Something for the Pacific Tile Set

[bustr]

I've become interested in the Pacific tile set and after slogging through all the mistakes I made with bowlma at the blue print stage, and the construction stages. I came up with a better blueprint stage. So I created a 4096x4096 1:1 multi layered blue print in my art program this time, with 25x25 sector lines and rings along with 19x19 sector lines and rings to better judge field placements. I can better judge land masses and clearances for task forces. My observations of my terrain bowlma and how it was utilized by the community verified that they want quicker action with less travel time. Easier transit with GVs without the trees eating their GVs. And they didn't notice by keeping airfields mostly between 25-500 ft along with 19 miles separation, they spent more time fighting below 15k than climbing to hide above 15k.

As for the construction stages, I'm still waiting on my temporary license for L3DT. Barring that, I can create a 4096x4096 CBM, paste my blueprint into it and connect the dots. The screen capture below of the blueprint from my art program, the file is 4096x4096. The grey ring will be another 25k barrier while fortunately, my research of the Solomon islands, elevations are not much above 1000ft for any of the islands and having water ways 19-25 miles wide promoted more interest on bowlma in getting quickly to the action and taking the base or furballing versus climbing to 15k and higher.

Hopefully Hitech will allow me to continue associating a cvtg0 and a bbtg0 out of the same port. Since this terrain has more water, I'm not sure if I should give each country 3 or 4 ports. On bowlma the BB was not as destabilizing as I feared, while the usual cast of suspects had no problems level bombing them to the bottom of the sea.

As of now, I still have to create layers with base types, base numbers, spawns for GV\PT, and strat. The black grid in the screen capture is a 25x25 sector grid, I have a 19x19 sector grid(3\4 sector) I'll be using to get airfields closer for quicker action since that is working well on the previous terrain.


   

[Easyscor]

Easier transit with GVs without the trees eating their GVs.

The Med set is/was the most open of the three tile sets at this time.

[bustr]

If my changes in how I prototype the blueprint and the hard lessons I learned from the first one with the euro set pay off. Maybe a Med one, and the nice openness between trees. I still have not gotten to the terrain editor stage yet with this one to look at the Pac set. Still have to populate the blueprint with layers for bases, strats and spawns. And figure out where I want to put four ports in each country to give the guys more BBtsg0 to shoot at each other with. If, Hitech is allowing the two task group types per port as a standard now instead of a one-off for my first terrain. I don't think eight ports per country will fit on this terrain.

I'm still waiting on my 90 day license from L3DT. If it's not e-mailed to my by the time I'm finished with the blueprint layers, I'll just create a height map file to drop in the gross block land masses including the 25k ring. So I don't have to mess with trying to count sector lines and lay down 6 mile diameter dots just to connect the dots. That took almost two months with the first terrain. I can generate a height map that will create all the islands as 1000ft tall raw blocks of land, I've gotten very fast at sculpting after the 25k mountain range and fhords. That is part of the reason the blueprint file is a 4096x4096. And I finally discovered how to get rid of the messy noise hair spikes around the edge of object from the import, you run a blur of 1pixel against the PNG file before converting it to RAW.

Right now I have to keep remembering which layer I'm working on and to make backups for version control.

[bustr]

Just did an import test of the map corner from the 25,000ft wall arc back to the map corner set down to 6,000ft. If it comes to it, I can import a basic heightmap to mass produce the land masses and water ways. Just had to create enough grayscale samples so I have a known mapping of basic elevations once the test files were imported into the terrain editor.

[bustr]

It took longer to create the blueprint jpeg than it did to massage the converted to 16bit grayscale png file. And fortunately the 16bit grayscale pallet in Krita number values are almost a 1:1 for elevation values in the terrain editor. Once I go through the conversion process I came up with to get the TE to accept the heightmap file I create.

I do not recommend this for semi historic regions from WW2 as MA terrains. It works great to lay down raw land blocks with water clearly defined. There is a 25,000ft continuous wall with erosion cuts in the vertical face and the gradient I pulled to each corner translated into runoff cuts. Now it's about a week with the TE sculpting tools until I like what I create. I wussed out and made the islands 500ft instead of 2000ft. It takes less time to use the hill creation tool set to 2000ft per\sec to target creating something than sculpting away massive blocks of raw land mass. I still have to touch all of those half circle scallops, that is easier than cutting them in the terrain editor if you can pop them into a art file with a brush. And I remembered to rotate the png file work space 90 degrees to the right before I exported it for the raw file creation process.

Blueprint in a 1:1 4096x4096 jpeg file. 4 hours of work with 12 layers.





First heightmap import, then "rock" tile painted from 5400-36,000ft for contrast. Creating the grayscale png file, making adjustments and applying brushes and effects. Then conversion to raw format for the terrain editor, 2 hours. My first terrain took me a month to reach this stage cutting it all out of the 4096 work space while being able to only look at one sector at a time. Self inflicted handicaps due to having never created a 4096x4096 terrain.

[bustr]

If you decide to use a heightmap file like I did, L3DT has not sent me a temp license to use the pro version, while the free version limits you to a 2048x2048 work space. You cannot get as near a completed terrain topography as with L3DT but, you can get a well thought out RAW land mass topography. The most important high elevation and altitude tapered down to the outside edge of the work space land mass is the 25,000ft ring wall and the runoff areas into the four corners.

The land step in front of the ring wall is 5,000ft high. All of the islands are land masses 500ft high with some areas higher due to things art programs do that you can account for by running a blur tool against the whole 4096x4096 file before exporting it from 16bit grayscale PNG to RAW for import into the terrain editor. That way they are not 5000ft spikes, instead 2000ft softened mounds and ridge lines. And that may come in handy as you are sculpting the islands.

What I learned from my first terrain that would have saved me many weeks of work. Before you really get involved in sculpting your terrain into your masterpeice while you have all of your raw terrain blocks in place. Decide on your three highest elevation tiles, say snow, snow\rock, and rock. Then use the global terrain application tool which allows you to pick a minimum then maximum altitude. And apply's each tile type inside of the band you set for it to the whole terrain at one go. Apply those tiles so your raw blocks have some color and texture. This will help as contrast while you sculpt, and it's easier to finger paint smaller areas to get that custom look than it is to try and finger paint all 20x20 sectors by hand.

The screen captures below include the CBM map and how I applied the three tiles to date. Then the 25,000ft barrier wall and 5000ft step below it. I had to use a 23,000ft diameter brush to raise the brown stone on the vertical wall back up to the snow cap, which setting it's band had it half way down the wall. You can see the three tiles I used. And then part of an island at 500ft with a 2000ft edge that would have been a line of 5000ft spikes if I had not applied the blur tool to the png file before conversion to raw format. YOu can see how I have contrast now to start sculpting.

[bustr]

The terrain editor has a nice tool called the "Bulldoze 2 points". It will cut a down sloped trough between 2 points if one is higher than the other. It will even raise a ramp if you pull one point from up on a 90 degree cliff, then out and down to the lowest point like the ocean. Makes it very nice to raw cut canyons and gully's, and setup raw raised ridges for an extensive runoff area from a mountain.

This is my first cut with the bulldozer tool set to 3miles diameter. I'll make a pass over all three 5,000ft land bases under the 25,000ft barrier wall to raise buttresses and create runoff canyons. Then I will have to stop and eyeball all of it for a minimum of secondary cuts off each primary cut. I'll be using brush with a smoothing tool set to a very low feet per second to slowly act like erosion to blend these cuts down into something that looks like canyon terrain running off of a high mountain into the ocean. Once you get the hang of it, each primary cut is simply setting your elevation level about 10,000ft, use the W key to push to the barrier wall, then the S key to pull you away to the ocean 1 1\4 sector away from the base of the wall. It's just finger painting with a 3mile diameter finger tip. Kind of like building a sand castle with damp sand.

If you make booboo's, incorporate them as a feature into the landscape or, use the elevation tools to put the area back you booboo'd and start over. Worst case, immediately close the editor and do not save. But, if you have not been saving all along or set the auto save to something faster than 15 minutes. You loose all your work like I did yesterday when I made the terrain editor CTD. It was fortunate for me, I really didn't like the block of work I was doing just before the CTD. 


First screen shot is half the distance from the wall to the ocean. Second is at the ocean and you can see the buttress and trough the bulldoze tool creates 3miles wide. This is cut No.1 on the first crescent shaped land footing and I have three of these crescents to cut before I then look at doing secondary cutting. By the way that smooth round over at the top edge of the 5000ft cliff is courtesy of running a global blur against the 16bit grayscale file before converting it to raw format for import into the terrain editor. I found if you don't, the edges of cliffs and the water just off the edge of land ends up with vertical spikes of land all over the place. And it flattens random vertical spikes of terrain on land bodies.

One of the real problems using the terrain editor is visual scale. That 25,000ft wall, the 3mile wide trough and the 5,000ft cliff do not look like they can be that large in those screen shots which are 1:1. You have to constantly give yourself reality checks about scale. A 100ft cliff in the editor looks like the width of a hair from the alt I'm working in the screen shots. The mistake is trying to make things look right from 10,000, 20,000 or 50,000 feet above the project land base. Then you run a build and login offline to find you have built a port with a 10,000ft half circle cliff wall around it. But, it looked right in the editor because the port object is on a 1x1mile tile.

[bustr]

About 30 minutes later and I have one 5000ft base crescent of land mass finished with first pass bulldozer buttress and channels. Starting my brush up on the face of the wall creates the raised buttress which runs at that angle all the way to the sea. The slope angle doesn't look like much in the screen capture, but, once again scale is the issue. Halfway up the wall is about 15,000ft, while the trough is being cut at that angle down to the sea through a 5,000ft high block of land.

Since I'm posting screen captures of this crescent at different stages of creation, I should move on to the second cut stage and smoothing tool finish stage to show how all of this ends up looking like mountain ridges running down to the sea. The current terrain editor manual is excellent getting you started and I thank Easyscor and Greebo for their great work. Part of the 6 months it took to finish my first terrain bowlma was teaching myself the tools with no advanced directions or screen captures from someone's terrain editor as they created a terrain. The bulldozer tool is a incredibly simple tool. Select it, take your mouse and click on point A, drag to point B and release. Then presto you get what is in the pictures I'm posting. The rest is up to you to experiment to see what it does.

[bustr]

Now I use the smoothing tool and the raise hill tool set to "negative raise hill" so I can cut into the terrain.

Raw terrain cut and modified with the bulldozer tool. Then after with the smoothing and raise hill tool.

[artik]

Have you thought of importing some real world geographical data of some beautiful location with nice relief and use its parts (mountains) as building blocks for MA terrain?

[bustr]

Will your program allow me to create the output of the ring barrier and three equal land mass areas? Also why ask me now when I'm on the hook for some time to come with this terrain?

[bustr]

Everyone,

Artik's program is perfect for translating a real world topographical map into a heightmap to import into our terrain editor. It's a god send for the AvA and special events terrain builders. Or if you want to take a shot at having 3 countries divide some place on earth into thirds and fight with dissimilar strengths and weaknesses. Hitech accounts for that with the random function that rotates country location with every rotation of the map.

I'm building a terrain style where I make all three country land masses the same sitting inside of a 25,000ft unbroken retaining wall. The retaining wall and it's runoff ledge do not exist in the real world so I'm on the hook to sculpt it all by hand. When you use the tools long enough in the terrain editor, you will see they have random effect properties that you can leverage to create the random effects you see in the real world on water and wind sculpted canyons and mountains. Remembering the scale of the world topographically becomes the real problem as you sculpt. It helps to look at photos and videos of the topographical region you are basing your terrain idea around.

I planned my terrain to achieve having feilds and water ways certain distances in general apart. A real world topo map cannot be relied on unless it is solid land to fit into my design. The real Solomon islands are too far apart for what I am doing. They work for FSO and Special Events, MA players would not tolerate some of the distances to get to a fight. I used them as a guide for constructing the islands from that part of the world. So it's up to me to build every single island now that my heightmap import created the base 500ft blanks in the water.

I knew I would have to create everything by hand once again, so I thought posting ongoing screen shots with comments would be helpful for aspiring terrain builders. If this is a bad idea, let me know and I'll pack up shop and let Artik take over from here with screen shots from his program.


There is no place on planet earth with a 25,000ft retaining wall and 30 mile runoff ledge to an ocean.

[bustr]

One of the biggest problems you will run into is staying random in your brush strokes or cutting strokes while keeping in mind, nature works with a purpose, randomly. I'm not trying to copy any place real on earth. I'm trying to copy the look of specific topographical features from a region on earth inside of a theme I am creating this project around.

After awhile you will discover one of the shaping tools set to around 5000 then pushed or pulled down a ridge line will impart random weather cutting to it's sides. You can add to this by pulling it down the gully to deepen it while rocking it side to side against the gully walls. If I use a very narrow brush and the brown stone tile the vertical walls are painted with. And pull it down the bottom of every gully to the water, looks just like weathered runoff areas. And may not be worth the trouble in a place no one will ever fly over.


Large faces of some kinds of volcanic rock in the Pacific are weather eroded like this. A large part of this eroded area will eventually be painted with trees like you see most volcanic mountains that are the basis for some islands in the area north of Australia become over grown with.

[bustr]

So I have finished sculpting one of the three 5000ft crescent shaped land masses at the base of the ring wall for one country. Took about 8 hours and I'll get faster from here now that I've settled on the width of the brush and speed of the feet per second change settings. Instead of wasting time cutting cross runoff canyons after I smoothed the straight down runs, I gave up and simply cut them with the bulldozer tool straight off which speeds things up.

The map showing the finished upper crescent and giving up and cutting the cross hatch pattern randomly. Looks like I need to revisit the first 1\2 of the crescent to the left and apply the faster technique to put more cross runoff canyons and more fingers to the land points between runoff canyons. As you sculpt your terrain, this happens as you get your stride on your sculpting techniques. Free hand sculpting you cannot really screw anything up.


 

[bustr]

Second crescent land shelf under the barrier wall of another country sculpted. One more country to go.