mikebart

thanks again, yeah i'd love to see some drawings:). The clutter.hpp goes in the terrain config, its basically a list of all the clutter included in mb_veg.

Thanks stephsen, thats great! the building you've placed really fits in there and the posts are a nice touch too, thanks for showing it. I just updated the front page and added a link to download the "cfgClutter.hpp". And I added thanks to Homer Johnston for his road painter tool, sorry homer I forgot to give you any credit for it, by the time I got to writing the readme, I was like "I just want to upload the !@#$en thing!", but honestly without that tool, I dont think I ever would have put as much detail into the roads, it was so easy that I simply forgot it ever happened, there you go :)

oh ok, dont use "mb_c_grassLush_NM", I was playing around trying to use the NormalMapGrass pixel shader but I never actually got it working, it worked in buldozer but I just ended up with black grass in game, just remove any reference to it from the clutter.hpp and cgfSurfaces.hpp and you should be right. must have left it in there by mistake.

Open the PBOPREFIX's and have a look in there, rocks will be "mikebart\mb_rocks" so that means P:\mikebart\mb_rocks\. not too sure about the hedges Darkxess, i think i might be fixing bugs for a while, thanks for using the objects :)

oh right, sorry it should be "P:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_trees\"

Some nice suggestions there, ill see how i go :) I hope the get used for a WW2 map aswell :) yeah thanks cameron, ill remove the lush grass from the west coast, its bothering me too.

Yep, you're welcome to use them, this was the reason behind seperating everything into smaller packages, eg veg, rocks. Also the mb_veg package is split up into seperate .pbo's, trees, bushes, clutter. No need for configs, unless you want to place them in the editor. You just need to depbo them the same way you would with BIS's CA\ and put them somewhere in your P:\ drive for Visitor 3 to read. theres still a few more versions of the elms to be made, but thats just a matter of swapping out the textures, and rendering a new distant lod texture, so hopefully ill release more soon. im pretty keen to have a go at bushes, hedges, and as Darkxess suggests, hedge rows. I think the bad performance could be due to there being too many of the "mb_t_ulmus_large" they're the tall ones with foliage just about all the way up the trunk. From what i've found its not so much the vertex count of the tree or wether or not it uses a lightmap on a second UV channel that causes slow down, its more the volume of the foliage, which could either be the volume of the view, geo and fire lods or alpha overdraw, not too sure atm. I know that if I swap out the elms with bis's fagus's (which is what I used to test the elms against) I got roughly the same performance, give or take 1fps or so. If a forest is mostly made up of the "mb_t_ulmus_forest" and the other 2 elms are used around the edges then I think it could perform ok at a larger scale. But I havent tested them yet on a larger terrain and im not sure what might happen with the blended alphas used for the distant lods, im pretty sure theres a limit to how many blended alphas you can render at one time. So I think the blended alpha are ok for Mana, cause its small but Ill probably have to release new versions that use the standard tree shader on the distant lod for larger terrain. Thanks for the advice, Ill try this out, I've tried to make the east side quite saturated while the west is quite desaturated, but I think this clashes a bit where the two sides meet, Im a big fan of the "movie day filter" in the mission editor though and I've used it extensivly throughout colour correcting for the island, I quite like the idea of a screen filter handling saturation levels rather than force desaturation on the textures themselves, this allows more options for the artist and mission editor, although it doesnt solve the problem im getting at sunset and sunrise. yep tussocks are the best :), and I think they offer an interesting and unique battleground, at quite a low performance cost, I had the chance to photograph tussock that grows around the middle of the south island last month and got some great references, so ill definitly develop them further. I think a rock and tussock environment would make for a fantastic map, and theres sure to be more variation in the next release, i've been experimenting with modular rock ledges aswell, still in the modelling stage, but im hoping ill be able to use shezans world tools to place them. edit: for the rock texture, just grab it out of the mb_manaisland_data.pbo, but ill definitly put it in the next release. heres a little cave that should make it in the next release too

Thanks again for the nice comments guys. @icebreaker, thanks will check it out, and im already on your skype, you must have a massive contact list :) Thanks, its not really based on any real world location, i've just made a lot of trees and plants that I like and thrown them all together on one island :) @Dimitri_Harkov, thanks heaps for the mission Dimitri, I had a good round of it this morning and it was alot of fun, Link to server key @Kristian, thanks for posting some pictures, and with a story, awesome :) @Enad, Kristain, sorry about the bad performance, Ill try and do what I can to optimize things, for me the fps drops mostly around the forest on the NE side of the island, but usually wont drop below 30fps with these settings: Im running an i7-920 and a GTX275 @Tankcommander They're not the best of quality but you can gather a general profile of each tree, grass etc from the images here: http://dev-heaven.net/projects/mb-veg

Thanks for the comments guys, nice shot hurby :) @Darkxess, I'd like to get the tussock so that you can walk through it but have it offer some resistance, its one of the last plants I worked on and it needs a bit more work. Ill eventually make some tussock clutter aswell. Ill see how I go with the hedgerows, its actually something i've considered earlier. @Icebreaker, thanks, i really want to change the water colour to make it a bit blue'er could you let me know some time how you do it? @Electricleash, thanks for the comments, Ill definitly look into making some flowers, I think theres plenty of room for more clutter and some new colours would help out alot. I agree with you there, I've been thinking of ditching the Ivy growing under the trees and also removing it from the ground texture. Earlier versions of the trees actually had Ivy growing up the trunks so it was fitting at that time, but dead leaves and twigs would be more fitting now that the island has more of a dryer feel too it. About the ground appearing darker at sunset/sunrise, ill try and address this in the next full release by tweaking ambient values of the grass and/or the ground textures, hopefully it can be fixed.

yep ok no major problems then, thanks big, ill sort that out, im so glad I seperated the layers from the config :) ill upload fixed version, thanks again

ok, sorry guys, ill try and get to the bottom of this asap, thanks for downloading though, and stay tuned ---------- Post added at 09:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:16 AM ---------- hey guys, can one of you please download this quick fix and copy it over the mb_manaisland.pbo and bsign?, and let me know how you go, thanks! http://dev-heaven.net/attachments/download/7368/mb_manaisland_quickfix01.rar

Im just having some problems getting my island working since I re-structured my custom vegetation folder in order to divide the pbo called mb_veg.pbo into mb_trees.pbo, mb_bushes.pbo and mb_clutter.pbo, just to make things a little bit easier for if i need to update after release, so in the project folder I have for e.g. p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\ etc... Im getting a few errors in the log file and im wondering if it could have anything to do with the way the folders are structured, but the log's saying 'Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_grass.rvmat', even though it definitly exists in that folder on p:\ heres the log: Convert model p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_forestweed01.p3d -> P:\BIN_temp\mb_clutter\mb_c_forestweed01.p3d Convert model p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_forestweedgroup01.p3d -> P:\BIN_temp\mb_clutter\mb_c_forestweedgroup01.p3d Convert model p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_grassDry01.p3d -> P:\BIN_temp\mb_clutter\mb_c_grassDry01.p3d Convert model p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_grassLush.p3d -> P:\BIN_temp\mb_clutter\mb_c_grassLush.p3d Convert model p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_grassLush_NM.p3d -> P:\BIN_temp\mb_clutter\mb_c_grassLush_NM.p3d Convert model p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_grassShort01.p3d -> P:\BIN_temp\mb_clutter\mb_c_grassShort01.p3d Convert model p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_grassTall01.p3d -> P:\BIN_temp\mb_clutter\mb_c_grassTall01.p3d Convert model p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_ivy01.p3d -> P:\BIN_temp\mb_clutter\mb_c_ivy01.p3d Convert model p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_ulmus01.p3d -> P:\BIN_temp\mb_clutter\mb_c_ulmus01.p3d Convert model p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_ulmus02.p3d -> P:\BIN_temp\mb_clutter\mb_c_ulmus02.p3d Convert model p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_ulmus03.p3d -> P:\BIN_temp\mb_clutter\mb_c_ulmus03.p3d Cannot load font core\data\fonts\lucidaconsoleb8 Fonts file \core\data\fonts\lucidaConsoleB8 not found Cannot load font core\data\fonts\lucidaconsoleb11 Fonts file \core\data\fonts\lucidaConsoleB11 not found <model = "p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_forestweed01.p3d"> Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_forestweed01.rvmat. Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_forestweed01.rvmat </model> <model = "p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_forestweedgroup01.p3d"> Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_forestweed01.rvmat. Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_forestweed01.rvmat </model> <model = "p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_grassDry01.p3d"> Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_grass.rvmat. Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_grass.rvmat </model> <model = "p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_grassLush.p3d"> Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_grass.rvmat. Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_grass.rvmat </model> <model = "p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_grassLush_NM.p3d"> Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_grass_normal.rvmat. Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_grass_normal.rvmat </model> <model = "p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_grassShort01.p3d"> Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_grass.rvmat. Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_grass.rvmat </model> <model = "p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_grassTall01.p3d"> Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_grass.rvmat. Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_grass.rvmat </model> <model = "p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_ivy01.p3d"> Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_grass.rvmat. Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_grass.rvmat </model> <model = "p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_ulmus01.p3d"> Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_ulmus.rvmat. Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_ulmus.rvmat </model> <model = "p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_ulmus02.p3d"> Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_ulmus.rvmat. Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_ulmus.rvmat </model> <model = "p:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\mb_c_ulmus03.p3d"> Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_ulmus.rvmat. Cannot load material file mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter\data\mb_c_ulmus.rvmat </model> in binPbo i have in the Addon source directory = "P:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter" in the Destination directory = "M:\ArmA2\@mikebart\Addons\" and the addon prefix = mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter hope thats enough info, if you see anything i could improve with the folder structure or naming convention, please let me know, thanks in advance ---------- Post added at 09:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:34 AM ---------- solved!, it was because i had "P:\mikebart\mb_veg\mb_clutter" for the Path to project folder instead of "p:\mikebart" sorry about making a thread for nothing :o hope it helps someone some day :bounce3:

you can edit paths of textures in Oxygen2 using the "Tools\Mass texture & material renaming..."

hey shezan, I just spent some time playing your terrain in the armory, I really like it, I noticed though that when I spawned in a town though that I'd fall a short distance before hitting the ground, not enough to cause damage though, but just thought you might like to know about it so you can fix it in config or something, I really like the rippled effect that you see on the terrain off in the distance its very effective, and its pretty cool that object placement was entirely done using your own tools. im wondering if the performance issues are due to there being too many different tree types?, I recall hearing somebody say once that in a forest situation you should really have no more than 4 different tree types, but I guess then theres always the cross over to different forest types where you'd have more, I could be wrong on this. Im not really a big fan of the dry grass you've used throughout most of the terrain, I think it could look good in small patches or mixed in with for example some of the dry grass from Utes, with more of a gravelly with small rocks texture underneath sorry I forgot to record where this pic was taken but I think you have a really nice look going on here, its almost like it has a bit of Utes and a bit of Chenuraus combined, I like it and I think this is the look you should go for for the outskirts of the forest and then maybe a bit greener and lush in the deeper areas. Anyway I hope these suggestions help, nice job, and looking forward to seeing the next update.

ok thanks hallokitty, no problems, im just grabbing part one now.

i'd be happy to post up some pictures if I can get a copy of the map, so this would be the source data of the waiouru terrain?

Waiouru?, ill take that. Thanks and say thanks to rocket too!

A @#$%ing Lego-Technic Sniper-Rifle!!! Makes nice clickety-clack sounds! !

Very nice max, thanks for the info.

Hey Shezan, I've tested the export to image function and it works well, great that you can export multiple images too, nice work. Im wondering if it would be possible to control the height of each tree in the forest via a black and white mask, could you import multiple data images into world tool for different purposes?. Im guessing this might steer away from the way the forest generator currently reads image data, but if we could control what flora spawn and how large depending on a height map of the forest/zone, i think it could create more realistic forests (in some situations) I placed some trees in visitor and recorded some data to help explain what i mean. Each different tree type can only exist between a certain colour range and also reads scale from the colour value, so this data would have to be recorded for each object involved in the operation. I suppose it really comes down to weather or not you can import this much information into visitor. edit: you might be able to include the width of the object, this could determine how much the objects are spaced apart.

this is the result from screen grabbing visitor and selecting the colour ranges of vegetation and applying a blur filter in photoshop, probably a bit intense in these shots but the effect is noticeable i think. Its really just another useful piece of information to add to the _sat image and might have other uses but in this case Ive multiplied it over the forest parts of the _sat.

Sounds good. Shadows disapear over a distance, and quite often you end up with too much light underneath the forests, consider it like baking an ambient occlusion map of all the terrain objects. I think the same was done on podagorsk, but ill try and post up some screens of what i mean tonight .

yeah it would defintly help to have it the same size in pixels as the _sat/_mask image, I've already done this for my island from screen capturing visitor and pasting it in photoshop, I'd hate to have to do that for a larger terrain though ---------- Post added at 07:07 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:46 AM ---------- it would be useful if you could adjust how many pixels would go into one object aswell

looks nice shezan, do you think you could render the results of tree/object placement as a black and white image to be blured and multiplied over the islands _sat image in Photoshop?, for some ambient shadow under the trees I used the tree generator for the tussock and the rocks, but i placed the trees by hand, its doing a great job.

nice job namman2, looks like a few smoothing issues on the front of the hull, but nice attention to detail.