spooks2k1

Hmmm good call :D

Guys, any ideas for terrain locations ? I'm learning the terrain making process on a small piece of the Helmand Province, but Batou's Afghanistan seems well under way, so I'm unsure if any more Taliban pounding is needed. I've seen Vietnam mentioned, that might be a cool terrain to make. ? any ideas? thanks spooks

Yup seems to be the case, Here I re-aligned 4 tiles to the helpers Here I am at the edge of the un-altered pivot 4075m And here I am flying on the centered section -495, goin underground That's the issue, I'm not sure what the correct pivot placement is. Is this an error in the High-res template ? thanks spooks

Do I need to Center the Pivot after applying the Displace and Optimize before exporting? Can someone confirm? thanks

I think I might have figured this one out too, when you apply the displace modifier the mesh jumps up. I'm not sure by how much but maybe it explains the 4000 meters on the altimeter. from the WIKI: What does the -98m mean? my mesh is zeroed out on the z axis when I open the Hi Res Template.

Way too many Here is the nasty 30m res And here is the same with SRTM 90 I see what Ducky meant about the river edges, the ASTER DEMS are just going to create far too many problems to fix.

I've spent the best part of today with these cratered DEMS I can't come up with an easy fix, I guess the reason they are free is because they are unusable in production. I give up, 90m STRM is has to be. I have 60 cells to fix, the workload on terrain is enough without this extra hassle. I retire defeated :(

I agree for general use, but this is specific for desert terrain, it just looks absolutely perfect. Thanks for looking I couldn't find it anywhere, good luck.

Yeah i generally zoom in the UI and use Current Screen Pixel Size, It's always overkill, so resizing improves the texture. That wasn't my issue, it was the odd X and Y co-ordinates, which turned out to be just the X co-ordinates on both Axis.

Helmand Province

I'm hoping to find a fix, mountains look much better with 30m, I read you can combine STRM and DEM to partially fill craters, I'll look into that before trying the 90m SRTM 4, thx for the link Ducky.

Check these bad boys out, Craters when using ASTER GDEMS :(

yup, that's what I've been doing, It just didn't seem right to have odd scaling when using square pixels. With hindsight I've been exporting correctly anyway, hey it's all a learning process :D

I'm not trying to be a smart arse, but it doesn't matter how different the X and Y are, exporting with 'Force Square Pixels' checked always uses the smaller of the Axis in both the X and Y The wiki is wrong. I'm being pedantic here, it's just that when I want to half the scale to double the size of the output, it seems unnecessary work to input co-ordinates that don't really matter. So as far as scale goes, I can't see those values having any impact on the end result, surely it's the proportion that matters (square in this case) not the scale.

OK but I can't help noticing that the "Always Generate Square Pixels" is checked, doesn't that over ride the X / Y settings ? If I re-export and select "Use Last Exported Sample Spacing" both the X and Y are set to the X-axis. which means the last time it exported it ignored the Y setting and used the X axis for both. ?

I need to ask if these settings are still relevant when exporting, or is this just an example ? also why are the x and y axis different ? It seems strange to offset the axis. thanks spooks

Thanks Almazi that's cleared up the confusion. There is no information on exporting the LOD01 mesh on the wiki, and there is no LOD0 scene in the LandMax file. As I'm becoming aware of the amount of work involved in terrain making, I've got to ask If/When will the new dev tools be available? Is there any point in me continuing with this? the process I am using now to make terrain is old and "unsupported". a lot of the guys here are holding back development for the new tools. I'm enjoying this, but I can't see the point in continuing if there are new plugins to be released sometime soon. Is there a definite decision on the new format/plugins? Thanks spooks

Great find! Tanks can emit real-ish dust now. Do you guys know where this smoke is located ? It's the smoke that's kicked up when the plane skims just above the ground, It's perfect for desert terrain/ maps, your mod helps but this would be kick ass awesome :D I've tried all the .x files but it doesn't seem to be there.

Cool, I hope this isn't a dumb question but I've come across many different references to LODS. This thread has mention of 4 LODS, 4, 3, 2 & 1 From my reading the wiki there are only 2 main LODS, the main mesh and the mesh viewed at 80km. Although the example Max files are named LOD01 and LOD02, It's very confusing, could you clarify? maybe they are referring to the rivers and objects as LODs ?

I've just about finished the M1A2, managed to improve the colours, this is just about as good as it gets without a template. I hope you guys can use these, I plan to release a skin pack when they're all done. When I figure out how to make the green dust sandy colored they'll look much better :D spooks

Yeah, I made 1024x1024 res, but to be honest the difference wasn't that much especially up close. ~I was going to try 2048x2048 but that would be a huge increase in file size, obviously this is why we have the noise layers. What I was asking was should both the LOD0 and LOD2 materials be exported with Surface&Noise? In the BASIC_SURFACE_LOD2.max from the wiki the mesh has, Is this because it's viewed from 80km ? and the noise is not needed ? Also from the wiki in the CreateLand_TestVideo.avi the is removed from the object properties. Is this an old entry and no longer used ? I find no trace of Noise_e3.dds in my fc2 installation. only NOISE_MOUNT.BMP and NOISE_SMALL.BMP Sorry for all the questions, I'm getting there, just trying to speed up the process :D thanks spooks

This is how they look at the moment, done using adjustment layers in photoshop. It's camo but not entirely accurate, but much less work involved ;) I still need to fine tune the colors on the Hummer

Are there any skin templates available for vehicles / ground units ? Hummer, Abrams etc I mean the ones in PSD format with all the outlines and details on one layer, the same as the ka50 / A10 templates etc. I'm wanting to make some desert skins similar to this http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=6167&highlight=vehicle+skins Tracing the existing skins is pretty time consuming, so I thought it best to ask before I start making them. thanks spooks

In the Hi-res template for the LOD0 the Material is set to Surface&Noise, I thought LOD2 had the surface and noise parameter, do all the land meshes require the Surface&Noise material?

Does anyone here use ASTER GDEMS ? I have a problem in GM, but I'm not sure if it's a GM issue of a DEM one. I have 12 GDEM tiles loaded and am using the Modify Layer Position to adjust textures, but where the grid intersects the tiles (if you have the grid on), or where the DEMS meet, there seems to be a bit of an overlap. You can see it when a texture overlaps the intersection of 2 dems, I toggle the texture on and off and there is a definite contracting of the dems underneath, so the dem on the right side is perfectly aligned with the texture but the dem on the left side is slightly out, or vise verse. Has anyone noticed this ? btw Aster GDEMS are 30m resolution, you get quite a few craters with them but other than that they are pretty high quality, worth a look. http://www.gdem.aster.ersdac.or.jp/search.jsp EDIT It's not the Dems it seems GM handles it's graphics in blocks If you zoom in close you can see the image shifting slightly when you toggle the layer on and off, It's only apparent when using hill shading, I've been staring at this thing for two long, time for a break.