2022-03-06T09:32:00Z New editing day has started, today I am hoping to get this terrain binarized, should be doable if I work hard.
Todays goal is to get started on my tool pipeline and do every single short/small/quick task first and leave the long duration ones last because I don't want to be wasting time waiting for example global mapper export when I could be doing something else in the background.
Perhaps this would make me re-organize tool pipeline 00.txt list a bit to optimize it. There should not be any 2hrs waiting times when long processes are completed, tool pipeline should flow naturally so that I have always something to do. Now obviously there is no miracle cure for global mapper satellite texture export or Terrain Builder generate layers not to mention huge terra incognita download time which is the longest process in the whole terrain making tool pipeline.
Really excited to see how doing the short tasks first goes today
2022-03-06T09:53:00Z Blasted through SRTM ASCII Grid heightmap.asc download and OpenStreetMap (OSM) shape file loading, cropping, road reduction and cropped OSM shape file exporting.
Then transformed the OSM shape files to correct UTM 31N 200,000/0 coordinates for terrain builder and arma3 use, including doing roads.shp ID/ORDER feature setup.
Next assigned RGB colors to OSM shape areas, that is always such a fun task... NOT. Ugh after doing several terrains in recent days it is SO boring to type in the same FCLASS names and RGB values as this is precisely the kind of task that computers are built for. Repeating procedure without any variables, just have to go through the steps. I did take a look at global mapper's GMW file format but its some kind of weird "hex in text" type thing that I don't think we could just copy paste the RGB colors from previously made GMW into a brand new one. So yeah, just need to suffer through this utterly boring finger numbing repetitive task.
2022-03-06T10:30:00Z Inspected terra incognita downloaded oziexplorer .map tiles using irFanview, found one (1) single Terra Incognita Black Tiles in one of the grid section 3 JPG images. So now started terra incognita cache -> JPG export to fix that tile.
ArcGIS 17 level satellite source was otherwise pretty good, sure there was few cloud puffs but nothing too bad, considering the large 81.9km size of the area.
Then leap frogged again skipping dev diary writing, was editing too fast. Okay so I did hmm terrain builder project, Terrain Processor obj_forest generation and road smoothing, Terrain Builder Template Libraries import, hmm what else... cant recall
I'm tellin ya.. writing dev diaries will slow me down a great deal, I cant edit multiple terrains at once when writing these texts. Its really bizarre situation, there is not much point writing these at the end of the day, although guess that would be better than nothing in grand scheme of things. The goal of these dev diaries is to write down all the experiences, plans, successes and failures etc of "what really happened" manner, if you cant write them "live" as it happens, you don't remember much of anything hours later in the end of the day. So yeah, bad situation.
2022-03-06T10:54:00Z Global mapper started exporting satellite mask in 8 x 8 grid tiles and terrain builder was importing obj_forest objects for the next 35min, so now I have absolutely nothing to do, everything else in tool pipeline text list is already done, there simply is no task I can do as I have no files to process until global mapper finishes.
Waiting is the most painful thing in terrain editing
I wanted so bad to continue editing the next terrain on the list, but this would require me to open its "dev-diary-NAME" web page for editing and Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) recording videos would be nightmare to sort when a video clip has footage from two terrains, how do you choose to which dev diary it goes, you cant.
2022-03-06T11:33:00Z Started terrain builder satellite mask import, while global mapper was still exporting satellite texture.
Waiting time was killing me, I had to move into the next terrain on the line, I am simply wasting daylight sitting here waiting for global mapper satellite texture export to finish, especially as its soul sucking 1421hrs ETA while time is now 1152hrs.
So I moved dev diary video clips into their own project dir and started editing brand new terrain, Ukraine Odesa.
2022-03-06T14:26:00Z Global mapper had finished exporting satellite texture.
Then started to GIMP clone stamp tool brush off cloud puffs. This will probably take a while.
Satellite texture tiles with clouds: A4, A3, A8, A6, B3, C3, C6, D1, F4, F3, F7, F6, G4, G3, G7, H2, H1, H7
2022-03-06T16:27:00Z Finished fixing them cloud puffs. Uuuh.
Then used GraphicsMagick with Darken Merge Picturemap Satellite Texture Tiles _run_graphicsmagick_darken_and_picturemap_tiles_8x8_green.bat to prepare tiles for terrain builder import. After that ran _run_graphicsmagick_l3dt_8192_texture_map_tiles_8x8.bat to generate the L3DT_texture_map.png image.
2022-03-06T16:42:00Z Started terrain builder importing satellite texture.
Created proper latitude/longitude config.cpp values.
2022-03-06T17:10:00Z Terrain builder finished importing. Now I need to milk everything I can in terrain builder before generate layers gets going which takes few hours again.
Then L3DT smoothed out the airfield in this terrain and exported heightmap.asc out again.
Next did airfield_runways.shp and roads.shp merge in global mapper, exported out to roads.shp which I still have to shuffle through terrain builder because for some reason global mapper saved SHP is not working in arma3, no idea why.
2022-03-06T17:28:00Z Started terrain builder generate layers, this will take some hours...
2022-03-06T19:25:00Z Terrain builder is done generating layers, finally, uah.
Then usual shuffle; terrain builder export WRP, it had five million-something objects, moveObject re-pathed WRP file and then started Convert Layers PNG to PAA Fast bat.
2022-03-06T19:49:00Z PNG's converted, but now I'm busy editing berdyansk and need to finish that task before continuing
2022-03-06T20:05:00Z Did the Separate Data Layers for smaller PBOs, RVMAT's re-pathed, only thing left to do is to terrain builder import/export shuffle roads.shp to make it arma3 compatible.
2022-03-06T20:09:00Z Started pboProject binarizing, we are done here
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