pm@snake

Edited September 2, 2009 by Atsche

[icebreakr 3159]

SgtAce *thumbs up*!

You've been a great help (I've managed to fix Panthera v2.0 clutter & configs for A2) and its absolutely amazing to see that community helps out "noobs" in editing and not BIS itself...

Edited September 2, 2009 by IceBreakr

[Snake Man 407]

SgtAce are you the P85 TEAM person in BIS Wiki?

[ph00nix 10]

hi,

I have a problem. When I want to pack the addon file I get this error message:

My P:/ca folder looks like this:

(I have an arma1 folder in which contains old files from other tutorials)

The copy_cpp.bat created me a folder thats includes arma1 in the path: P:\TUT\ca\arma1\SampleMap\config.cpp. Wheres I have all files of the project in the TUT\TUT_samplemap folder.

So I have 2 config.cpp one with 2 kb one with 12 kb.

Edited September 2, 2009 by ph00nix

[Sgt.Spoetnik 10]

Thx SgtAce, great stuff that tutorial, Island making have become a little easier:D

[prowler.wolf 0]

Great work SgtAce, this will help a lot of people in the future. :)

[landdon 0]

I have follow the Tutorial, but I the following error "Cannot load material file tut\tut_samplemap\data\layers\p_000_000_l00.rvmat."

[luki 53]

Check the final pbo if the stuff is really in there (you can also check the BIN Temp foldier), otherwise you missed something.

[anim8or 10]

@Landdon

Did you select text mode for saving the rvmat's as mentioned when importing the satellite & mask?

[El Mariachi 0]

Note:

if importing a greyscale .png, make sure it is set to 16 bit and greyscale in the png options (for instance, in Photoshop cs2, the "mode" option at the top should be set to greyscale and 16 bit). Else, your imported terrain will be pinched vertically in visitor (i.e. a 2048x2048 texture will show as 2048x1024 and will be 'stretched')

8 bit rgb color for both the satellite mask and terrain type mask.

[anarres 10]

Everything is fine until I get to import the P:\TUT\TUT_SampleMap\Source\mask_lco.png, and I get the error :

error loading p:\tut\tut_sampleMap\source\mapLegend.png

[[aps]gnat 28]

- Have you filled in the TOOLS->PROJECT PREFERANCES per the instructions?

- Is the mapLegend.png in that directory?

[anarres 10]

apologies, I seem to have put the directories as P:\TUT\TUT_SampleMap\TUT_SampleMap and this caused the import to fail. Correctly unpacking in the format as explained works!

Thanks, sorry for the misaligned post, hopefully at least others will not make the same unpacking mistake I overlooked.

[ebanks129 10]

When i connect to buldozer no textures show up. Is that normal? or is it just suppose to be a white terrain?

[W0lle 1052]

aaaaaa

Please refrain from spamming the forums or you make us angry....

[luki 53]

When i connect to buldozer no textures show up. Is that normal? or is it just suppose to be a white terrain?

Did you impoirted the Sat and Mask, otherwise you missed something.

(will try to update the whole thing a bit in the next days)

[Sgt.Spoetnik 10]

hi, I have same problem when connecting to buldozer, i get a message saying;

"arma2-Cannot load texture tut\tut_samplemap\data\layers\s_000_000_ico.paa"

i followed all the steps but dont know where the problem is,all maps and files are in there place.

even in visitor i cant see the textures, only the height map.

later

[Planck 1]

Presuming your tools suite and P: drive is set up correctly ...

If you have generated your layers, by using Tools ... Import Satellite + Mask with your .pew file loaded into Visitor, have you have set your 'Folder - Textures' path correctly.

Tools ... Project Preferences

This tells Visitor and Buldozer where your terrain textures and layers are.

For example:

myislandprojectfolderinP:root\data

This mean, my island project folder (in P: root) contains a data folder where the files can be found.

If this is not set correctly then Visitor and Buldozer won't find them.

Incidentally, when generating your layers files make sure Buldozer is not running.

Planck

[[aps]gnat 28]

Incidentally, when generating your layers files make sure Buldozer is not running.

But start Buldozer after you have imported the Layer config, Sat and Layer PNG files.

A DOS box should appear and it'll tell you its converting a bunch of textures.

Once its finished and after a short time delay, that box will disappear, and then you can click on the Buldozer window to (hopefully) view you terrain.

[Alliexx 10]

Hi all,

I just created this in half an hour, i will provide you with 2 download links, 1 is the empty project, you have to do all the compiling, importing your terrain(provided) and importing of the textures yourself. You also have to setup your P: drive yourself. The empty project is ONLY the PROJECT FOLDER !, so read the manual from SgtAce carefully, specially about the ADOONS in your P:\CA folder ! Aslo pay attention to the extraction of all the *.CPP config files to your "TAG" folder( part about the XCOPY in manual from SgtAce).

link empty project: ftp://ftp.fraghaus.com/arma/satpics/testmapempty.rar

The second download is the whole project, all is done for you, you can open it up in visitor and start editing or start BinPbo it straight away, if you have setup your P:\CA folder correctly. As a refferance you can see the P:\test\ca folder for what addons to extract.

link full project: ftp://ftp.fraghaus.com/arma/satpics/testalldone.rar

Its all in the "config" file, where most people go wrong, i wont say mine is ok, because i still have problems too, maybe the clutter part in this sample is buggy too, i have not had the time to check it out, i just needed myself an easy small and quickly compilable test map to test out things quickly. In the end it became a whole island, and why not share it with you guys.

This island making is taking a long time, i'm still months away from a test version. :(

Still i hope more people will take the time to make them, it can make the game so much more fun.

Greetings,

Alphons

P.S. For BIS guys, what about your Plant, Roads and other addons from game 1, This is going to give compatibility problems, are we allowed to release them with our own created islands ? (copyrights), i mean in the first game we have been given the open roads, so we could edit with them. People now, who NOT have bought "game1", and i give them the Game1 roads pbo's ???? Please elaborate with me.

[icebreakr 3159]

AFAIK BIS allows us to use A1 content for new addons (its on devheaven somewhere).

[Alliexx 10]

So i can use these addons, give them a different name, ( so we wont have conflicts with people starting to distribute all kinds of versions of Plants and Roads) and provide people with it with my island?

I havent found out how to distribute them "inside" my island yet, but i will find a way, it was possible in arma1 so there must be a way.

Its pure for conflicts in the future, i mean its at the moment already a madhouse on the internet with addons for this game, conflicts and such.

So i like to release only some complete addon, without seperate PBO's, all addons used by me will have a unique name, so conflicts should be at a minimum.

Also to overcome the problem of people releasing parts of plants, in a folder called plants/roads. Bla Bla Bla, smoked myself retarded again,

later,

Allie

[icewindo 29]

AFAIK BIS allows us to use A1 content for new addons (its on devheaven somewhere).

Yep the MLOD license clearly states you are allowed to use the models for ArmA1+expansions and following sequels.

"1) Bohemia Interactive grants to you a personal, nonexclusive License to open, modify and distribute the ArmA Sample Models for the purpose of designing, developing, testing, and producing non-commercial game content for PC game ArmA and its sequels or expansion packs."

Also see:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=66013

Edited September 28, 2009 by Icewindo

[[aps]gnat 28]

I havent found out how to distribute them "inside" my island yet, but i will find a way, it was possible in arma1 so there must be a way.

See;

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=87125

Its currently allowing me to add custom rocks and runway cross-ways to my Sands terrain.

[Alliexx 10]

Hi all,

I have managed to pack addons inside my island, without any errors :)

Thanks for the info about the open sample addons from BIS, i'm really bad at reading ALL, i mean there is so much, that i didn't read the part about the open addons license agreement, i didn't know that.

Thanks again,

Allie

NOTE: If i'm home i'll explain with a sample what i did.