Terrain Editor

[Easyscor]

So im Working on the Baltic Map conversion. (thanks EasyScor, Skuzzy, and everyone else who have helped document the terrain editor. The transition from Engines like Unity and UE4 was painless thanks to that documentation) My only question is that pretty much most of the beaches are all messed up either via sunken landmasses or beaches that are  double the size they should be. I figured id start there and clean up and correct the beaches and sunken landmasses. Well I saved what id done so far, built it, and loaded it in the offline mission mode to notice that AH3 is placing Trees/bushes on the beaches.  I cant figure out how to correct it. can someone point me in the right direction?

You are welcome. I'm glad you've found it useful. I know it's a pain, but backup your terrain folder often!

[NerdFather]

So Ran Create Beaches Tool as you Suggested Hitech, But while it removes the trees/bushes. It completely destroyes the beaches. You can see in the image where i Hand redid the beaches, and then once the create beaches tool has ran it just obliterates it.

[ghostdancer]

I found the same thing Nerfather. The create beaches in some areas produce similiar results. I also am staying away from the spline islands function since it also tends to produce results I don't like. Then again the stuff I am working on is historical terrains that need to match say New Britain and the Solomons and it does tend to matter about getting the coast lines to match as much as possible the real places.

You can always try just painting along the coast line with the pure sand terrain. I don't think that has trees/bushes in it but I haven't checked that out personally yet. Its not a huge concern for Special Events Terrains because we have very few events that incorporate LVTs landing on beaches.

[NerdFather]

I found the same thing Nerfather. The create beaches in some areas produce similiar results. I also am staying away from the spline islands function since it also tends to produce results I don't like. Then again the stuff I am working on is historical terrains that need to match say New Britain and the Solomons and it does tend to matter about getting the coast lines to match as much as possible the real places.

You can always try just painting along the coast line with the pure sand terrain. I don't think that has trees/bushes in it but I haven't checked that out personally yet. Its not a huge concern for Special Events Terrains because we have very few events that incorporate LVTs landing on beaches.

I'll Give that a try, I've found a lot of interesting things during the conversion such as Massive terrain Spikes for no apparent reason, Random holes, And even a few places in game Where for instance you can see the top part of a hill from a distance but the sides dont load until much closer.

Heres an Imgur gallery of screenshots in AH3 of Baltic So far. Im working on texturing atm, so i frequently check stuff out in game. but some of the funnier bugs are in there as well haha.

http://imgur.com/a/ZpEXD

[ghostdancer]

Yeah I have similar issue with spikes all around my coastlines.

Oh, and this if something anybody should know about working on historical terrains. DO NOT import the elevation height file if you have spline beaches. A fresh import gets rid of all your splining (or does so for me). So get your elevations right. Then after you are happy then go do the spline beaches.

[NerdFather]

Yeah I have similar issue with spikes all around my coastlines.

Oh, and this if something anybody should know about working on historical terrains. DO NOT import the elevation height file if you have spline beaches. A fresh import gets rid of all your splining (or does so for me). So get your elevations right. Then after you are happy then go do the spline beaches.

What map are you working on? You keep saying historical and my interest level keeps getting higher hahahaha.

[Easyscor]

Anyone want to make a request that the conversion process test an exported water depth bitmap for land or water depth and sets the elevation accordingly? Say default +5 minimum for land instead of underwater and default -40 where the bitmap shows water depth? That way we could eliminate the rivers (they'd mess up the conversion) before running the procedure and the beach work would become trivial.

I'm gon'a be in sooo much trouble!   

[ghostdancer]

Hi NerdFarther Special Events has about 30 maps 512x512  based on the real world.

Currently I am working on a rebuild of blksea, blkseaw, solomons, and mariana. On blksea I decided to not just convert but bring in a new elevation map. So basically got srtm3 DEM files, brought them into Microdem and exported out a GeoTiff. Which then brought into L3DT and exported out into 16 bit gray raw. Then brought that into Photoshop and did a bunch of touch up. Then finally imported a new height.raw file to see how things would go. Lets just say it has been a learning experience.

Outside of that the normal conversion things you do is review the OBA file for base rotation issue (a few were randomly rotated but I think that was path 11 or 10), objects having the same name (didn't have any), missing objects (all our custom objects were replaced by fixme - beer bottles) so had to be yanked or replaced such as the 1x1 mile old cities being replaced with either 2x2 tank town or 4x4 cities. Same issue with the large 16x16 strat cities had to be replaced. Check errors showed that towns and bases no longer could be adjacent so had to move some so that they had 1 mile (1 sqTuare in between). Also had to give some airfields towns since the custom town objects they had were now gone. Then visual inspection of all the bases and strat objects to make sure they were now at the correct elevations. After all that then onto coastlines, painting textures on land, and hunting down lakes dots that didn't get removed. Also fixing the whole spiky elevation shoreline issue (where I found out not to reimport a raw.height file after you have done beach splining). etc.

Outside of convesion a bit easier but still lot of research and the maps are initially created from the DEM files I talked about earlier to match real work land shape and elevations. I was working on Malaysia but that is on hold.


 I am reviewing work done on germanyw done by another team member. Also bob40 is currently being converted.

[hitech]

Anyone want to make a request that the conversion process test an exported water depth bitmap for land or water depth and sets the elevation accordingly? Say default +5 minimum for land instead of underwater and default -40 where the bitmap shows water depth? That way we could eliminate the rivers (they'd mess up the conversion) before running the procedure and the beach work would become trivial.

I'm gon'a be in sooo much trouble!   

Maximum height you wish before setting to -40?

HiTech

[Easyscor]

No, no. Any land shown in the waterd will still be land in the terrain and any water will still be water after the conversion. Lots of current terrains have broad low stretches along the coastlines, particularly around bases that needed to be on flat terrain.
Max height where the conversion would normally come up with water and a negative value would then default to ~+5, that's the important part as far as I have seen.
Where the conversion might find land instead of the water shown in the AH2 terrain's water, the default Min height would be at water ~-15 or -20. That would be a good start for showing lakes deliberately left in the terrain.

I'll send you an email later today with a zipped terrain showing examples of what is working and what isn't.

[NerdFather]

Hi NerdFarther Special Events has about 30 maps 512x512  based on the real world.

Currently I am working on a rebuild of blksea, blkseaw, solomons, and mariana. On blksea I decided to not just convert but bring in a new elevation map. So basically got srtm3 DEM files, brought them into Microdem and exported out a GeoTiff. Which then brought into L3DT and exported out into 16 bit gray raw. Then brought that into Photoshop and did a bunch of touch up. Then finally imported a new height.raw file to see how things would go. Lets just say it has been a learning experience.

Outside of that the normal conversion things you do is review the OBA file for base rotation issue (a few were randomly rotated but I think that was path 11 or 10), objects having the same name (didn't have any), missing objects (all our custom objects were replaced by fixme - beer bottles) so had to be yanked or replaced such as the 1x1 mile old cities being replaced with either 2x2 tank town or 4x4 cities. Same issue with the large 16x16 strat cities had to be replaced. Check errors showed that towns and bases no longer could be adjacent so had to move some so that they had 1 mile (1 sqTuare in between). Also had to give some airfields towns since the custom town objects they had were now gone. Then visual inspection of all the bases and strat objects to make sure they were now at the correct elevations. After all that then onto coastlines, painting textures on land, and hunting down lakes dots that didn't get removed. Also fixing the whole spiky elevation shoreline issue (where I found out not to reimport a raw.height file after you have done beach splining). etc.

Outside of convesion a bit easier but still lot of research and the maps are initially created from the DEM files I talked about earlier to match real work land shape and elevations. I was working on Malaysia but that is on hold.


 I am reviewing work done on germanyw done by another team member. Also bob40 is currently being converted.

Awesome, Yeah I was going to do a cliffs of dover map, but Hitech told me someones already in the process. but it was still fun to grab the DEM files for it and rip my hair out between microdem and L3DT getting a smooth heightmap. but then Hitech sent me the Baltic Source so Now im consuming all my time with that conversion. Deffinatley love the fact that Terrain for AH is so much more streamlined and intuitive then it was when creating and working on terrains in things like unity and Unreal 4. Spent most of today, going back and fixing Texture blend issues, and filling in holes etc. that shouldn't be there. Probably will spend tonight checking all of the cities and bases making sure they blend with the terrain properly without Gaps or a few locations i found today where theres 90 degree cliffs going up 6-700 feet right at the end of the airbase on a couple sides.

[bustr]

I stopped using the create beaches tool along time ago. You will get infinitely better results hand touching them up. In England the cliffs of Dover are a chalk clay formation with no trees growing out of it. I hope who ever is creating a custom tile for chalk clay without random trees sprouting out of every seam. All three of the stone formation tiles I've been working with in the Terrset00 sprout random trees in the worst places.

Those Baltic cliffs, unless they drop off straight into the ocean, there should be a talus slope at the base of weather wear erosion rubble. But, then the stone tile to paint that with will have lots of random trees that really don't grow out of talus slopes.

I've just spent the last three months had sculpting and tile painting an island to get the geo formations and water erosion runoff scars real life looking from the air. I wanted to understand the limitations of sculpting terrain with this editor. Then Hitech decided to change some of the tiles which hosed what I thought was a finished product. Turns out he did me a favor.

I have a lot of respect for you guys with fixing everything on those full sized terrains after the conversion. Here are some shots from the editor of what three months taught me using terrset00. Oh! and this is al Easycor's fault......

[Easyscor]

ROFLMAO

My fault eh? I couldn't have picked a more deserving victim, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.
I think Hitech has a few MA terrains that need conversion and you have the experience to recommend you now.
After that, I have a couple more here on my hard drive.

[Easyscor]

A tip for those dealing with large terrains and missed water bits.

Problem: Finding all those sewer ponds scattered about the terrain after shoreline and river repairs.
Solution: Create a tile terrset with a bright color tile. It will make finding those ponds from altitude much easier.

[ghostdancer]

Hey is the object count still 50K for terrains in AH3? In AH2 if you had more than 50K objects in a terrain it threw "excessive object count" message when you loaded up a terrain in an arena but still allowed you to load the terrain.

So wondering if 50K objects is still the thresh hold for that warning message? Especially since I noticed with the conversion of some our larger terrains (e.g. Germany) the object count went up after going to the new version of strat objects, bases, etc.