oktyabr
Member-
Content Count
778 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Medals
Everything posted by oktyabr
-
See?!?!? Even though I'm "new" I don't just hound you guys for answers... I try to share what I've learned when I can. Helps carve it into my long term memory too... I'm 44 and wonder if I don't sometimes forget things faster than I learned them :j:
-
He's right, GIMP can process png with a simple check box for interlacing (leave it UNchecked of course, when resaving the image). 24bit is *fine*. "8bit RGB" means 8 bits for each color, ®ed, (G)reen and (B)lue, 8+8+8=24bit. Be *sure* you only save it in "P:/(namespace)/(map folder)/Source/" There are no options for PNG in L3DT, at least none that are accessible from the Export dialog. It should automatically save a PNG as 24bit, non-interlaced, and exporting directly as "sat_lco.png" should be very V3 friendly. What's the resolution? Did you resize it outside of L3DT?
-
I'm pretty new at this too but I'll try to help... According to the tutorial installing the BIS TOOLS 2 package on an empty partition is "highly recommended". I know not everyone does that (I did) but I've also read threads where guys ended up having to entirely reinstall windows when V3 or some other tool took a particularly hard dump! That scared me enough to go with a different drive/partition (I had a small spare laying around). YMMV. That said, if your tools were installed correctly (and they seem to be, if you have gotten this far), you will find a folder titled "ArmAWork" in your BIS TOOLS 2 folder. This is where the "P" drive lives, sort of... The "P" drive is a virtual drive that is created when the "BIS TOOLS 2" are properly installed and is apparently needed for the tools to work correctly. The path /BIS TOOLS 2/ArmAWork/(your map) is the same as P:/(your map). The only difference is the links to the folder contents are different whether you drop a file in one way or the other. Everything in your map must be put in that folder via the "P" drive to work properly, AFAIK, *except* the bmps you want to use backgrounds. Those can pretty much be placed anywhere except "P:/(some folder)"... Get it? If your tools were installed and are working properly you should be able to see the "P" drive under "My Computer" just as if you stuffed another drive (or partitioned an existing one) and called it "P:". If it's not there you have more serious problems than getting a background image to work, I'm afraid... If it IS there, great! Put your background images anywhere BUT in that "P:" drive. Visitor will make a copy of it and put it where it belongs once you've loaded the image. Some posts I've read say that those BMP images need to go in your map "Source" folder, others seem to suggest that they can be anywhere on your harddrive. Since I like keeping all my stuff together I use the first method. The drive that my BIS TOOLS are installed in is called "terrain (F:)" and for this example my map will be called "OKTY/OKTY_map". I put my background source bmp in "F:/BIS TOOLS 2/ArmAWork/OKTY/OKTY_map/Source/" Last but not least, again, I've read that the bmps need to be no larger than your map. Maybe you should try using a copy of that bmp resized to 8000x8000?
-
Need help understanding Textures
oktyabr replied to Calthazar's topic in ARMA 2 & OA : TERRAIN - (Visitor)
Yeah, I can confirm that GIMP has a couple of "one click" filters to make a texture seemless/tileable. Good stuff! I just used them myself today before following the rest of the steps in Beton's excellent surfaces tutorials. On a tangent, anyone have any good shots of black basalt/lava rock looking stuff they wouldn't mind sharing? I've spent a couple hours now picking through google results and still don't have the look I'm going after. -
Oh, you didn't say "background images" in your first post! A quick search of the forums brought the answer: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=86818&highlight=background+images&page=2 Basically V3 doesn't like the bmp if you point at your "P:" drive to locate it. Locate the bmp through your hard named partition instead, the one that you installed the BIS TOOLS in... (drive letter)/BIS TOOLS 2/ArmAWork/(namespace)/(mapdir)/Source/your_background_image.bmp Someone else said that your background image shouldn't be any larger than your sat_lco.png (in pixels) but I keep mine the same. Also remember the entry dialog is asking for the size of the image in Meters, not pixels!
-
@Bushlurker - Thanks for sharing your Falkan's source! It's been immensely helpful in seeing how a real config, layers and textures should be laid out. Going through your source should be like the next step in "Learning how to map 101", after the basic tutorial is mastered! The only thing I found odd was that I couldn't seem to find a mapLegends.png in it. Anyway, if you ever make it to the 'states I owe you pint! @bigshotking Try converting it to .png and make sure it's called "sat_lco.png", *exactly*, as per tutorial. I didn't even know V3 would accept .bmp as sat_lco...
-
Ok, I know I saw a guide around here somewhere but I can't seem to find it! All I have so far is the grass from the tutorial map. Another thread said that one, as well as the others, could be found in the Utes.pbo, etc. but aren't they encrypted? I need grass, sand, and black, volcanic basalt. Is there someplace/somewhere where I can find these easily or do I have to make them from scratch? Ok, I need palm trees, mangrove (swamp/salt marsh type trees) and maybe some pineapple too? Thanks in advance.
-
Thanks! I got a couple of textures working now. Just need to tweak the colors.
-
I just bought L3DT Professional and hoped someone had some good tips on how to use this tool to manufacture fantasy terrains that look and work good in Visitor? One thing I've noticed, and I post here because I'm not sure if it's the way L3DT exports .xyz or rather something Visitor does with them on import but I can make an island the way I want it (in L3DT) after the .xyz export/import process my elevations are much more steep; peaks are like mountains instead of the soft rolling hills that I saw in L3DT's 3D editor... IF I export the exact same HF as a PNG and import into V3 "from picture" I get something much more like what I was expecting, usually only needing a bit of tuning on the terrain.pbl to keep sea level something like what I want it, but even that isn't perfect. I've gone through literally about 10 solid hours of trial and error trying to find the best work flow to get what I see in L3DT's editor into V3 with the same terrain geometry and sea level. I'm going to keep hacking away at it but if someone has some tips or suggestions that might help I'd sure be much appreciative! And then I can get on with actually making something meaningful. Also have GIMP and Wilbur and familiar with both, if that helps. Thanks in advance!
-
DOH! It wasn't until I looked at your screenshot that I realized that it has an option... either "Clip below" or "Clip Above"!
-
Best approach to editing terrain vertices
oktyabr replied to tupolov's topic in ARMA 2 & OA : TERRAIN - (Visitor)
Top shelf tip Bushlurker! I was about to ask the same thing in my L3DT to V3 thread and then I found this! (At least I use the search function while stuff is compiling ;) ) Thanks! -
Thanks Bushlurker! I'll try that. EDIT -- Ok, I tried that setting min at -100 and max at 300, seeing how the top of my highest peak was 283 or so. The clip seemed to work right but the sea bed (everything clipped at -100) was solid white and 300m high so my island appeared surrounded by a steep canyon! What did I do wrong?
-
Yup, an island. 5x5km, 512x512 @ 10m/pixel, in the example I posted the HF from. Thanks, I'm trying those settings now. Glad to know 5m seems to work ok on most modern hardware... I wasn't sure what the convention was... but as I'm working on a relatively complex island, geographically speaking (extinct volcano, avalanched basalt fields, highlands, swamps, sandy beaches... not the HF I posted) double the terrain detail might help make it more believable. One thing about L3DT is that if you try to render a high res texture map (for sat_lco template) from the existing HF the interface only let's you increment exponentially... so 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, etc. I'm sure there is a good mathematical reason for this but I'm not sure what it is... All I know is that meandering through my trial-and-error session using this technique means I can't get exactly 5x (10240)... I can go 4x (8000 something) or 8x (16000 something) and resize either larger or smaller before import into visitor3. I'm guessing most people would suggest render large and scale down so that's what I'm working with. Yup, I've been playing with grayscale HF's for over a decade: POVray years ago, a little for the original Halflife engine, then Quake 3 and Wolf:ET, most recently trying to build race tracks for rFactor (almost as difficult as Arma2 islands!) so I understand that principal pretty well anyway. The tip about dialing in the exact same min and max heights from L3DT to V3 seems to work pretty well if I don't mess up the scale somewhere else. I know that HF doesn't look like it's got much under water but it happened to come out with a pretty shallow sea with reefs and sand bars, sort of what I'm really on... again, that's just an HF I whipped up quick to try and help me learn these techniques. I tried that yesterday and ended up with drastically steep inclines, not what I had in mind. I also wonder how .xyz might convey min/max height information to V3? Anyway someone had suggested using an HF png for the initial import to V3 and then using XYZ after that to jump back and forth from V3 to L3DT and back again. I haven't tried this method yet but I will. Many thanks again for all the thoughtful replies and tips! While L3DT isn't quite the perfect HF editor it does have some very nice tools for the price... wish I could figure out why I can't rebuild my DM from HF (it's grayed out in the menu)... perhaps because I've used a generic volcano insert in the DM instead of a "custom" volcano overlay from the HF? Eh, I'll hammer the guys on the L3DT forums about that one ;) ---------- Post added at 08:41 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:40 AM ---------- Is there a way to easily "squash" the terrain in V3? Perhaps in the terrain.pbl or am I better off darkening the HF.png itself? While my terrain looked good in both L3DT and bulldozer it is still way too steep for practical use in game! My current settings are minHeight -1839, maxHeight 562.91, producing a range of 2401. I think I'd like it about HALF that or a range of 1200. Can I just reduce both min and max by half and get predictable results? Thanks in advance!
-
EDIT: I'm not sure what was wrong with the first of these two examples but the second one, where I followed the sizes used in the tutorial, the problem was as simple as having "--" in front of the "minHeight" value! -- = +? So it might have compressed my approx. 800m terrain into about 200m?!?!? Anyway, that works. I'll leave the following examples for those that might walk in my footsteps one day. Hmmm.... now my terrain came out all squashed. terrain grid: 1024x1024 terrain cell size: 10m terrain size: 10240x10240 sat_lco.png: 2048 (I wanted a small one that might run fast, for testing purposes) Image size: 2048 x 2048 Image Resolution (m/pixel): 5.000 Segment Size: 512 My terrain.pbl: minHeight and maxHeight were *exactly* what I had in L3DT's "vertical range" dialog. "squareSize" I set to "2" based on what I understood as the formula: sat_lco.png size divided by terrain.png size... 2048/1024=2 (or 5120/512=10, in the tutorial) I had an extinct volcano that was 424m tall at the highest point! In V3, bulldozer specifically, it was like a pot hole in the ground. Yes, my horizontal size in L3DT was also 10m (per pixel). Any ideas what went wrong here? Thanks in advance! ---------- Post added at 09:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:53 PM ---------- Ok this time I decided to fall back closer inline with what the tutorial had: terrain grid: 512x512 terrain cell size: 10m terrain size: 5120x5120 mask_lco.png: 5120 (the all white one from the tutorial) sat_lco.png: 5120 Image size: 5120x5120 Image Resolution (m/pixel): 10.000 Segment Size: 512 Again, besides changing the squareSize back to "10" (as in the tutorial) I used the exact numbers I had in L3DT: Here is my terrain.png... Nothing fancy, just something I wanted to whip up quick for a fast test (click for larger version): It should have plenty of elevation and yet in bulldozer it was almost perfectly flat... my 400+m volcano looked like you might think it a bad pothole if you drove over it. :mad: Suggestions? Ideas? ---------- Post added at 11:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:43 PM ---------- I'm still looking for a little work flow from an expert ;) Suppose all you have is L3DT and a working build and tool partition, etc... What is the right way to go from HF to SAT? ------------------------------------------------ I realize that things just seem to go smoother if the sat_lco (and mask_lco) are 10x larger than the terrain being used but how do YOU get there? If I follow the tutorial example I'm shown a terrain.png that's 512x512 and a sat_lco that's 10x that, or 5120x5120. So, in regards to L3DT do you start with an HF that is 5120x5120 and then shrink it down for the terrain.png or... work with an HF that is 512x512, export it as the terrain.png, then increase it's size to produce the needed "hi-res" texture or something I haven't thought of yet? Thanks in advance!
-
Anyone figured out a good work path to generating broad, sandy beaches, resort style?
-
Thanks Bushlurker! I was trying to work with 2048x2048 @5m to get a higher terrain resolution, as recommended by L3DT but I see that 10m seems to be the standard for Arma2 so I'll go with your recommendations. My first project is just a small island anyway, something similar to Spirit's excellent @SIX_SHL island, with a prominent salt-marsh type swamp for a particular mission I once started for Counter Strike years ago, before I found more realistic shooters, so 1024x1024 should be plenty :)
-
LOL! And thanks! I never made an exact note of max/min but rather tried to tune terrain.pbl from memory. I'll give another go with exact values this time. Keep the tips coming, if anyone has any more! Can L3DT be used to render usable masks for V3, even just for testing purposes? What is the best work flow to do so and recommended image sizes? If I'm using a: 2048x2048 HF as "terrain.png", is there an advantage to making this larger or smaller? Should my sat_lco.png be the exact same scale? And masks? I've found GIMP's "posterize" color tool (limits the number of colors in an image) makes at least something a bit easier to work with. Should they be the same size as everything else? Again, any tips or descriptions of workflow would be very appreciated!
-
Buldozer crash with Arma2P setup and OA1.54.exe
oktyabr replied to commander1985's topic in ARMA 2 & OA : TERRAIN - (Visitor)
So that's the only benefit to using arma2oa.exe as buldozer? I can still make arma2oa (or combined ops) maps even though I am using the "stock" buldozer.exe? Sorry, new to visitor... took me two days of reading forum posts and reinstalling *everything* at least twice before I got all the way through the tutorial without an error (loading TUT_SampleMap.bpo in Arma2 correctly). I want to start work on an original island asap as I have a couple of weeks to kill before my RL job sucks me back in again... Should I just plan on mapping for arma2 and stay away from OA/CO for now? -
EDIT-- I uninstalled everything and reinstalled again, this time to a much bigger partition (126GB). Tutorial went without a HITCH! /me jumps for glee!!!! I tried using arma2.exe as buldozer but it had problems so I went back to using the default one (with original \core and \bin folders too) and it binarizes correctly and even loads into the game without a SINGLE error message! I've been at this for most of every waking hour for the last two days and it feels good just to get this far. (HINT to those reading this with the idea of jumping into island making too... you might have better luck than I did but plan on needing more than "just a few minutes" to set it all up and get it working properly!) Now I want to start making real islands! My question is what do I have to change in this setup to map correctly for arma2 and preferably combined ops? I understand there is some issue that seems to require editing files in binary to get working under OA/CO and I'd rather not tackle that quite yet... unless there is an easy work around I haven't heard of yet? What's the benefit of using arma2.exe (or arma2oa.exe) as buldozer? arma2.exe at least I have the bin and core .bpos for but I bought both on Steam and I don't even see a Dta folder in my OA directory... I'll be searching and reading and searching and reading too... just hoping someone might point me in the right direction before I spend all night reading 90 page threads! Thanks again for your help! DISREGARD ALL BELOW -- Problem remedied (even though I'm not sure what is different now). Kept for posterity! /END EDIT --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks! Your tip of using an empty text file by that name solved my config problems but I'm still curious why there is no mention of it in the tutorial(s)? Is it supposed to be included in the tutorial zip? I redownloaded the tutorial in case I got a bad download the first time and still didn't see the TUT_SampleMap.hpp. Is it made automagically by Visitor3... am I still doing something wrong so that it's not being created? Nevertheless I've gotten much further since I crossed that hurdle with your help! On to the next problem... I followed another tip to use my arma2.exe as bulldozer and got that working... I can even see and run the map in the game's editor now so I feel like I'm finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel! BUT I have to have "binarize" UNchecked in BinPBO.exe to get this far. If I try to binarize it I get the MS error reporting dialog that: "Binarize.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close." I've read elsewhere that XP might have a problem with this and I AM running XP SP3 but have a hard time imagining that as people were obviously binarizing islands back when XP was still the big OS to have, weren't they? There must be a workaround or someone that has found the solution to this problem? Thanks in advance, either way.
-
http://pastebin.jonasscholz.de/1292 Thanks.
-
Hi, I'm running into problems with the tutorial too! Last error first is during binarizing I get the error: Followed by a SECOND error that reads exactly the same except all the path is in lower case. I'm a linux guy and not really sure how case-sensitive these tools might be but I've followed the tutorial *exactly*, including case, just in case (forgive the pun!). I've gone over everything at least twice (checked some things more than that) and I'm stuck. I DO have XP so I followed the advice here: I download the copy_cpp.bat to "P:\CA\" and ran it with a double click. A DOS window popped up for a second and seemed to process stuff with no errors, then disappeared. I check P:\TUT\ca and the only folders in there are from "buildings2"??? When I hit this phase My path said: so I changed it to "buldozer.exe -window -buldozer" and still have the same errors. Also I had a problem in this step: In the drop down menu I don't have an option for 40x40. The smallest is 25x25 and then 50x50 and larger. If I try to manually enter 40x40 V3 crashes and I get a MS "Error Reporting Dialog" so I went with 50x50, at least before I posted here. No crash that time and the rest of the tutorial went fine... I could see the contours in V3 and the preview in Buldozer just fine... So then we get back to my first error! Looked at the config.cpp and couldn't find anything wrong that jumped out at me. It even completes with a .pbo in the @TUT/addons folder and logfile, although the TUT map never shows up in the game. I DID notice that "#include "TUT_SampleMap.hpp" in the config.cpp does NOT have a file in my P:\TUT directory. The only .hpp files I have are cfgClutter.hpp and cfg.Surfaces.hpp Here is the content of my logfile: I'm sure it's something simple that I missed but I'm going crazy trying to figure out what it might have been. Many thanks in advance if anyone can help with the answer.
-
Frigates, Weapons and Waves Addons By Gnat - OGN Exclusive
oktyabr replied to Auss's topic in ARMA 2 & OA - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE
Excellent work and a lot of fun to play around with! Thankyou for your all your time and effort on these. Last but not least *thank you* for actually including a useful "README" with creative commons licensing and your contact information in it! If everyone did such things squabbles over who had permission to use what and where would be more quickly resolved instead of turning into pages of arguments and accusations. -
Hell in the Pacific MOD
oktyabr replied to mr pedersen's topic in ARMA 2 & OA - ADDONS & MODS: DISCUSSION
WOW! Another awesome mod to tinker with? There isn't enough hours in day! I was just thinking about how prime the Pacific theater might be for such a mod when I stumbled across this thread! Looks super nice, very eager to get to try it. -
Hi, I'm interested in trying my hand at making an island and have been reading lots on it. The only question I really have is how big should my partition be to house the BIS tools, etc? Basically my primary gaming drive has about 120GB free on it. I don't mind making a new partition for island creation but don't want to just throw 100GB or something at the wind if I don't have to. If I really need that much space I'll go buy a third drive (have two already). Can someone suggest a reasonable partition size if I keep my project neat and tidy and only use it for one island at a time? Thanks in advance!
-
How big a partition should I use?
oktyabr replied to oktyabr's topic in ARMA 2 & OA : TERRAIN - (Visitor)
Thanks! I do have both A2 and OA (and PMC, etc.) so that was exactly the sort of answer I was hoping for. 30GB I think.