mondkalb

Not every tile inside the volume/bounding box automatically turns into a very costly tile, it depends on the the geometry lod's position and distance to the surface. Roads are very special cases, as they represent desireable road-nets that the AI in vehicles will prefer to use. The equivalent for AI soldiers would be the path-way lod of an object. (invisible path objects)

Give your groups some "Dismissed" waypoints. They'll then wander off in small groups, sit down and do other random things.

Only for PR? Well... that's a map maker's decision and a pity in my opinion then.

Please be aware that the cost tiles used for pathplanning are generated generously around the geometry lod. Take the classic "tip of the iceberg" rock usage. Just a tiny portion of the rock is visible while the majority of the rock object remains submerged. Here an example on Takistan: Left the rock submerged with just a tiny portion visible, on the right the view from above with visualized cost values per tile. White being the most desireable, black being the least. http://i49.tinypic.com/2ldbode.png (1262 kB) This is an easily overlooked problem causing massive troubles for the AI.

This does indeed look very good, but I wonder if the AI's pathplanning will be able to cope with the amount of objects in the built up areas. Edit: I explained it here.

Ahahahahahahaahaha. That so reminds me of making my Celle 2 map. Keep it up.

You'll spend an substantial amount of time on just learning how to use VB-Edit. It's become an insanely complicated tool to use. Needless to say there are comepletely other ways of approaching terrain making, such as Blender or just-txt-file creating tools that supply random generated importable data. (Forests & towns, so much like World Tools).

Update released. See first post for details. Fixes in 1.1: land_* classes now have scope = 1 (Required for this to work on terrains, *shame*) 2 extra paint variants of "Big Apartment 3" Download: MBG Generic African Buildings (v1.1) - 50MB

A fix will be inbound this weekend. (Thanks to iceBreakr and Synide for tracing the bug, as I didn't have the time this week to go looking on my own. :( ) Depending on how not-hungover I'll be I might get around patching in some more retexed variants as well to make up for the wait. :)

Just join the Terrain Maker's Skype group. There you can ask Miro (The dude in the video you linked) directly about his work and troubles with the Blender-Workflow. :)

This looks really good. Though don't forget about traffic signs and street lamps. :p And the colour of the clutter objects looks odd. (http://i.imgur.com/pe27i.jpg), any chance you can get around tweaking that?

Hah, be sure to expect some feedback from me. :P

Glad to see people using my stuff better than I could. :)

*throws money at Russia*

Yes, more paint variants would indeed be nice. But the time for the amount of work to get it to look at least half-decent seems for me to be harder to come by. :/ To be honest, last time I worked on these buildings was two months ago. Just today it hit me that I could add some final touches to the last building and get these out so they don't end up completely unused. Would've been a pity for the time already invested in these objects. :) If anyone gets around using these, let me know! And if someone wants to retexture one of these buildings, PM me and we'll see about the MLODs.

Exactly! And thats why I keep repeating myself when speaking to anyone trying to learn terrain making: Do not start with a giant project as your first terrain! Start small and simple to get used to the steps involved in creating the terrain. This way you learn the basics and shortcuts. And without these making a new terrain that is 5km x5km, or even 10km x 10km is most definitely never going to get finished. Usually resulting in that community member leaving his attempts at making terrains out of frustration.

Absolutely stunning. Can't believe is done in our engine!

Glad to see this project going! :)

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Mondkalb's_Terrain_Tutorial Written at the beginning of this year. When you say tutorials are out of date I immediately assume you know already everything about mapmaking to be able to judge the quality of the tutorials out there, which would leave you without the need for tutorials in the first place. Please - next time, be considerate about the time, effort and quality people invest in their free-time to pass on their knowledge. Which is often taken for granted by most people who keep forgetting that it is absolutely not a thing that is common.

Hear ye, Hear ye! Here is one of the promised maps that will accompany the release of my latest Building Pack, MBG_Buildings_3. This map is called "Moonfield Base Testing Grounds", and it is not a showcase Island for any addon or whatsoever. Originally this island was spawned by the idea that it would probably be cool to have TopGear's test track/airport in Arma2. So I went on and did it and thought while I am at it, I might as well try some new techniques in creating satmaps. And I am very pleased with the result. Then the project grew and grew. It was developed simultaneously along MBG_Buildings_3, though it only features a portion of the pack, simply because the area didn't need to have supermarkets, living estates and that sort of infrastructure. Finally this island served more purposes than being the host for TG's track. It got around to feature some water basins with varying depths, a range of slopes with inclines from 10% to 100%, two fallout shelters that directly withstand several MK82s for safely testing the latest relase of the missile box on some caravans. The airfield itself features two runways, one out of commission and another one with a length of 3500 metres (excluding jet blast areas). The runway is fully lit and I tried my best to create an airport that would meet up to the ICAO's specifications. So be prepared to get your flightgear working at night. Also there is a firing range with no targets on it (so you can do your own scripty wonders on it). As a small gimmick the firing range has range marks in 25 metre intervals, and the big 27-09 Runway has rangemarks in 50m intervals. For if you need to test your M107 1337 haxxor skillz. (All range markers are visible in the editor as black lines) In addition, there is a huge offroad track called "Offroad Course of Death". It is a really rough course (No smoothed roads) to see how good a vehicle is off the road. I advise to take the course with no less than the BAF Landrover... In general the map is divided into two Areas. Approximately half of the map is flat and leveled at 7.00007 metres. The other half of the map features extensive mountainious regions for your personal hiking and hunting experience. All in all this is probably a terrain best suitable for clan's bootcamps and flight schools. Or the occasional test of a newly released addon. That's the reason why I am releasing this. That and the TG Track. Here we go: MBG_Testfield @ Mondkalb.org (90.7MB) Required Addons: MBG_Celle_Objects (Included in MBG_Celle) http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=9448 http://www.armedassault.info/index.php?game=1&cat=news&id=3770 MBG_Buildings_3 http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=115347 Here are some Images: A map showing the relevant areas. A map showing the Power Lap. Here you can download the racing mission. It is just a small script for keeping an accurate time. My personal best on the Power Lap was 1:55:59 in the BAF Landrover.

Heya, that you have lots of experience in creating 3D assets definitely will speed things up. :) However you'll still have to learn the basics of O2. This is required to create the needed named selections for doors, label the LODs correctly and to have the correct named properties to work properly in terrains. I'd still advise you to go through this tutorial to get a grasp of what each LOD needs. Certain LODs have special needs to work properly. That tut also explains how to get a door working. So simple basic stuff that you won't necessarily be able to do in 3DSMax / Maya as they're very engine-specific. Other things you'll need to wrap your head around include configuring these buildings correctly (The usage of the "LAND_" as prefix is generally forgotten about which leads to ladders/doors/other things not working correctly in a terrain). You also may want to have a look at the multimaterial to save on the amount of required textures for your buildings. Terrain editing won't change drastically for A3. Terrains made with the Community Version of Visitor 3 should work fine in A3 already.

Aloha meanmachine1, I don't want to sound like a party-pooper, but what you're aiming at is a project of insane size that hasn't even really been done by anyone in the community in many years. Not only are you looking at learning how to make terrains, you're also looking at making new Buildings + all LODs making new Generic objects + all LODs making new Plants, Trees, Stones + all LODs What I mean to say with this: This project is too big for someone alone, let alone for someone who hasn't got any familiarity with the matter at all. Instead, I ask you to consider this: Start a small terrain on your own for now. 2x2km in size. Finish this terrain first. That means all the way until it's ingame and working fine with a decent satmap and maybe a mission or two. Take as much time as you need. You will not regret spending more time with the basics before starting on your "real" project. Golden rule here: DO NOT rush. Once you mastered terrain making (This'll take at least 2 months, maybe three at a normal Workday-Evening pace to get the basics goind), you can start thinking about creating new buildings for your terrain. Start by creating a single one-story building. Figure out what all LODs do, what they're needed for, and how you can save time creating them. Only after you've done that, too, I would only now consider even starting such a project of what you mentioned. But It'll soon occur to you/me, that this can't be tackled alone. You will need team mates who like the idea and want to help out with the project and stick around. (IMHO the hardest part). So, maybe grab a friend of yours and you can start learning all these things in tandem. This way you'll be an inseparable modteam of two already. Something that is insanely valuable! Morale of this message: Take it slow, take baby steps first. Many people have started off like you by biting off too much than what they can chew, which led them to forfeit the project after week 1. Probably forfeiting modding entirely. :( Please don't make this mistake. Tutorials on how to do these things I mentioned can be found all over the forum. I wrote some of them, but they're already really outdated already. Time flies... The Forum itself has many threads about the problems you'll encounter when starting modding in these separate areas. But you will need to do the reading, digging, and trying out of things yoursefl. Don't expect solutions magically presented to you by this great modding community. People will help you with your problems, though. Guaranteed. (Or well, as long as they're written down understandable).

CenterPosition is not the map's center. It's the default position of the cursor/view in the editor when you load up the map.

If you want to know how these sounds sound, have look in this folder: \ca\sounds\Characters

You'll need an algorithm that uses nearestObjects or nearestBuilding to store all structures of the desired type. Then write an algorithm that runs the building-finder only in specific areas when called, to avoid massive lag when calling it those commands with radii bigger than 2km. So ideally you iterate through all square kilometres of the map and store the data that is acquired within that. Very basic script Example: /* --- Params --- */ _gridSize = 1000; // in m, defines the size per scanned interval _mapSize = 8000; //in m, total width/length of map /* --- Script params--- */ _cursorX = 0; _cursorY = 0; _limit = _mapSize/_gridSize; _allBuildingPosition = []; while {_cursorY < _limit} do { // Get new grid center position _curX = _cursorX * _gridSize + 0.5 * _gridSize; _curY = _cursorY * _gridSize + 0.5 * _gridSize; // Store all positions of all found buildings { _allBuildingPosition = _allBuildingPosition + [position _X]; } forEach nearestObjects [[_curX,_curY,0], ["house"], _gridSize]; // Iterate X cursor (rows) _cursorX = _cursorX + 1; // If X cursor exceeds the limit, start a new colums if (_cursorX > _limit) then { _cursorX = 0; _cursorY = _cursorY + 1; }; sleep 0.1; }; I haven't tested this code (It's Sunday evening. :P), but if you know the basics of scripting, you should be able to work on from here. _allBuildingPosition is the variable that will then contain all building positions of all iterated tiles. Here a picture of what the script does. Maybe it helps you understanding the code. :) Note: The nearestObjects covers circles, not squares, so this current script above will not cover the entire map. You will have to double the radius for the nearestObjects command and come up with an efficient system that avoids counting building positions twice. The entire mapsize is currently readable via a script command. You can try hacking your way around it by sending "a probe" northwards originating from [0,0,0] and checking the iterating position's surface type and compare it to the surface defined for the outside terrain (The dynamic terrain generated outside of the actual map). However this approach is very complex and requires you to understand not only the basics of scripting, but also the advanced quirks and shortcuts. You can probably reuse code that you may write for the building finder. Anyways, all this is off the top of my head. I'm too lazy to actually test it, but hopefully if you work this out on your own with some help, you'll understand the scripting language very fast.