The 1 mile x 1 mile town shape (or any of the base shapes or strat shapes, for that matter), once you export it for AC3D, is very customizable. Even the bitmaps can be altered to suit whatever you're trying to do. And you can add berms and finer terrain features right into the wire frame.
The thing that escapes me, though, are the clutter, trees and buildings. How is that painted in. The game uses Speedtree, I get that. But what tells the editor to place the specific types of clutter here or there in a town, or a gun emplacement, or a building that's destructible, etc. Where and how is that done, exactly.
Instinct is telling me it's a baked-in somehow, and the game looks for cues in one of the bitmaps. But I don't know which ones. You open the wire frame in AC3D and you see the terrain, and you open the bitmaps in Paint and you see what each brings to the end product. But I don't see anywhere what actually drops the buildings and gun pits and trees and oil tanks, etc, into the final town shape, base shape or strat shape, etc.
Reason I ask is for the AvA terrains. I'm trying to make the shapes for the terrain on the north and south sides of the Ludendorff Bridge. It would help me tremendously to learn how the clutter (buildings and trees and such) is placed in a shape like a town or GV base.
Thanks