bushlurker

I wasn't talking about placing A3 assets at all - that's simply not possible in the normal way until compatible tools are released, unless you want to get involved with temporary hacks and workarounds devised by superkeen community members. I haven't bothered trying any of those this time around, nor did I mention any of them in my reply above... And for my two Arma 3 terrain releases so far, I sneakily skipped objects entirely - apart from a few hundred thousand worldtools-placed rocks... My little description above was simply designed to highlight some of the basic operational differences between the two toolsets under discussion. Until those official community tools appear, in whatever form they ultimately take - this whole Arma 3 Terrainmakers Section is purely devoted to.... temporary hacks and workarounds... Right now - for Arma 3 terrainmaking - that's all there is... Oh... and a lot of freestyle speculation... there's plenty of that too... I quite enjoy that part as we Wait the Big Wait for New Tools - like we do every few years... If you're going to learn how to run, its a good idea to start by learning how to tie your shoelaces properly, then get a bit of simple walking practise in first... my speciality is assisting with that tricky shoelace-tying step... ;) Looking forward to the screenshots... B

Current V3 and BinPBO are incompatible with the latest .p3D version iteration - that could be fixed with a simple tweak and we'd be good to go with the current tools for A3. However, there's additional tech been introduced with A3 - road shapefiles, satellite normals layers, etc - I seriously doubt BI will hang us all out to dry on these features - therefore some sort of updated version of Visitor is likely. And since there's been no ongoing development of V3 for quite some time, I'm guessing - and hoping, that they'll be handing over some sort of V4 version, sooner or later... here's a typical step-by-step list for placing two houses in Visitor and moving them into the correct position... first in current V3, and again in current (VBS2) V4.... Visitor 3 Select house model from list Click to place Click again to select Drag into position Select different house model from list Click to place Click again to select Drag into position etc, etc, etc (if you're making Fallujah, you've only 19,998 buildings to go...) ;) Visitor 4 Select "object placement tool" from top menu Select house model from list Click to place Click again to select Realise you're still using the "object placement tool" and you've actually placed another house Say "dammit" Select "object manipulation tool" from top menu Select accidentally placed house Delete it Select the real "First house" Drag it into position Select different house model from list Click to place Wonder why no house is placed Realise you're still using the "object manipulation tool" Say "dammit" again Select "object placement tool" from the top menu Select different house model from list Click to place Avoid saying dammit and go directly to top menu to change tools - again Click to select Drag it into position etc, etc, etc Now that's a little exaggerated, though everyone who's a regular V3 user will find themselves in that loop a lot to start with - if/when they get to start working with V4, but even after you get used to the concept - there's often a lot more "changing tools" involved than there is with V3 where one click places and the next click selects... There are other compensatory facilities and in general, V4 IS a decent step up from V3 in pretty much every area but.... it's not VB Edit, and it's not a "magic bullet".... Indeed, though since I'm technically a BI Sim dev, apart from the "VBS2 Discussion Thread" where it IS directly relevant, on the rest of the forums, my little badge is mostly a kind courtesy from the Moderators, a little encouragement to some of the more ambitious modders who've known me for a while and who may harbour Dev ambitions ("hey! I made it - so can you!") and, I admit, a little conceit... (the "hey! I made it!" part :o :D On the contrary, in both my Professional and in my free-time hobby/community capacity, one of my Primary Functions is to help people learn how to make terrains :) B

Absolutely agree with ZeroG on all counts... Visitor 4 is by no means a "magic bullet" - it won't let you place objects, for example, any faster than V3... In fact - it's often slower! As for Silvador, it's been in ongoing development for a while now and has burgeoned into a fairly multi-purpose - and Big Bucks - software... It's also primarily a VBS/BiSim asset, which BI have "borrowed", so, unofficial opinion as usual, I think it's a little unlikely BI will be handing out copies... :( As ZeroG says though - there's a few modders eagerly awaiting the release of the A2 assets... it's VERY likely that once those vegetation models are freely available we'll be seeing a proper "summerplants" pack, maybe a nice subset of "winter veg"... and all of those veg packs - should - if they're setup correctly, be equally usable in Arma 2 or 3... B

This seems to be one of those obscure Visitor oddities which crops up time and time again and for which I've never seen an adequate explanation... I'm pretty sure I've even experienced the same error myself... Take a look at the "Sticky" section above the "normal" threads in this Terrain Forum section - Atsche's "Simple Arma 2 Terrain Tutorial"... This is the "discussion thread" for Sgt Ace's Tut Samplemap - THE number one guaranteed-to-work ideal introduction tutorial, which has served us well for the last few years and has started off many terrainmakers with Arma 2 terrain editing (myself included)... Try searching that specific thread for "mapLegend" - you'll find about a dozen different variations of this exact error! :( What you won't immediately find is a guaranteed solution... Some people find a config typo and that fixes it, others check the spelling of mapLegend", others reboot, reload their files and it works, others find an error in Visitor Preferences and that seems to fix it... Most annoying! It seems to be one of those problems which goes away if you fuss enough, but for which there's never been an adequate posted solution. From the above code it looks like your Layers.cfg is fine... Assuming all those files ARE in those locations, all the paths ARE valid, mapLegend.png IS present, etc then it - should - all work... The only suggestion I can make is that you once again triplecheck everything - from Visitor prefs to paths, exact spelling of all files including "Uppercase" etc - reboot - don't run Visitor as "administrator" and possibly sacrifice a goat to the Visitor gods, and it might just all magically start working... :( B

Depending on whereabouts on the actual final terrain project these objects were placed - this might be an example of the "floating point error" which I believe was present in Arma 1 RTE's and the A2 3D editor as well... Or, at least - it's an error which frequently appears somewhere between the 3D editor and Visitor... If the bottom-left corner of the terrain is the 0,0 origin point, then basically, as you get further and further away from that corner, higher and higher numbers are required to represent the X,Y position of an object. In addition, to place objects precisely we want those numbers to have a high degree of precision... It seems there can be an issue with representing numbers which are high AND require high precision. eg: a coordinate near the origin point might be "12.3456" - 4 decimal points of precision... pretty accurate... but a coordinate further away might end up as "12345.6" - which would translate in buldozer to a shift sideways... The further from the 0,0 point, the more pronounced this effect can be - though it should really only be noticeable on pretty big maps, or if you're placing stuff in the top right corner to nanodegrees of precision... I'm afraid I can't remember immediately where I last saw discussion about this issue... I remember Mondkalb mentioning it in a 3D editor export/import context... And I also remember a conversation with Jakerod once about misbehaving sidewalk pieces - which he WAS placing to his usual nanoprecision degree, and they were mysteriously moving out of place.. Anyway - this might be nothing to do with the problem above - especially since they're all examples from previous engines, but if the objects in question are being placed at the Far Side of a Very big map then I guess it's a possibility.... B

Yes, No, Maybe, A Bit, Sortof... ;) First, some basic background info... 1. Unlike Visitor 3, which, in my entire time with BI Sim, hasn't changed by so much as one byte, (VBS2) Visitor 4 is under constant ongoing development by some seriously top-notch coders. 2. Differences between (our/community) Visitor 3 "PE" and the (VBS2) Visitor 3 "Full" are pretty nominal - the same bugs are present (4096 heightmap dodginess, etc), and the "extras" are equally minimal - .xyz heightmap output, Landbuilder roads input capability... In VBS2land, Visitor 3 is still provided in the toolkit - for now - but afaik, nobody really ever actually uses it... 3. As has been said many times, BI Sim and BI are pretty much separate companies - BI have their own "branch" of Visitor 4... This almost certainly means there's differences between the VBS2 version and whatever BI are currently using - it's tailored to their needs, just as the VBS2 one is tailored to the needs of the military user. Moreover, there's "terrain tech" visibly in use on Stratis/Altis which doesn't feature in current equivalent VBS2 terrains, (eg: Satellite normals layer, etc). [*Warning*/Total Speculation Mode Engaged] From the above "facts" what can we guess? - here's my two cents worth.... 1. Visitor 3 is probably history - adieu, mon vieux! 2. BI have an Arma(3?)-specific Visitor 4. 3. BI have released a (nominally reduced) "PE" version of Visitor before, it's therefore likely(?) they'll be thinking along the same lines again. Based on the above, my guess is that, sooner or later, we'll be presented with a shiny new "Visitor 4 PE", which will essentially be a (nominally reduced) version of the (BI-specific) version of (what looks like, from the screenshots), a pretty recent incarnation of the (Real/VBS2) Visitor 4... :) [*End*/Total Speculation Mode] It's all pretty exciting, huh? As I've said before... "Patience, young Jedi"... I think we're in for a Big Treat in due course... B

Hi again Josh... Hmm - you'll notice a much slower response on this question than on your last one... that's because nobody here probably knows the answer to your question :)... This section is where the island guys hang out - for "mission editing" questions, you'd need to ask in the "Missions Editing" section, where the "missions" guys hang out... get the idea? - It keeps thing neat and easily searchable for beginners... However - there's an added complication in this case... It's likely you won't really find anybody on this Forum who really knows about that really DayZ-specific" stuff at all... You were OK with basic terrain questions since that tech is common to Arma and DayZ, but for this sort of really DayZ-specific query you'd really be better off with one of the actual DayZ Forums... B

Hi Josh79... Ok - let's take a look..... Suggested changes / fixes in RED... Okay... I think I caught most of the obvious stuff with that initial peek... Give things another try with the suggested alterations above and see how it goes... Mondkalbs Tutorial is excellent, and up-to-date... a rare combination in Terrain Tutorials, but - it covers a LOT of ground VERY fast.... You might want to also download and have a look at THIS Tutorial as well... It's the opposite - it goes on and on, and on, and on.... :), and covers very little ground at all really... Just the configs and files in fact - exactly the sort of thing you're now tackling... Well worth a read, or use it like a "lookup table / dictionary" for the basic fileset - it painfully explains them all - line by line, what to change and why and what it does... Sometimes it's that level of obsessive pickiness you need, other times - rely on Mondkalb to paint with the Big Brush... Anyhow... have another go and remember to post back and let us know how it went, or if you have any other problems..... B

Well done ZeroG!! This looks awesome!! You've really worked hard to promote the use of the 3D Editor - despite some of its (current) shortcomings. I totally agree that, regardless of whatever goodies we finally get on the Visitor front, for the actual composition of little scenes and areas and even vb edit-style "presets" there's nothing to beat working in a proper 3D environment... I'm hopeful scripted tools running in the 3D editor is going to be the Way Forward for future development... things like a "Homer's road tool", but for fences... things like that... Congratulations again and thanks for taking the time to assemble what looks like a complete basic solution to a lot of the current woes! B

Well spotted James2464! Yet another interesting "teaser mockup"! As usual, it's pretty difficult to make out anything definite, dammit! The satellite image showing directly in the 2D view of Visitor is a Visitor 4 feature... no hint of shapefile overlays or anything this time though... looks like a few basic trees positioned, wiith the usual "vegetation = coloured circle" markers... I'm guessing the buldozer/3d view alongside is meant to be of the same area with those "interesting" pine trees in position... As you say - they could be A2 piceas - not sure if they'd reinvent the wheel / release additional veg models, unless there was a new terrain coming that required them, and they wanted some new pines made in the new, suspiciously "Silvador"-type style. The "hemispherical markers" in the 3D view have appeared in a couple of the other Teaser shots - I'm not sure what they are at all - that's NOT a "standard Visitor 4" feature - not in the VBS2 version anyway... I've seen that sort of thing used to mark out "poly vertices" in VB Edit, and Homer's Roadpainter 2 used a similar style of marker... No idea what they're "marking" in this context though... It's all very promising so far, and quite exciting too :) It seems the "toolkit" will be being released in stages, with us Terrain Dudes last, of course :( ... Still, I reckon that's because our goodies are the most complex to produce/upgrade... B

Not sure if this review has been posted before... https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WlXoyoOep2k#t=17 A decent and pretty favourable review all round, but also some terrific spontaneous and sincere high praise for the Multiplayer Community... "On my first day with the game [online] I found a random player who I'd never spoken to before, who was happy to then sit down and spend an hour hand-holding me through the first steps of exactly what the hell it was I was supposed to be doing! And this is not an isolated episode, I've found this to be genuinely a continuing trend in the Arma Community... players are helpful, respectful and work hard towards the objectives in the game" Well done, whoever that was! B

Lest We Forget where we came from, and why we're here.... ... and how far we've come... B

Absolutely awesome stuff guys! I took refuge in that newly-enhanced "benzina_schnell" while under heavy fire - something that simply wouldn't have been possible before. (of course, I was then subsequently killed while playing with the animated main door) :D Terrific work guys! B

Kinda puts all the recent small-potatoes, lack-of-furniture, I-wanted-six-different-types-of-chicken Forum bitching into perspective, doesn't it? ;) B

There's an example one on my website - "Resources & Tuts" section - look for "Snappable 50m Pond Object" B

Yeah - that's definitely worth a try... BinPBO is just a front-end... Binarize & BinMake are the underlying routines that do all the work - it's perfectly OK to run the install procedure again and re-install selected bits over again directly into the same locations... TexView is another one which occasionally seems to go dodgy and rights itself after a reinstall... B

If you just skip mentioning the "class Names" section entirely, AND you're inheriting from some terrain or other, then you should get the "Names" from that terrain. class Names {}; - should - effectively clear the definitions out and result in no keypoints at all. However - since exporting a .wrp always results in a "yourterrainname.hpp" being created as well, even if you have no keypoints and it's just an empty file, it's generally regarded as Good Practise to have the #include statement in place in your config, just as the codeblock above - that way, if you have no keypoints defined, it'll use the empty file and you'll get... no keypoints, but if you decide to add some later, you're already configured for them and they'll appear with no further effort on your part... B

You can set Global Mapper to use Decimal Degrees instead of the default Degrees, Minutes, Seconds format (Tools > Configure > "General" tab) and/or use an online converter like This One B

Hi guys! Remember this part from the little "keypoints tut" which M1lkm8n linked to above.... So... Keypoints showing in V3 / Buldozer OK = You've got a working kptypes.dat and you've added some keypoints - at this stage they're lurking in the main .pew file. Then you need to actually launch buldozer, and - while it's open and you're viewing your terrain - Export that .wrp file! At this stage you should find a "yourterrainname.hpp" file has been created in your main project folder, beside the "yourterrainname.wrp".... That's your "Names File" - externalised now and ready to be included in your main config. Next step is to include that file properly in your config... Make sure you have something like this... class Names { #include "yourterrainname.hpp" }; * Remember to change that filename so it really IS "yourterrainname.hpp", not "names.hpp", which is a common mistake if you're speed-reading a tutorial... Final stage is to Binarize your terrain with BinPBO - this should do the actual #including part, and assemble a final composite config.bin from all your separate .cpp's and .hpps... It might be useful after this final stage to unpack the resulting .pbo file, and derapify (unbinarize) the config.bin (Mikero's "Eliteness" will do both operations at once), and take a look to make sure your "myterrainname.hpp" contents have been properly included into that Names class... Hope this helps a bit.... B

Looks very promising! Did you sculpt the heightmap yourself? The hills look very natural! Well done so far!! B

This is a terrific extra bonus! There's nothing worse than not being able to use certain buildings on anything other than totally flat ground... A simple foundation wall protruding down a meter or two below ground level, and a matching set of "steps" leading down from all street-level doorways means you can cram buildings into all sorts of more interesting locations, or even simply avoid having to buldoze a "village area" totally flat just to be sure your buildings won't have crazy gaps showing everywhere... Well done guys! - I'm sure a lot of terrainmakers are following this thread with great interest! B

Don't!! I made that original scale demo and it was exactly that - a "scale demo"... its seriously unsatisfactory for several reasons... Firstly - it was an early effort and the quality is pretty woeful... :( Secondly, its a 4096x4096 heightmap - that's OK for "no object demos" but there's a bug in the Arma 2 Visitor which prevents proper object placement on 4096x4096 heightmaps, so when you got to the building locations stage you'd be severely hampered... And finally, even by maxing out Arma 2 Visitor totally with a 4096x4096 heightmap at a fairly crude (Sahrani-era) 10 meter ground res, the biggest terrain you can effectively manage would be... around 40x40km... The Falkland islands are bigger than that - a LOT bigger.... The red square outline is approximately 279km x 279km - that's approximately the same size as Eighty One! of Arma 3's Altis terrains arranged in a 9 x 9 grid! Simply not possible with Arma 2 tech... The alternative is to "scale" - as I did with my original demo (which was really designed less as a serious alternative and more as a means of demonstrating the impossibility of a 1:1 representation)... The problem with scaling is that you end up with a "minature golf" style landscape... To squeeze the whole of the Falklands into a mere 40x40km you'd need a roughly 600% reduction - all distances and heights would be at least a sixth of their realworld equivalents... 600 meter hills become 100 meter small mounds, every house would need to be the size of a dog kennel... If I remember correctly, most of this conflict happened on the East island... by literally editing out the entire West island and zooming-in on the East only, you could reduce that scaling level by a fair bit, but probably still not enough to muster an effective "overall map"... I think you guys are definitely best focussing on specific conflict or scenario areas, Port Stanley, etc - areas you can effectively depict at a reasonable or even 1:1 scale, otherwise you could end up with a lot of work and a less than satisfactory outcome... Great news! Jakerod totally knows what he's doing! B

In order for the Visitor road tool to work properly, it needs special road models with "memory points" or "snap points" which lock the sections neatly together end-to-end... Unlike all the rest of the game models you unpack to P:\CA for use in Visitor, you can't do that with the road models, since all those models are binarized, and embedded snap points don't work with binarized models... So - as part of the Tools package, Visitor also installs special unbinarized road models - with the snap points in position, for use with the road tool... You should first make sure you DO have these unbinarized road models in place... In P:\CA\Roads2 - doubleclick any road model .p3d - if it actually opens in Oxygen you're good to go - if it says its a binarized model you need to look at your P:\ drive setup... The next problem - probably the more likely one, is that although BI included a lot of road models, not all of them actually work! :( - theres a fair few with no snap points included... these will throw an error like above if you try to install them in the roadtool... If you check out the "Resources & Tutorials" section of my website, you should find "Alliex's Roads Tutorial"... It's an old tut, and a little... rambling... at times, but it explains which road pieces work and which don't and the basics of installing and using them..... B

Both the above errors indicate either out-of-date or wrongly installed tools suite... Tools Suite 2.5.1 Tools Install & Beginners Guide I strongly suggest you work your way thru this beginners tutorial... it covers all the basics and would save you lurching from one basic error to the next... B

Drop the "P:\" part from all paths... eg: texture = "TRS_stanta\data\TRS_grass_detail_co.paa"; Of course, make sure there really IS a folder called "TRS_stanta" on P:\... with the specified files in the specified subfolder... If you actually have a Tag or Namespace folder called "TRS" on P:\, with the "stanta" project folder inside, then your path should be something like.... texture = "TRS\stanta\data\TRS_grass_detail_co.paa"; ... which is the more usual arrangement... Also check the format of your Sat & Mask files just in case - the most common cause of an outright crash at import Sat & Mask stage is a Sat or Mask which isn't the correct format... .PNG format - RGB 24bit (8bit per channel) - No Interlace B