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Homer Johnston

Script / Tool suggestion box

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how about a tool that would be easier to create an island, with out the use of going through many steps. A tool that can also help texture the ground and allow us to place objects in the island. Smething that is not so suffisticated, :)

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A great thing for me as experience from working on my island Nicosia is having a tool

so that it paints forests, but not over objects! for instance, when ive put my roads, then

put a forest around the road, to make the road more into the forest/dark style etc, the trees go all over the road and planted all over the place, something that would stop trees being on top of the road would be great! for me, Nicosia was annoying when i had to go over every single road to remove trees that were all in the way etc...

Hope you get what i mean, lol...

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how about a tool that would be easier to create an island, with out the use of going through many steps

A one click island maker..... cool! hehe... unlikely tho...

To be honest, a wierd, masochistic part of myself kinda likes the fact that its hard to make an island and it takes absolute ages... if there were a simple point n click tool that banged them out, we'd have hundreds of islands - and they'd all look the same... whereas right now we have only a few - and they all look VERY different...

A tool that can also help texture the ground

L3DT will do this - in as sophisticated or simple a style as you want - and make you a matching Sat and Mask_lco too - Google for "L3DT" and take a look at the demo!

Though what I've just been saying above applies here - you can tell an L3DT island - its the nature of using a tool - like getting a machine to do paintings - you lose the individuality...

Still, having said that - its a good way of getting a "base" mask and sat for subsequent enhancing - which is when you can add that individuality back in again... check out IceBreakrs more recent stuff - he's used L3DT and you almost can't tell! :D

and allow us to place objects in the island

Shezans World Tools does this....

(both L3DT and World Tools ARE pretty sophisticated programs, but with a bit of reading and messing around you'll find that you pick them up quite quickly, and they're both VERY powerful tools.... L3DT will make you hi-res, immediately usable, as many ground textures as you want, Sat and Mask_lco's with about half a dozen clicks, and - if you've taken time to properly prepare a mask, World tools will place a million trees of as many different types as you want, arranged by ground elevation - if you want - with a similar half dozen mouseclicks!...

For L3DT - learn the program, then make yourself a Custom Climate...

For WorldTools - learn the program, then make yourself a Custom Forests Mask...

something that would stop trees being on top of the road would be great!

If you place trees by hand - watch out for roads!? ;)

If you're placing trees via a mask - either with maskmapper or with WorldTools - overlay the Roads mask you used to make roads appear on your Sat_lco over the top of your Forest mask in Photoshop... subtract one from the other, and you'll be left with a forest mask that has blank stripes where all the roads were - you can then use that mask to place forests and there will be no trees on roads...

B

Edited by Bushlurker

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If you place trees by hand - simply watch out for roads! ;)

If you're placing trees via a mask - either with maskmapper or with WorldTools - overlay the Roads mask you used to make roads appear on your Sat_lco over the top of your Forest mask in Photoshop... subtract one from the other, and you'll be left with a forest mask that has blank stripes where all the roads were - you can then use that mask to place forests and there will be no trees on roads...

B

I quote everything from Bushlurker.

To clean roads you can use the CLEAR ROADS script that comes out of the box with Visitor3. Simply select the whole road and surrounding trees and run the script.

Works like a charm :)

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not exactly is that all isalnds would look the same, if it was easy to use. Im trying really hard to learn L3DT and Visitor3 but school and work dont leave time to be 24/7 on it. especially with 12 - 16 hr shifts at work and finishing my BS(not bull s**t) degree online :( in my spare time.

Thats why it be good to just have a tool, that would allow you to sketch your island, pass it to one that will add the detail of mountains etc, and then pass it to Visitor to add stuff to it (houses, roads, trees). That be bad@ss, but i doubt theres a tool that exists out there that could perform such.

Or just do blank terrain islands and work with them with mission editor, to add buildings and stuff to it, but how would they remain permanent is the question?

Edited by Civilian_88

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Or just do blank terrain islands and work with them with mission editor, to add buildings and stuff to it, but how would they remain permanent is the question?

Permanently connected to the mission itself.

Try placing 600.000 trees with mission maker and let me know :)

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Thats why it be good to just have a tool, that would allow you to sketch your island, pass it to one that will add the detail of mountains etc, and then pass it to Visitor to add stuff to it (houses, roads, trees). That be bad@ss, but i doubt theres a tool that exists out there that could perform such.

...well, this isn't far off what you can do with L3DT... I haven't actually used the "design a terrain from scratch" "Design Map" facility it has - which is basically the core of the program - I've merely used some of the heightfield tools for editing... but essentially you can literally import a hand-drawn sketchmap - use the terrain generating facilities to make a landscape from scratch, then use the climate tools to define ground cover - then finally export a pretty much Visitor3-ready Heightfield, Mask and Sat layer..... not bad really!

After that it's just...

define ground textures, configs and .cfg's (a manual copy/edit job)

lay roads (Homers Tool)

place vegetation (Shezans World Tool)

place other objects (World Tool again, plus "Random Object Placer" script, plus good old manual placement)

... and that's it - you made an Island...

A year ago none of these community tools existed - (L3DT is really a commercial venture that can be used for A2, rather than a tool specifically for it)...

Roads took forever... painful section-at-a-time placement - and then you still had to smooth the buggers - now smoothing is really the only area that hasn't yet been upgraded by some clever community person - and the only thing that still takes a lot of time (I'm forever hopeful that some community coding genius will decide to take a look at that script someday..... Homer's learning C++, and has gone awful quiet recently... I take that as potentially a Very Good Sign ;))

Similarly, a year ago the only real "bulk object placement" tool we had was the Random Object Placer script - which actually worked OK - within it's limits... but which can't even begin to compare with World Tools, which does stuff I don't even quite understand yet (always a good sign!;))

So... in effect, new Island Makers have never had it so easy!

B

Edited by Bushlurker

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I already created the island in L3DT now im stuck on sending it to Visitor, I set up all my island info in a folder. Though i dont know what image to send to Visitor the: PNG, JPG.

Im working on a 41 >< 41 island, for the mod we are creating, it gets fraustrating that theres no tutorial or anyone that could help me out at least by advices on how to; (the tutorials that exist, are to narrow, they need to expand; which i know its hard)

On my free time i spend about 4 hours max, I had to smooth out many parts of it using L3Dt but i cant managed to import it to Visitor :(

anyone knows how i could do this?

Edited by Civilian_88

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Yes.

First advice: a 41x41 island is too big even for BIS. If it's your first project and you like to deploy it with a decent quality consider reducing it to 10x10 (that is BIG enough).

Keeping a 41x41 island will produce big headaches if you want to seed some plants on it.

Second advice: from L3DT export the heightmap to png, then check on operations -> heightfield -> "change vertical range" for the min/max range of your island.

Third: Download a sample terrain suggested in one of the fucking unuseful tutorials made by stupids that loose their time to wrote manuals for everyone "but not for me, because i don't need tutorials from anyone", get the .pbl file and set into this file your min/max heights from L3DT heightmap

Fourth: load this terrain into V3.

Finally: before complaining about manuals that are narrow and needs to be expanded be sure to be able to do the basic operations that are explained on those manuals.

If something is still unclear please

1) refer to one of the various tutorials you can find around on this forum

2) use the "search" function on this forum

3) read again the tutorial starting from the concept "i'm a newbie".

4) use again the "search" function, even on google.

5) write your requests in a new thread without using topics related to other issues.

By the way i've followed the above list, starting from scratch and from one of the good tutorials that are STICKY on this forum (yes, they doesn't cover the terrain smoothing using Wilbur or the erosion feature in V3 but they're enough to start).

Welcome aboard, we're waiting for your island :)

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Not much to add to that... export heightfield as .png, adapt the tutorial .pbl file to match the reported L3DT height range as Shezan says - "import terrain from picture" in Visitor, and you're on your way.....

I'll second his "41x41 is a bit big" comment too... Unless an awful lot of your map is planned to be pretty much empty, it'll take you easily a year to properly "dress" such a big landscape...

I'm working on a 20x20km project - about the same landmass as Sahrani - maybe a little less than Cherno... now, OK - I've been learning as I go along, like most people here, and I work and have a life, also like most people, so I reckon I'm lucky if I'm at the 50% done stage (behind schedule!!! waaaah! ;)) - I started just before Christmas last year - I currently expect to have a decent Beta by this Christmas... Think about it - my project at 20x20km is the equivalent of Four Isla Dualas - a lot of work! But a 40x40km project is SIXTEEN Isla Dualas... IceBreakr is Fast! and his islands are "well-dressed", they ain't just thrown together - but I reckon it took him a few months from the initial Duala ideas discussion stage to the first Beta being released... and he has the skills and experience to put together a top quality product in an enviably short time... let's say 3 months... you're proposing to make 16 of them, with no previous skills or experience...

If it all sounds like we're trying to rain on your parade - we're NOT! - It's just we've all been there, been that enthusiastic, drastically underestimated that project commitment... I'd say at least 2/3 of the beginner island makers who we help start off here fall victim to despair and give up, not because the actual job is so difficult - it's not, but because they drastically underestimate how long things take and aim too high on their first attempt...

Back when I started at Christmas last year I was a total noob too, tho I did have the benefit of having made a terrain and a few small addons for OFP, so I understood some of the basic concepts at least... I did Sgt Ace's tutorial - asked some real dumb questions and got told to go search, made all the same mistakes I now help people with... we were all there - not that long ago...

Don't aim too high... read and search a lot - if you don't find answers, ask... do the tutorial - even if you think you don't need to - it forces you to grasp some key concepts... Learn the rules, then you can start breaking 'em...

B

Edited by Bushlurker

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I got a 10 x 10, it was less stressful. Anyways, is this bigger than Nogova?

Probably a wise choice for a first project! You'll start to see decent results fairly quickly, roadways and the boring mechanics won't take too long to get established and you'll be on to the fun, creative stuff like building little towns 'n villages...

The original Nogova was 512x512... and we thought it was ENORMOUS at the time :)

Look forward to seeing the first screenshots!

B

Edited by Bushlurker

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The original Nogova was 512x512... and we thought it was ENORMOUS at the time :)

Nogova as other OFP BIS islands were all 256 x 256 cells with 50 meter cell size.

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ok here goes nothing, this how it looks on L3DT. I added a Canyon South East, The Border North of the southern Island. Desert, Jungle, temperate, and Artic type of climates :) Im going to see if I can Transferr it to V3

Edited by W0lle
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Hi Civilian88...

Looking great!

One point springs to mind... you can run into trouble if you have landmass too close to the edge of the map... it seems to be a known problem which is discussed briefly in This Thread...

OK... Now all we need is a script or tool suggestion to heave this thread back on-topic :)

B

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what about a script or way to give us more options in the toolbar rather than just have "Nature" and "Artificial" .. a good example for instance is when you have too many items in visitor! its begins to lag! and sometimes lags alot! wouldnt it be cool if we could make extra menu tabs to create our own ones... then once say you have finished with your "Nature" and "Artificial" objects, you can work on your customs ones without the lag!

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Do we have a tool that peices satalite images back together after they've been split up into tiles?

I guess this is probably possible using an action script in photoshop, but a seperat tool would be great for those who dont own a copy.

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Pieces are overlapped a bit. Maybe photostitch or similar panorama maker software could help on thjs

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I am thinking about various items (perhaps all that already exists ^^) :

- a way to save and export objects gathered in nature, artificial and roads list from a map to another.

- a way to smooth part of terrain in Visitor3 as Beton has suggested in a thread a long time ago.

- a way to build terrain with ravines to get out of the rounded features we are all getting ^^, of course with 10m terrain cell size ;)

and a bit out of topic :

- a special "The Gimp for Visitor" tutorial for those having, like myself an inclination for this free tool.

- a community "Visitorpedia", with a special "Visitor3 for dummies" section and a bunch load of community made vegetation, buildings, objects and roads addons links to be downloaded. I know there are already pinned threads in this "Terrain editing section" but the idea of the Visitorpedia is appealing.

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