[Question] Newbie Questions about the BF2 Editor

[Nightingale]

I'm pretty excited to have gotten my BF2 editor set up to work on PR maps. Unfortunately, I have a lot of questions about very basic things which I'm struggling to find answers for on the net, mostly due to dead links/pics from 2005. I'm just going to clump them all into one thread so that I don't spam up this board too fast with my questions. I hope it's okay that I make this kind of thread in this forum.

1.) Is there such a thing as an absolute snap grid that isn't dependent on the terrain? I want to make a bridge out of pieces, but I already made my terrain non-flat, so I'm not sure how to line up the pieces nicely in mid-air.

2.) How do I duplicate an object that I already have in my level? (so that I don't have to drag and drop it from the resources dialog each time)

3.) Is it possible to make the translation widget work in "real-time" so that the object will move with my cursor while I am translating it in the x,y,z, directions? It's very tedious to keep clicking a thousand times just to line up one object to another.

4.) Is it possible to scale an object in the x,y,z dimensions? (ex: scale an object by X1.0, Y2.0, Z1.0)

5.) How do I flip an object over the xy, yz, or zx planes?

6.) Is there a way to preview what a certain object is in the resources dialog without having to actually place the object onto the terrain to see what it looks like?

[CTRifle]

1.) Is there such a thing as an absolute snap grid that isn't dependent on the terrain? I want to make a bridge out of pieces, but I already made my terrain non-flat, so I'm not sure how to line up the pieces nicely in mid-air.

Well if its a bridge model, just select all the pieces, go to snap and align in the editor window on the right. Once theyre all together just select the whole group and put where you want.

2.) How do I duplicate an object that I already have in my level? (so that I don't have to drag and drop it from the resources dialog each time)

Hold shift (or ctrl? I forget) and move the object. It might lag for a second but itll duplicate

3.) Is it possible to make the translation widget work in "real-time" so that the object will move with my cursor while I am translating it in the x,y,z, directions? It's very tedious to keep clicking a thousand times just to line up one object to another.

Double click on the object and youll get the coordinates and rotational factors. remember you can select more than one objects by click and drag over what you want like windows desktop

4.) Is it possible to scale an object in the x,y,z dimensions? (ex: scale an object by X1.0, Y2.0, Z1.0)

No you cant change teh actual object

5.) How do I flip an object over the xy, yz, or zx planes?

You can rotate it by double clicking and adding a value of 180 into the rotational factor

6.) Is there a way to preview what a certain object is in the resources dialog without having to actually place the object onto the terrain to see what it looks like?

Right click the object in the resource browser and click preview






The biggest thing is just play around with the editor, right click on stuff, read through the options ect

[B2P1]

Some quick tips:

1. Duplicating an object: Hold Control and move the object with either x,y,z vector. Not the anchor.
2. Rotating an object 90 degrees, click on the plane you want to do the rotation in and press right mouse button.
3. Double clicking an object will allow you to enter precise values.
4. Scroll mouse wheel all the way down, select object, hold shift and use arrow keys for minor adjustments.
5. Use the road tool to modify terrain, it'll give the best results, and you can always use the splines as a reference line.

Don't hesitate to PM me if you have anymore basic questions.

[Nightingale]

Thanks guys. I was wondering what I was doing wrong when duplicating objects.

The absolute value entry for position and rotation are very useful, but I was also hoping I could do something like mirror an object. For example, look at these two L-shaped buildings:

The L-building isn't symmetrical; one side has two sets of balconies facing outwards and the other side has just one set. I want to mirror the left L-building so that it has two sets of balconies facing the adjacent L-building, instead of just one set like it has now. Is this possible to do in the editor?

Also, I notice sometimes that I can select an object just by clicking on it. But at other times, I have to draw a selection box that covers the object's pivot in order to select it. What's going on here?

[CTRifle]

1. No you cant change the actual objects, its how its modeled and 2. sometimes the objects are too small or whatever so you have to do that sometimes. Just gotta get used to it

[Insanitypays]

With a basic knowledge of max you might be able to open the static in 3dsmax9 and flip it. It may have to be exported again but I'm not yet familiar with the process.

[Nightingale]

It's okay. I know how to use Max, but it looks like it's not really worth doing the whole process for such a minor alteration. Thanks for the suggestion though.

New question: I have like 100+ objects in my map. I want to move all of them +100m in the Z direction. I thought of trying to group them together, but selecting all of them and pressing "group" doesn't seem to do anything. Do I need to use some sort of console command to accomplish this?

[CTRifle]

Just zoom out and highlight them all, it sonly around 100 itll be fine

[Nightingale]

I guess I worded my question poorly. It's not that the editor is crashing on me, I just don't know how to get the entire selection to move +100.0 exactly in the Z direction. I don't know how to get to a transformation dialog that applies to the entire selection.

And thanks for being always so quick to answer my questions about the editor. You guys are a really great help.

[Rhino]

With a basic knowledge of max you might be able to open the static in 3dsmax9 and flip it. It may have to be exported again but I'm not yet familiar with the process.

TBH its seriously not worth it. It requires a lot of fixing of the static to every lod and col too which the importing process creates and this takes quite a bit of time.

Instead with the above type of static, just rotate it 180 degs and it will be pretty much mirrored.

I guess I worded my question poorly. It's not that the editor is crashing on me, I just don't know how to get the entire selection to move +100.0 exactly in the Z direction. I don't know how to get to a transformation dialog that applies to the entire selection.

There is no way within the editor that I know of moving them excatly by a set amount unless they are all snapped on the grid before hand, then you can move them roughly 100m and snap them on the new grid position once they are 99.6m or 100.4m.

But the best way I know of doing it is importing all your statics into max via the 3DsMax LM tools, then you can move the entire selection by an exact amount in there, then save all the static locations back out BUT this is pretty tricky to do.

BTW one way to select all objects is to go into layers, right click on the layer, which for all the basic statics you've played with be in Layer 1 (Default) and then click "Select all in layer".

[Nightingale]

Thanks for the extra info Rhino. I probably will never end up doing it with the LM tools since I've only ever used Max 2013 to make statics, but it's good to know there is actually a way to do it outside the editor.

About vegetation... I've noticed on some maps that bushes and trees are placed as static objects. But in other maps, they are implemented using only the overgrowth feature. Does one have a performance benefit over the other? What do I need to consider when choosing how to place my foliage?

Also, how do I change the draw distance of my overgrowth and undergrowth? It doesn't seem to be affected by the world view distance.

EDIT: Nevermind, I found the overgrowth draw distance field. Any changes to the draw distance are not reflected until I restart the editor, but I suppose this is normal for 2006 software.

[B2P1]

Also a question that I have, I've seen overgrowth on surrounding terrain (lashkar valley). How is this done? And how much of it can be outside the primary map?

[Nightingale]

This is what my 2km x 2km Vietnam map currently looks like (this level will include no aircraft at all). The level draw distance is 600, overgrowth is 400, undergrowth is 100. Is there some kind of console command I can enter to display drawcalls/second and triangle-count on screen? I'd really like to sort out my foliage densities before doing anymore work on this map, and as my computer's specs are way above BF2's max settings I'm not sure how I should be making these kinds of optimization decisions.

I'm also interested to know the answer to B2P1's question as well.

[Microwaife]

and as my computer's specs are way above BF2's max settings I'm not sure how I should be making these kinds of optimization decisions.

Give the map to people with less powerfull machines and tell them to give you info on fps drops in certain areas. You can also hop ingame yourself and check for fps drops on the map yourself.

[Mineral]

Triangle count is useless. You should check the log window to see what the final OG counts are after rendering them. And you can press the level info at the bottom for some more stats. But PR's performance isn't about triangle counts and rendering them. It's about drawcalls(simply said amount of objects and their materials). So those stats are more important.

[Nightingale]

Okay I think I have a basic understanding of making the terrain and placing statics now.

I only have a very basic incomplete level at this point (it's 99% terrain and foliage). But before I go and populate it with statics, I want to be able to test the level in-game and be able to distribute it to others who have lower-spec PCs to test the map performance.

I know I have to assign factions by editing init.con, so I did this:

[spoiler]

rem *** Generated by BF2Editor ***
if v_arg1 == BF2Editor

run Heightdata.con
LevelSettings.InitWorld
run Terrain.con BF2Editor
run StaticObjects.con BF2Editor
run Sounds.con
run Sky.con BF2Editor
run Editor/GamePlayObjects.con host
UndergrowthEditable.create
Undergrowth.load Levels\phu_nguoi\
run Overgrowth/Overgrowth.con
Overgrowth.editorEnable 1
run AmbientObjects.con BF2Editor
run Water.con
run TriggerableTemplates.con BF2Editor

else

run Heightdata.con
run Terrain.con v_arg2
run Sky.con v_arg2
run CompiledRoads.con
run Sounds.con
run tmp.con v_arg1
Undergrowth.load Levels\phu_nguoi\
run Overgrowth/Overgrowth.con
run Overgrowth/OvergrowthCollision.con
run AmbientObjects.con
run Water.con
run TriggerableTemplates.con

endIf

rem ------------------------------- LevelSettings -------------------------------
rem -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

run ../../Factions/faction_init.con 1 "vnnva"
run ../../Factions/faction_init.con 2 "vnusmc"

rem -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

gameLogic.setBeforeSpawnCamera 0/150/0 0/0/0

if v_arg1 == BF2Editor
LevelSettings.CustomTextureSuffix ""
else
texturemanager.customTextureSuffix ""
endIf
rem -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

GameLogic.MaximumLevelViewDistance 600

rem -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 16 1 50
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 16 2 50
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 32 1 50
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 32 2 50
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 64 1 50
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 64 2 50
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 128 1 50
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 128 2 50
gameLogic.setDefaultTimeToNextAIWave 8
gameLogic.setTicketLossAtEndPerMin 1000
gameLogic.setTicketLossPerMin 1 10
gameLogic.setTicketLossPerMin 2 10

rem -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

rem -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

renderer.globalStaticMeshLodDistanceScale 1
renderer.globalBundleMeshLodDistanceScale 1
renderer.globalSkinnedMeshLodDistanceScale 1

[/spoiler]

And now I am sort of at a loss. What is the next step to making the map loadable in PR singleplayer?

[Nightingale]

So I painted most of my terrain with a green grass texture. But then I wanted to change the grass's colourtexture into something else. Changing the colourtexture caused to visible change to the map, so I hit "generate low detail map" and then saved the map and closed the editor. When I opened it back up, still nothing had changed. But then I started painting onto the terrain with the grass, and this happened:

The green grass (left) is the old colour map. That colourtexture doesn't actually exist according to the 3 layers of materials I have setup for the terrain. The brown grass (right) is the actual colourtexture.

So somehow the old non-existent green colourtexture is persisting on the terrain even though I set the colourmap to the brown one.

What exactly is going on here? What is the proper way to change the properties of terrain materials?

========

Is it not possible to change the size of overgrowth? I changed RandomScale from 1/1 to 1.5/1.5. But no change occurs. When I restart the editor, RandomScale always returns to 1/1, as if I had never changed it. Is is just simply not possible to do this?

========

BTW, should I be just making my own map thread and then asking these kinds of questions in there?

[B2P1]

As far as I know you will always have to repaint the terrain after you change the colourtexture. And the scale thingy for overgrowth scales how the OG follows the terrain. Set it to 0 and they wont follow the terrain at all and stand vertical.

[derg]

to apply the texture on the ground you have to click the "merge button" in the paint mode section.

you can have a million different colortextures but only six detail textures. a color texture can be an image, a checker pattern or green paint with muddy spots in it.
you can also paint simple colors in the editor, so if you want red grass, there you go. and if you want blue grass 20m into the woods, you can have that aswell, but if you want to change the colortexture, you have to paint over the old one.

Sent from my GT-I9100

[Nightingale]

Oh, so that's how the colour maps work. That is really wierd.

to apply the texture on the ground you have to click the "merge button" in the paint mode section.

Sorry, I didn't understand this part. What does it mean to "apply the texture on the ground"?

And the scale thingy for overgrowth scales how the OG follows the terrain. Set it to 0 and they wont follow the terrain at all and stand vertical.

I think you are talking about the NormalScale instead: (?)

For Undergrowth, that RandomScale field adjusts the size of the undergrowth geometry, and it reflects the changes in real-time without generating anything or having to restart the editor.

But for Overgrowth, it doesn't change the size of the overgrowth. And when I save and restart the editor, it's always back to 1/1. Am I doing something wrong? Or is it just not possible to make trees bigger or smaller?

================

EDIT:

Today I realized that I wanted to completely re-do the material properties of all my texture layers (ie. I wanted to change what sound is played when the player walks/drives over certain parts of the terrain). I painted over all of my previous work with a new texture layer using a new "material" (mud wet). After saving everything, when I loaded up the map in PR, all of the old unassigned "materials" remained. So when I walked over a patch of grass, there would unexpectedly by a muddy squelching sound where there used to be a dirt road.

wat do