[Request] Secondary Terrain Tut.

[sylent/shooter]

Does anyone know of any tutorial that helps with generating secondary terrain and breaks it down?

As when I created my map I made the mistake of only creating the primary terrain. I could make the secondary by hand but it would take a long time. So I was wondering if anyone knows of any tool or tutorial that will create secondary terrain or teach you how to do it with photoshop etc.

PS. When creating my secondary terrain in photoshop I am having a few problems.

1. I do not know what format to save it as when the .raw saving box pops up
2. I am unsure on how to import the secondary terrain into my map.

[AFsoccer]

Download this file: Battlefield 2 | Files | bf2heightmapgenerator.rar | Utilities | Tools | Game Front

The tutorial is contained inside the rar.

[sylent/shooter]

does that application just flip the original heightmap?

[AFsoccer]

does that application just flip the original heightmap?

It flips and/or rotates it so the edges match up. It also tells you how to activate the surrounding terrain, in case you haven't done that yet.

[sylent/shooter]

I was looking at it earlier after my significant 5 hour search of the internet on possible ways of doing it xD I downloaded it too and tried it but I wasn't happy with the surrounding terrain. But then again I did only open up the .raw files in photoshop.

I will go test this out in game and see what it's like.

[Rhino]

AFsoccer;1727155']Download this file: Battlefield 2 | Files | bf2heightmapgenerator.rar | Utilities | Tools | Game Front

The tutorial is contained inside the rar.

I would strongly recommend not using this tool to make your surrounding terrain for the reasons I've posted here: https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f189-m ... ost1639342

Rhino;1639342']This is basically what the tool is doing, using OGT as an example.



Now with OGTs VD you most likley wouldn't notice how crappy the surrounding terrain was but with a much larger VD, and epically on a map with air assets, you would easily be able to see things like for starters, the river looks totally wrong and the train track lines (which the terrain has been modified for) don't meet up at all etc, espically in the NW of the map the train line goes off at a 90deg angle all of a sudden.. In some locations you could even see the extra rivers on the map...

The tool isn't a good starting point as it means you need to do even more work to clean it up the surrounding terrain than if you where just working with a blank map and if used as a place holder, it would get left...

It is far better to do the surrounding terrain at the very begging of the map, epically if your generating the terrain or using DEM data.

If generating your terrain, generate your map size by 3 then split the map up in photoshop, using the centre for the pri terrain and the edges for the surrounding terrain, as I did for my "Test Airfield" map:
Design Map:


L3DT Minimap with surrounding terrain:


And if your using DEM data, take the area outside of where you want your map to be as well as the map, then split it up in photoshop, much like what you would do above with generating terrain, except your not generating it, although if your going to shove it though Geocontrol keep it as one for that before you split it up.


Doing the above not only means you get a much, much better result and very nice transition between your Pri and Surrounding terrain, but you also save a heap of time trying to clean up a really crappy surrounding terrain which doesn't work.

For surrounding terrain as I said above, your best off making it in the first stages of making your map but if you forget, then I would recommend using Photoshop to make your surrounding terrain. Assuming your map is a 1024 map and each of your surrounding heightmaps is 257x257px then make a new 771x771px image, open up your primary terrain, scale it down to 257x257, place it in the centre of the image and then make a new layer working off your surrounding terrain (making sure not to edit your pri terrain).
Then when your done export each bit around the middle in this format, image also labels the textures each one uses:

Then your done other than texturing which the simplest way is with tpaint

[AFsoccer]

Not everyone uses a terrain generator tool to make terrain, so this is a nice option. I used it on Shijia Valley (which has helicopters) and it works great. The nice thing is it matches your seams so the edges are at the same height... then you can manually change a few things like rivers so it doesn't look obvious.

Remember that there are many ways to do things Rhino.

[Rhino]

Hence terrain gens was only a tiny bit I talked about

If you read it fully, I talk about DEM data and making it by hand and if you had forgotten to make them before hand, how you can do it later with PS...

Also Shijia you can just about get away with it due to its size and the low VD, but still no where near a very good method. I also used it a tiny bit when I did Muttrah's although I did it by hand in PS as a base and then I painted on top mainly just for the edges bit.

If I did it fully on Muttrah the carrier would have just ended up in a pond and you would have certainly noticed that

It really should not be the standard way to make surrounding terrain, standard way should be to do it in the early stages of the map, when its easiest to make.

[BroCop]

Since this thread is already up here I thought about sticking this question up here.

Basically what causes the surrounding terrain to go haywire all of the sudden (usually whenever I use the undo feature when working with terrain)?

Note: By "haywire" I mean its like an entire secondary hm got hit by a Random tool nuke. Will post screen if necessary

[sylent/shooter]

^ happened to me too CroCop.

Also thanks for the response Rhino and likewise AFsoccer

[sylent/shooter]

this is what my surrounding terrain looks like. (In one section. L1)

I did it in photoshop. But i'm thinking it could be something thats incorrect with my raw file... Is it possible to save it incorrectly? I'm saving it as IBM PC option but thats the only thing I can change when I save the 257 px file. I'll upload an image of the section if that would help determine the issue.

[Rhino]

pretty sure that means its been saved in the incorrect format.

Surrounding terrain (note, not Primary) is in a different format than Pri terrain, main thing its 8bits rather than 16bits.

Opening settings:


File format settings:


Save settings


Your file is most likely currently in the wrong "mode" so change its file format settings to 8bits then resave

[sylent/shooter]

I had a hunch that it was in the wrong mode. But I was not aware on which one it had to be in. Thanks for the info! I'll give it a shot ^^

EDIT: That was the problem. I guess when I brought the layer over to my new 257 x 257 document it copied the 16 bit depth over with the layer. When I saved it, it was essentially a 16 bit file compressed as an 8 bit so it got all weird and stuff

[sylent/shooter]

Two things are happening now:

1. when I open up the editor and choose the "render" secondary terrain button, it'll render correctly and everything is done right. But it is a very light colour. It's textured but it doesn't seem to be following the rendered colour map that T-paint created for it. (I.E default sand colour. Same colour as my picture I posted above) What have I done wrong, if anything and how do I fix it.

- For reference I did open the tx_s7 file to see if there was a colourmap and there was.

2. When I go in game after packing the map again, the terrain looks the same as it did before. But i'm getting these weird walls of terrain where the surrounding terrain meets the pri terrain. They'll appear and disappear depending on how I look at them. (Also my terrain is still what it was before I edited it.)

- I have a now completely black raw file for my water surrounding terrain but it still shows up about 30 meters above the ground like it was before I created this new terrain.

[AFsoccer]

1. You need to lightmap the surrounding terrain. Then it will darken.
2. Open editor and manually re-save the compiled terrain (and compiled color and detail).
3. Re-lightmap after making changes to water heights as the terrain under water will be black until re-lightmapped.

[Rhino]

What AF said.

Other than for the light surrounding terrain, you do need to LM it (and then compile the colour textures for it to work ingame) but sometimes that's not quite enough. Sometimes you need to darken the surrounding terrain colour manually still to make it the same brightness as the pri terrain.

[AFsoccer]

Good point Rhino. For Tad Sae I had to lightmap the surrounding terrain twice since the first time it was too light. Basically, save a copy of your TerrainLight.con so you don't screw up your map settings, then darken the settings and re-lightmap just the surrounding terrain. Keep playing with it until it matches in-game.

[Rhino]

Well that's one way of doing it although I was talking about darking the colour of the terrain manually with PS but either way gets the same result as the "complied" surrounding terrain dosen't actually have a separate lightmap which is overlayed like primary terrain per se. Instead the lightmap is baked into the colour texture, as you can see in this complied one from muttrah:


It dose this to save memory as its cheaper to have one image than two images although it means dynamic shadows can't be cast on the surrounding terrain as if that was to happen, then the shadowy area would become even darker if a tank drove onto it for example, which is why you don't have this for pri terrain

But ye, I would recommend darking only your editor colour textures for the surrounding terrain but can do it the LM method too if you like, just harder to get right and you have to wait for it to generate, although you do need to save each patch individually with PS but once you've got one right, you can make an action to do the others

[sylent/shooter]

Yes I will need to darken the surrounding terrain lightmaps now. But before I do that I have another issue. Behind my carrier I now have an invisible wall that is 250 bf units tall. Now I have a hunch that it could be caused by a 1 px barrier between the edge of the .raw file and the size it should be. (i.e coloured area is 256x257) Because this area is not coloured anything it's seen to be non existent. Thats my hunch.

But is there anything else that could be causing this? I know Rhino was having trouble with that one spot in Muttrah..

[Rudd]

those invisible or visible walls are just accidents in automatic generations

these need to be fixed manually

invisible walls are fixed on the alpha layer only, they are created when compilation of terrain goes wrong