Auto tiling / object placing

F4Browse, CATE, Tacedit, Terrainview & TheaterMaker etc utility related

Moderators: Lone Wolf, Snake Man

javanree
Recruit
Posts: 29
Joined: 2001-09-01 22:01:01

Auto tiling / object placing

Post by javanree » 2001-09-09 12:44:00

OK I finally managed to get DEM2L2 to produce the TDF and L2 file... (Thanks Miran !)

Now I am looking into auto-tiling and auto-object placing. I grabbed ObjectPlacer. However there are no clear help docs included with both...

- Object placer : I edited the .ini file first, as described. I open the L2 file, but when I use "Place bridges" for instance, it asks for a CSV file. How should I have gotten this CSV file? Tacedit :?

Hope you guys can give some pointers... I need to do this before I can start dividing the map so others can help with the tiling process (not to mention making new tiles... sigh )

PS Europe Theater website is up, see signature for URL.
--
Jan-Albert "Anvil" van Ree | http://f4europe.vanree.net

ccc
Chief of Staff
Posts: 4857
Joined: 2000-08-06 22:01:01

Re: Auto tiling / object placing

Post by ccc » 2001-09-09 13:56:00

Snake Man could give you a hand soon :D

btw, i've checked your theater site, if some countries will be neutral, why not move map a bit north?

and, Snake Man could open a new forum here for Europe theater talk.

Snake Man
Commander-In-Chief
Posts: 9354
Joined: 2000-07-31 22:01:01
Gaming Interests: ArmA, ArmA 2, Falcon 4.0 and OFP.
Editing Interests: All, I (try) to edit everything.
Location: PMC

Re: Auto tiling / object placing

Post by Snake Man » 2001-09-09 14:10:00

quote:Originally posted by javanree:
OK I finally managed to get DEM2L2 to produce the TDF and L2 file... (Thanks Miran !)
Is netherlands underwater problem fixed?

I also had some problems on Vietnam 128 segment terrain, the southest part of vietnam was missing and there was some parts inland that were converted to ocean by DEM2L2...
quote:Now I am looking into auto-tiling and auto-object placing. I grabbed ObjectPlacer.
I have the village util here which makes airport/city/village objects automatically. It places random factories to the cities and also city/village objects are random.

The LODFixer is beautiful autotiler tool, it runs fine on default texture.bin when using the default script that came with the LODFixer package.
quote:- Object placer : I edited the .ini file first, as described. I open the L2 file, but when I use "Place bridges" for instance, it asks for a CSV file.
I think that was the SAVE .csv file, where you save the bridge datas. After the Object Placer has placed the bridges, you can start TacEdit and import that bridge .csv file.
quote:I need to do this before I can start dividing the map so others can help with the tiling process
I suggest you run TerrainView autotiling for river/road/city features first before handing off the theater.L2 file.

Here is how I'd do it.
- load river and city features
- run Compute Feature Tiles
- clear features
- load road features
- run Compute Feature Tiles
done.

Using terrainview like that, you first tile rivers and citys, then you tile roads. As you tiled roads last, it overlaps the river/city tiling. Roads are the most important ones for ground units so its best to have them made as good as possible in autotiling. Of course you should go through the whole L2 terrain using hand tiling to make sure everything is correctly tiled.

Let me know if you need any help with autotiling/object placing. Keep asking more specific questions and I'll try to help the best I can.

PMC TFW
Snake Man
PMC Tactical Forum New User Registration please read new info here.

PMC since 1984

Editing knowledge, visit PMC Editing Wiki
The leading, most detailed and comprehensive modification made for the Vietnam War - Vietnam: The Experience homepage
View our videos in PMC Youtube channel

PMC Tactical forum Advanced Search is power.

"ALPHA BLACK TO PAPA BEAR. ALL RUSSIANS ARE TOAST. OVER."

javanree
Recruit
Posts: 29
Joined: 2001-09-01 22:01:01

Re: Auto tiling / object placing

Post by javanree » 2001-09-09 17:41:00

quote:Is netherlands underwater problem fixed?
No not yet. I will need to manually alter the elevation I guess... My problem was that I couldn't load e00 files for more than 10 countries, or DEM2L2 would crash. Miran sent me a newer build that solved this problem.
quote:I suggest you run TerrainView autotiling for river/road/city features first before handing off the theater.L2 file.

Here is how I'd do it.
- load river and city features
- run Compute Feature Tiles
- clear features
- load road features
- run Compute Feature Tiles
DOOHH... ofcourse :)

After the importing of roads, do I still need to use pathmaker or is this done automatically?

And where can I get the village util? This area is FULL of towns, would be awesome if I could have part of the process done automagically.

CCC :
quote:btw, i've checked your theater site, if some countries will be neutral, why not move map a bit north?
If I did that, parts of Czechoslovakia would not appear. And in return I'd just get some more of Norway and Sweden. Nice, but not as important for the scenario I have in mind.

And this position means it is placed exactly above the Balkans theater in terms of coordinates. Going more north might also interfere with the nordic theater.

As to why not more east/west : I wanted the Netherlands in there for as much as possible (want to fly across my old home, right under the runway of Twente AFB) and at the same time I needed parts of Poland in the east to make the threat credible.

Also the scenario on the page is just for one campaign... I might also do something where Switzerland and Austria do take sides. And right now, even though they're neutral doesn't mean they don't do anything at all. They might close down their borders and airspace to both sides, and have CAP flight up to enforce their own "no-fly zones" :)

When I was still considering a 128 map, I was using the same south border , simply expanded 10 degrees north and both 5 east and west... but the amount of tiling (no autotiling, terrain in europe is very different from country to country) would be impossible.
Might have worked if I just went west, mostly sea, but that wouldn't be very useful, apart from including the UK and Ireland.

On the forum : if it's possible SnakeMan, could you perhaps set up such a thing? If not, I can host my own forum too, but concentrating it in one place is definately better.
--
Jan-Albert "Anvil" van Ree | http://f4europe.vanree.net

Snake Man
Commander-In-Chief
Posts: 9354
Joined: 2000-07-31 22:01:01
Gaming Interests: ArmA, ArmA 2, Falcon 4.0 and OFP.
Editing Interests: All, I (try) to edit everything.
Location: PMC

Re: Auto tiling / object placing

Post by Snake Man » 2001-09-09 18:43:00

quote:Originally posted by javanree:
On the forum : if it's possible SnakeMan, could you perhaps set up such a thing? If not, I can host my own forum too, but concentrating it in one place is definately better.
If you promise to keep us posted on all developments and such, sure I can arrange a dedicated forum area.

What should it be called, is this the definite "Europe" theater or Fulda Gap etc?

PMC TFW
Snake Man
PMC Tactical Forum New User Registration please read new info here.

PMC since 1984

Editing knowledge, visit PMC Editing Wiki
The leading, most detailed and comprehensive modification made for the Vietnam War - Vietnam: The Experience homepage
View our videos in PMC Youtube channel

PMC Tactical forum Advanced Search is power.

"ALPHA BLACK TO PAPA BEAR. ALL RUSSIANS ARE TOAST. OVER."

javanree
Recruit
Posts: 29
Joined: 2001-09-01 22:01:01

Re: Auto tiling / object placing

Post by javanree » 2001-09-09 21:46:00

This will be MY only Europe theater, but I don't know what others have planned...
To me Europe is fine. Anybody else have anything against it??

And yes, everybody will be kept up to date, through the webpage, this forum, and I might be setting up a news mailing list for everybody (there will definately be one for people working on the project)
--
Jan-Albert "Anvil" van Ree | http://f4europe.vanree.net

ccc
Chief of Staff
Posts: 4857
Joined: 2000-08-06 22:01:01

Re: Auto tiling / object placing

Post by ccc » 2001-09-10 04:22:00

Great to hear Europe theater start to roll! :)

hey Javanree, there should be many european falconeers could help manual tile-correcting after first round auto-tiling, local residents would be eagar to tile/correct errors on their own land :D :D
just send news and request to all major f4 forums!

well, i urge you check some MSFS/CFS terrain tiles, see if they can be used in Europe theater. pliz check related threads here, we got some valuable links and free files.

javanree
Recruit
Posts: 29
Joined: 2001-09-01 22:01:01

Re: Auto tiling / object placing

Post by javanree » 2001-09-10 10:34:00

CCC those MS tiles are protected by copyright. And I for one don't want to mess with Mickey$oft. Already had a run-in once (while at 3DGamers : we mirrored DirectX but were ordered to remove or get sued) don't want it to happen again.

Besides : what I need most at the moment are highway tiles... the autotiler makes all these pissy little roads, while in reality they're 4 lane highways :( So here : ANYBODY that wants to tile, email me at javanree@vanree.net and let me know what part you want to tile.

Besides I first need to auto-place villages / bridges etc etc, and I still need to learn how to use these tools before giving other people "jobs" to do.

Spent last night fooling around in Terrainmaker doing autotiling. I understand that process. Now I need to figure out a way to make the Netherlands, Denmark and parts of Germany right, all the land that's below 0ft is water at the moment. And I can't seem to find an easy way to fix this :(
--
Jan-Albert "Anvil" van Ree | http://f4europe.vanree.net

ccc
Chief of Staff
Posts: 4857
Joined: 2000-08-06 22:01:01

Re: Auto tiling / object placing

Post by ccc » 2001-09-10 13:02:00

IIRC, there's some link to free tiles, got to search again..

javanree
Recruit
Posts: 29
Joined: 2001-09-01 22:01:01

Re: Auto tiling / object placing

Post by javanree » 2001-09-11 23:27:00

Snake Man, can you give me some pointers as to raise the terrain to remove the unwanted area's of water? I know I can do it in terrainview, tile by tile, but is there some other way?

Also where can I find more info on the village util? I assume I can place those objects too before starting to tile?
--
Jan-Albert "Anvil" van Ree | http://f4europe.vanree.net

ccc
Chief of Staff
Posts: 4857
Joined: 2000-08-06 22:01:01

Re: Auto tiling / object placing

Post by ccc » 2001-09-12 03:34:00


KBMIL
2nd Lt
Posts: 87
Joined: 2001-07-12 22:01:01
Location: Belgium

Re: Auto tiling / object placing

Post by KBMIL » 2001-09-12 16:56:00

[QUOTE]
Snake Man, can you give me some pointers as to raise the terrain to remove the unwanted area's of water? I know I can do it in terrainview, tile by tile, but is there some other way?

you can select more tiles than one to raise terrain and change tile number. Try holding mouse button and dragging pointer to select more tiles :D

Widowmaker
Lt. General
Posts: 1002
Joined: 2000-10-30 23:01:01
Gaming Interests: Falcon 4.0
Editing Interests: Terrains
Location: The Netherlands

Re: Auto tiling / object placing

Post by Widowmaker » 2001-09-12 18:21:00

First unshare the segments you are goin to
alter if those segemnts are all water
I you dont do this you'll raise water all over the theater
You can do this by single clicking
on a segment in Main Map view.
Operations: Split segemnt
You gotta do this for every segment
wich is all water and you wanna alter.

After this goto segment view
click and hold the right mouse button
and drag a box over the segment
now 2 editable fields will appear
Elevation
and Tile

change elevation to for instance 10
and tile to the tile offset you want there

repeat this for every segment you wanna alter

done

Widmak
Widmak

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: ClaudeBot [Bot] and 0 guests