Stridors map making tutorial -

[rickier65]

Stridor,

Thanks for the two tutorials - I've read through them and I think I'll start out by downloading NEMS over the weekend and see if I can get through that part.

I started getting a little lost about 2/3rd of the way through the MS3D tutorial section, but I'll cross that bridge (no pun intended) when I get to it (well maybe I intended it a little bit).

Thanks Stridor!

Rick

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Rick
... but I'll cross that bridge (no pun intended) when I get to it (well maybe I intended it a little bit).

[:D][:D] When I crossed that bridge I slipped on a loose board and fell off ... I'm still climbing back up ... Stay away from the edge!!

Rob

[Stridor]

Guys, I think you will find that with a bit of practice it is not that hard and you can crank out new maps surprisingly quickly (at least the mesh parts).

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Stridor
Guys, I think you will find that with a bit of practice it is not that hard and you can crank out new maps surprisingly quickly (at least the mesh parts).

Yes, thank you Stridor ... I'm messing around with Singling ... France. Yeah, ain't Kharkov, but hey. Your tut works nice.

Question .... can the game use one Material for the entire terrain and show it? see screenshot ...

Screenshot is Present day Singling; 1kmx1km; measured almost exactly; the height map is as example.

Check out Small Unit Actions : Singling webpage ... compare the maps (map #4 at bottom of webpage) to my resize cutout ... takes practice, but hey, I like to practice [:)].

Thanks,
Rob

[Stridor]

Yes you can assign a hires texture to the whole terrain. I discussed this in the tutorial but consider this:

To get the same spatial ground resolution as you would with the current tile system you would need a texture 24576 x 24576 in size for the whole 1km x 1km. Raw that is ~ 1.7 Gig of texture. Even if you could quarter it with extensive lossy dds compression that would still = 420 MB of texture memory required.

So unless you got a video card with at least 512 MB of memory you can forget it. Remember that all the other textures need to be allocated as well.

However if you have a 768 MB+ card you could probably do it, and the result would be likely be incredible!

The next question will be where will you get a ground texture of that resolution anyway!

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Stridor
To get the same spatial ground resolution as you would with the current tile system you would need a texture 24576 x 24576 in size for the whole 1km x 1km. Raw that is ~ 1.7 Gig of texture. Even if you could quarter it with extensive lossy dds compression that would still = 420 MB of texture memory required.

Ouch [X(]..... I'll stick with using the texture as a guide for object placement, etc.

Curious enough ... If you have a topo map of the terrain area you want to make I found that it works pretty good ... albeit not smoothed out, flat contours (for now). The next screenshot is the topo map of Singling (from the website), and I carefully measured that roughly, in between the two hilltops (marked 365 and 338), the contour lines were about 5 meters, which equates to about 3Y ... so the hilltop (365) is +3 above the next contour, which is above the next contour by +3, etc.

Is my math right? .... 1000/64 = 15.625 meters per grid / 5 meter ~ 3.12y ?

Thanks for your question/answer time!! Always appreciated.

Note : hill 365 contour not built yet ... just a demo.

Rob

[Stridor]

Look good rob. Using topo maps or sat or aerial photos is a great way to start building a realistic map. i was going to do this with my tutorial, but in the end decided that I couldn't tutorial everything in total detail, so I wanted a way to show what was possible and for guys like you to pick it up and extend it as needed.

If you used a 64x64 base grid map mapped 1 to 1 then each unit will indeed be 15.625 meters. So if you wanted a hill 368 meters high and Y = 0 is your sea level reference then you would need to scale it so that it was 368/15.625 = 23.552 units high.

Just a note on this however. If your map has 368 meters of *total* elevation change across it over 1 km, *best case* (depending where the hill is) that is a one in three gradient (and likely 1:1). No tanks of WW2 or probably even humans could scale that under combat conditions.

Monte Cassino here we come [:D]

[Mraah]

Stridor,

Thanks for all your Tut's !!!

I've been absorbing this for a week and it's high time I finish my Spring_Level_8 and release that "as-is" and move onto an original made map like Singling. Again, not Kharkov but would be good map for next year or whenever the Western Front comes out.

I think I'll combine that with my Solitaire ASL camp idea and put out everything at once into a big fat RCG mod using one map ... with odds like you gave me in the other thread (1 in 40353507) you never know what the Platoon Commander's mission is gonna be in this little village!! ... well, the idea sounds good , for now. I need to rename my posts from [WIP] to [BFIP] ... brain-fart-in-progress!

Rob

{no photo attached} For once !!!

[Erik Rutins]

Singling, neat. [8D]

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Singling, neat. [8D]

Yeah, looks pretty cool as a project. I realized that once all the proper contours are smoothed out then every house will be on a hill ... which requires me to build additional foundations for them, so they stand upright without looking funning and exposing their backside ... argh, more work, but I'm quite the wiz at making square models, ha!

Also, see that U or C shaped building with the road in the middle? I don't know if that's an arch way or not but I'm going to try to make it that way.
Viewing my screenshot below, I'm going to deploy 4 building's connected, with one walll missing between each of the two buildings (white space on terrain map example). This way, they might be able to shoot between the rooms without blockage. The blue arrows show where you would need to initially place a squad of men to be able to access all the rooms in one phase ... ie unmount one room, then mount another room.

Anyway, just a BFIP, don't-cha know [:)].

Rob

[Stridor]

Rob,

Looking good.

I would focus 100% on this, I am sure you can make the ultimate map and give inspiration to others along the way.

Here is an idea (something I wish all the maps had, not too hard to add) why don't you do your map and then make morning, miday and evening versions of it. You can get the sun to play nice and change the orientation and color of the lightening so the shadows and colors all look natural. Not too much extra work once you you get your main map done.

All that needs to be changed is the light xml, ZFAR and some palette eds to the skyboxes.

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Stridor
I would focus 100% on this, I am sure you can make the ultimate map and give inspiration to others along the way.

Here is an idea (something I wish all the maps had, not too hard to add) why don't you do your map and then make morning, miday and evening versions of it. You can get the sun to play nice and change the orientation and color of the lightening so the shadows and colors all look natural. Not too much extra work once you you get your main map done.

All that needs to be changed is the light xml, ZFAR and some palette eds to the skyboxes.

Sounds cool. A few weeks ago I messed with some of those values for my Spring map, basically setting them to Kharkov light settings.

I understood these ... global ambient, zfar, type, and vector ... but the other diffuse and ambient section throws me. I know a,r,g,b = alpha, red,green,blue and I'm correlating the values as 255/white (bright) and 1/black (dark) ... but what would exactly change in the ambient and diffuse sections?

Yeah, three versions ... Dawn/Dusk ... Midday ... Full Moon (I've seen your totally black night on the other thread [X(], so a bit of moonshine, err moon light would be better[;)]). If I can get the skybox and the vector right for the moon it would be sweet!

Considering 3 maps ... I wonder what odds you'd calculate then ... based on the 1 in 40353507 from earlier ... I think it's getting even slimmer for a repeat.

I'll put a halt in production on my other BFIP projects and jump on this 100% using your tut.

Thanks!
Rob

[Stridor]

I will include the light stuff in my next tutorial

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: Mraah

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Singling, neat. [8D]

Yeah, looks pretty cool as a project. I realized that once all the proper contours are smoothed out then every house will be on a hill ... which requires me to build additional foundations for them, so they stand upright without looking funning and exposing their backside ... argh, more work, but I'm quite the wiz at making square models, ha!

Also, see that U or C shaped building with the road in the middle? I don't know if that's an arch way or not but I'm going to try to make it that way.
Viewing my screenshot below, I'm going to deploy 4 building's connected, with one walll missing between each of the two buildings (white space on terrain map example). This way, they might be able to shoot between the rooms without blockage. The blue arrows show where you would need to initially place a squad of men to be able to access all the rooms in one phase ... ie unmount one room, then mount another room.

Anyway, just a BFIP, don't-cha know [:)].

Rob

Hey - that's pretty neat idea - have you tested it yet to see if it works the way you expect?

I think I'll try downloading NEM tonight or tommorrow. Kinda looking around for another scenario to do. I've just about settled on some edits to make to Balta scenario - thought I'd give ift a couple more days in case anyone else trys it and has any suggestions.

Rick

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Rick
Hey - that's pretty neat idea - have you tested it yet to see if it works the way you expect?
Rick

No sir, just a theory for the moment. I won't test it until after I build the map and after I fabricate the 4 new buildings with the arch. I just starting working on the map mesh as I'm typing this post. It's taking a little longer for me because I'm trying to match the height with the contour line's to make it perfect, or close to perfect. At the moment, I'm superimposing the 1944 town with the modern day image and rescaling it. Trying to make an exact replica is the hardest part. Next step is possibly making new ground texture files from the image to duplicate the color. Then making the alphas to paint the terrain with the mask ... then loading it up in scene edit and adding objects, etc. The list keeps growing adn growing and growing ...[;)]

Rob