2022-03-28T07:36:00Z New editing day has started, err I mean YEAR! Heh yeah it was october 21st 2021 last time when I was editing PMC Taiwan Chiayi terrain, but here we are back at it again.
World has changed since oct 2021, Russia invaded Ukraine and everything is going to HELL
I have released sevral PMC Ukraine terrains in recent days (hmm is it week+ already?) and now its time to mix stuff up a bit so decided to edit and release the alphabetically first taiwan terrain and that is chiayi.
Just created taiwan arma3 startup bat and sent it to desktop, loaded arma3 up with LOW video preset and went to check out chiayi.
First thing I see is that roads.shp is broken, was looking at this dev diary from 2021 and I wrote that I fixed the narrow dirt/gravel roads, but was that just the same issue I'm seeing today which is caused by global mapper saving roads.shp which breaks them, I have to import/export roads.shp in terrain builder in order to fix them for arma3.
Heightmap near the coastline has the water bleeding through, I wrote some remarks about it in 2021 but nothing definitive, so the problem remains. Besides the roads.shp this is my first priority for sure as its the most obvious bug/issue on this and all coastline terrains.
So the game-plan for today is to first move terrain builder object layers files into some "JAIL" dir so no objects show up, they are just making things heavy and long time loading, so while I'm working on heightmap there is no need for any objects, if I have to do many binarization passes it makes no sense to have millions of objects present.
Global mapper dir was empty as kind of expected. Moved terrain builder objects layer file (only one) into other dir.
In terrain builder created airfield_runways shape layer and keypoints for the only airfield / airport in this terrain.
Exported airfield_runways.shp to _data\roads\ dir and WRP so that I can get the config.cpp class names{} for airfield. Then copy pasted the config values into pmc_taiwan_chiayi_cfg/pmc_names.hpp aka class names{} thingy.
Used global mapper to load airfield_runways.shp, set ID 7 and ORDER 0, merged it with roads.shp. Then started terrain builder and imported roads.shp and exported it out right away, then deleted roads shape layer and exited.
Then deleted layers PAA images and RVMATs, then deleted pmc_taiwan_chiayi_data_layers_05 through _08 because those will not be used anymore after I do the satellite texture/mask generation with surface mask as 2048 resolution.
2022-03-28T08:21:00Z Terrain builder started generate layers, this will take few hours I believe. In the mean time I'll try to get some other work done which doesn't require terrain builder, maybe create the web pages already, optimizing time usage.
Or maybe I just watch TV
Was searching this dev diary for info, gotta love that such info is available, of how many objects the previous Terrain Processor TPP Templates created and looks like it was 7.975 million objects, this is quite a lot of a single layer, I want to spread the load around a bit.
On global mapper loaded chiayi project, went to export OSM area shapes but noticed they were lacking, several of my 2022 standard OSM color assignment areas were missing, so I added those.
But on short term, didn't do much good as I'm just generating layers so they wont help at all, on the long term OSM areas are now colored properly, next time I import satellite texture/mask it will be nice.
Then exported cropped_areas.shp, unloaded data and loaded the new shp, then transformed it to terrain builder UTM 31N 200,000/0 projection coords. Then finally exported "obj" with 2 x 2 grid tiles setup which created nice and compact obj_A1_forest.shp etc named files.
These will be used in terrain processor and eventually can have nice and small object layers in terrain builder.
Created _run_terrain_processor_obj_Ax_Forest_sorting.bat file which had:
@echo off if not exist TerrainProcessor md TerrainProcessor move obj_??_forest.* TerrainProcessor del obj_??_*.* pause exit
So I don't have to repeat these same boring commands each and every time I generate 2 x 2 grid tile OSM forest shape files
Then updated mod.cpp description with homepage link and slightly better text, also made "name" as first line in mod.cpp file.
2022-03-28T09:09:00Z Terrain processor A1, A2, B1 and B2 TPP files are done and running.
2022-03-28T09:52:00Z Finished having lunch, terrain builder is still generating satellite mask for about 12min.
Going to start creating chiayi web pages now as I have nothing else to do especially when binarize starts to run.
2022-03-28T10:08:00Z Terrain builder finished generating layers.
Then ran convert layers PNG to PAA fast bat, 14 core short burst version
Not going to import vegetation objects for this/first binarization, I want to see what can be done for the heightmap ocean coastline before adding all those heavy objects into play.
Then separated WRP and Data addon dirs and moveObject re-pathed RVMATs. While these were running I added full history to changelog page.
2022-03-28T10:44:00Z Started binarizing with pboProject.
Tested in-game and roads.shp is fixed along with nicely done airfield runwaysand class names{}, so far so good.
2022-03-28T12:10:00Z Terrain builder started importing objects, first layer was super small it went within 10sec. However the full set is well over 10 million objects so it will take probably, hmm an hour to import all of it.
Humm "well over" heh, not so sure about the well part, but yeah technically just over 10 million
Then ran moveObject re-pathing of WRP and had to take a break, was one of those things that just lost all motivation and sort of got tired, yawning a lot even though I wasn't "physically tired". Hopefully this doesn't mean that next dev diary entry is from tomorrow ...
2022-03-28T20:27:00Z I did some "off the books" editing, experimented in global mapper, L3DT, PMC Heightmap Clipper and terrain builder how could I do the coastline water 0m elevations for arma3, in short; no progress, could not find a solution yet.
What I mean off the books is that I didn't write dev diary and didn't capture video. I was just experimenting, its not really a good thing to watch as dev diary. In general dev diary videos should be me showing you how I edit, its not meant to be live stream alike where mistakes are made and other wandering around aimlessly pressing buttons type of activity.
Continue reading page 6, previous page 4 or back to Dev Diary PMC Taiwan Chiayi root page.
PMC Taiwan Chiayi: Changelog, Dev Diary, Screenshots. Back to PMC Terrain's page.