flat terrain 6x6 km

[joske 10]

I am looking for a terrain which is at least 6x6 km (wouldnt mind if it was a bit smaller or bigger) which is completely flat, with normal fresh grass surface on the entire land mass.

Now i thought something like this would not be hard to make in visitor, well i got to say that i was wrong, i have been fumbling around in it for a few days trying out several tutorials, but failing each time.

Now if somebody would be kind enough to post a tutorial how to make this kind of terrain or even build me the described terrain (although i dont't really like the fact that somebody else does my work) if it isnt too much of a hassle.

ps: i checked out and tried several tutorials so you dont't need to link me any existing tutorials.Because i probably already tried them

[SRS 0]

Hi joske,

I understand the tuts confusion and that after having a look around here. The tuts all are helpful. So I think your problems might be elsewhere.

Probably what might be a helpful reference is the one by syn. It is a pdf Armabuildenvironment.pdf. I just looked it up. I know you don't want any links. But keep reading please. I did things a little different from syn. But not different enough to write or explain. It would just be making a Wagon wheel with a different number of spokes.

He explains the scope of an arma mod or addon well. I don't do it exactly the same as he did, I handled the ca space differently. But his way or my way endup with the same results.

The key thing is, his manual explains how arma works. I am looking at it now. If you follow it to the letter, starting from scratch. You should be fine.

If you don't plan to use Oxygen2 you won't need the sample models. I would install all the tools though just incase you might want to model later on.

For just a terrain no buildings or anything you really don't need all the pbos unpacked and setup. But it would only take a little while longer to do it. It would also be there for the future. I didn't unpack all of them myself. But I ran into a building that used a texture in the weapons.pbo. So I had to unpack it and add it. So I may end up unpacking all of them sooner or later anyhow.

Yea reading his pdf here. He explains the folder layout and purpose well. Honestly until you have or understand whats in this pdf syn wrote. I don't think any tutorial would do you any good.

All an Island is? is a height map. There's a dozen different ways to do a heightmap. The mask and sat are explained well at the biki. You can download the detail textures off the internet or use Bohemias. Thats about all visitor uses for an island with no plants or buildings.

You could use clutter for the grass. Anyone here could help you with that when you get to it. It is added via config files. It appears to me that it maps to the mco file. Or maybe any texture files with near enough names. I'm looking at a thread about clutter now.

I wonder why they didn't use a mask for clutter? I must be wrong about how clutter and the texture files work. Otherwise you would have to keep adding textures to add different clutter.

That can't be right. Its decomposed granite for miles where I live. But the plant life varies from where I am compared to a half mile up the hill. The dirt texture is the same but the plant life varies. If I did an island 75 miles in diameter around my house I could use the d.g. texture for dirt but I would need different types of clutter from the 4000 ft. 9000 ft. elevation. I could use just the one texture though d.g. is d.g.

I was just using visitor and arma to try out this procedural texturing software. I guess I will go abit further now and look into the clutter. all i have now is an Island with a few buildings on it for there shadows. Just to see how these procedural textures look on the terrain. I guess I will add some clutter on the other side of the island and see how that works. I can't believe it is mapped to the texture file names. Who know though maybe there is a reason. They had to do it that way. Reading this thread it sure looks that way.

[joske 10]

ok i got a bit further by trying and now i know that you need a terrain which you need to import from an xyz or from a picture, and i need a satellite+mask and that should be more or less enough for my goal.

Now where do you find a terrain and a satellite+mask of a flat area, in some off the tutorials it is stated that you need to make them yourself or download them from google earth, but i dont get how to make them myself and i dont think there is a suitable sat-mask anywhere on google earth, and i dont know how to download it from there.

and as a second problem, when i try to start up buldozer i get an error screen saying "error ocurred loading armalib/armalib.dll" now this might have something to do with the fact that i have armalib installed, but i have tried removing it and buldozer then still doesnt works.

[SRS 0]

the armalib problem I had to search. I found this was a mod, no actually, an addon, no really a pretty nice extention good work kegetys. I downloaded it according to the readme you need to add -noarmalib the bulldozer or arma.exe command line. for arma that would be a desktop shortcut. But in Visitor its in the system preferences. The command line for bulldozer. Yea I just installed it and tested adding the above works for bulldozer. So here is an example of the line from my copy of visitor you will have to alter to fit your directory structure, what window size you want to use. I don't really know if the addontext is required for what your doing but you pry want to add one anyhow. Its expalined in the Visitor manual.

e:\ArmA\ArmA.exe -noarmalib -window -x=1024 -y=768 -addons=P:\armaaddons.txt -cfg=p:\Dozer.cfg -buldozer

more to follow I wonder if I can paste a flat xyz file in one of these posts?

DO you have an image editor or paint program that supports 16 bit grayscale.

Or do you have a terrain editor.

Edited December 2, 2009 by SRS

[joske 10]

thanks for the help on that armalib problem, it is solved now.

as for the questions: for an image editor i only have paint left although i dont think that will work, and i dont have a terrain editor.

[SRS 0]

Ok you will need something better than paint or should I say at least supports 16 bit greyscale images. Paint at least supports .png files nowadays. But I don't think that's enough. I don't know of any free paint programs that support 16 bit. That doesn't mean there aren't any I just never looked for such a beast.

Maybe a different approach more to follow let me check something at daz 3d see if they still have bryce 5.5 for free.

---------- Post added at 01:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:20 PM ----------

Ok it looks like Bryce 5.5 is still available at daz3d for free you will have to register with them to get tyhe serial. Here is a link.

http://www.daz3d.com/i/support/downloads?product=bryce&_m=d

You can create your terrain with this export it as a dem then use microdem to save it in .xyz. You can even create your sat. I don't remember if it supports png files though. But a png converter well irfanview can do that.

Yea get bryce 5.5 and irfanview. I remember bryce well enough to help you there. There is also allot of tuts on Bryce out there. You may not even need my help.

I can help you with all that easypeasylemonsqueezy. Yuk can't believe I just typed that.

Edited December 3, 2009 by SRS

[joske 10]

thx for the link, i would have hoped that i wouldnt need a program outside of the bis tools to make a piece of terrain that is so simple as what i am trying, ah well il try it out.

[SRS 0]

Well you could create the terrain in Visitor. using the elevation tool. But you would still need sat and mask and texture files. You may find Bryce to be fun for many other things. As I said its well documented and supported by its community.

[joske 10]

ok i played around a bit in bryce (i downloaded the demo so i hope that wont interfere) and i think i have an idea how i can form that flat terrain of mine.

now do i need to change sizes or something (i want a 6x6 km map, so in visitor that should be something like 6144x6144 meters) to make it work in visitor?

how do i export the terrain into an xyz or some other file i can use to set up the terrain, how do i get a satmap+mask of the thing, in other words, how do i get the map from bryder to visitor?

[SRS 0]

Sorry I am doing this on the fly with you. Here did I mention you need microdem if not get it as well. If you don't have your flat island in bryce yet then you need to cover the terrain editor in the help and tutorials minimum. Why did you get the demo? You can get the complete for free. Its only 28mb. At least I believe its free you just need to register with daz for a serial key.

Well as long as the demo lets you export a dem you will be fine.

The scope of creating your flat island although simple in bryce maybe more then they want me to cover on the forum here.

But here's a bone...

When you create a terrain and its in the view window. Note on one of the corners of the bounding box theres a series of buttons. The top button is A, the bottom 2 are M and E. If you click on the E. It will open the terraim Editor.

Before doing this it would be a good time to move your mouse to the top of the screen. When the file menu drops down click on help select "help topics". Help should open in your browser. look through the contents for editing terrains. Then go over the section on the terrain editor workspace.

Once you are familiar with the terrain editor the key thing you need to do is use the brush to create your flat terrain. Also create a shore line by blurring, its all there.

The next thing is to click on the grid selector and select 256.

Make sure your island has some black space around all for sides otherwise vistor creates an infinite terrain going out beyond the milky way. I never tried to load such a thing in the game. But I,m sure its not good.

Once your happy with your plane jane island. save it! Make sure your island is selected goto file export object. In the type drop down change from 3ds to usgs dem.

This will export the dem now each pixel of the 256x256 terrain you created is translated to equal 30x30meters in the dem. So when you import it into microdem it will be a 7680x7680 meter island or 7.68 by 7.68 km island.

Once you have it in microdem all were going to do is goto file and savedem as ascii xyz.

Once you give it a name andsave it to your "P:\yourspace\source\terrain\" folder. The ascii export options will popup. Under XY format select UTM under z format select meters (integer). Leave the rest alone well thin should be 1 I think that is the default though. click ok.

The rest and this is covered in the visitor manual. but when you load it in visitor you will have your 7+km flat island.

We can adjust that size from this point.

Post when your at this point or if you get into trouble. I'm trying my best to leave you to this yourself. So spend some time browsing those help files and playing with bryce.

If it is overwhelming for you we may have to correspond another way. I don't think Bohemia wants me giving complete howto's on other tools in this forum.

[joske 10]

i have come to the point where i need to save my terrain as a dem-file, now i can only save it as an metastream file and not as a dem file.

[SRS 0]

Ok now I see whats going on here. Daz no longer offers the free 5.5 which means were stuck. Meta stream is a useless format pretty much. I just looked at my bryce 6.1 it doesn't even import meta stream. Neither does my other terrain editor. Ok I'll pm you my email address. Send me an email. I can convert it to what you need another way.

[icebreakr 3101]

Didn't read the whole post, but why do you need a 3rd party terrain editor for a flat piece of surface? If someone still needs this "island" let me know so I can put it together in 5mins :)

[katipo66 94]

If someone still needs this "island" let me know so I can put it together in 5mins :)

Yes please :D

[joske 10]

I dont need it anymore, also some other guy decided to help me and created the island for me, but apparently there is something wrong with my computer as every time i put over all the stuff he made, into a pbo the whole island turned out to be white instead of the green it was supposed to be. (this also happended with the test island bis provided, and i did put all the necessary layers and other thingies into it)