Elevation Edits (Heightmap aka .raw)
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Both, Alpha 1 and 2.
The “make elv file from loaded terrain” feature is bugged for me for some reason: https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?15231-Q-Bert-rocks-the-pyramidYou can do what you like with my work Richard…and if it really helps you … we both are happy.
You seem to be confident in what you are doing and i like that. Let us see WIP shots asap -
I’ll have to experiment some time to see how the two Alpha’s effect the elevations because I’m not seeing exactly what Alpha 1 is doing. It appears to be a map of the average height of each tile or similar but I’m not exactly sure about that.
I did not try to import that make elv file back in with TE; so it could be fubared, it just visually appeared to be an exact replica of the L2 data once scaled so I don’t know. I’ll try to remember to check it out later on this week to see if it does the same for me.
WIP shot, lol, got some stuff to do before I can get in game to take some screens. But I’ll show ya the forest/dense farm transitions that I’m working on right now. I’ve scaled them down to 512 and only have 8 of them partially complete out of 64, lol. And yes the square farms is one tile repeated, easier to keep it like that I until I completely finish my variations.
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Looks promising if that quality is maintained through the whole map. Keep it up
I assume alpha1 is for shaders over water and rivers, but i havent used water-tile-sets, instead plain-sets with water-areas within.
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I think I can shed some light here about Alpha1 and 2.
The e2 (or e0 - elv) file contains the raw elevation data, each elevation value is 2 bytes (16 bits) long.
When you open the file as photoshop raw, you can determine the dimensions and the record length. This is achieved when selecting the menu (in photoshop) “Open As…”, selecting the e2 file (no need to rename it to raw) and in the Open As field select Photoshop raw. You are then presented with the following dialog:
The Channel area is determining how PS will read the data. If you select Depth 8 bits (1 byte) and interleaved, in order to match up the file size you need 2 layers (count value). In that configuration, PS will take the first byte and put it on Alpha 1, the second on Alpha 2, the third on Alpha 1 again etc. This way, you get two layers with data, one with the first eight bits of the actual elevation values and the other with the remaining 8 bits. IMHO this is not good for directly editing and saving back the file, because there’s no guarantee that changing separately the two bytes of a single value, you’ll get a usable value in return.
I think the best way is to open it in 16 bit depth. You can then experiment with the IBM PC or MAC byte order (defines which byte will calculate first and which second, to display the gray value). The advantage here is that each pixel has the exact elevation value the e2 file has, so whatever changes you make, should be making sense when converted to elevation.
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Thanks Monster, I had just assumed that falcon was using 8bits and the two channels was just another one of those quirks within falcon.
These settings worked for me to view the e0 file on a windows/intel system.
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I used the “Guess” option for Guam Alpha in CS5 and it worked for us.DUNNO how that may work for you??
demer
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You can leave the apha 1 channel without touching it. Its irrelevant. Experimantal confirmations by reloading the differently created e0s advisable.
What is required instead is accurate information without loss, especially if you increase a L2 raw to a L0 raw (1024² to 4090²).
For that PS provides the “preserve” while scaling option, whereas the “smooth” option also has some nice sideeffects,
such as smoothening out the zick-zacks in your elevation work (in later processing steps).
Nevertheless, adding temporarily additional alpha channels can be handy aswell; this is how i gave the water a natural decline/flow i.e.Important is to generate the FIRST ACCURATE e0 !!, which you dont have as you work and manual-edits start in L2, and the one in the stock install (L0 file) is completly off from L2 data. Then you generate the theater from that basis (e0) and rest is fine-tuning.
Remember, regardless if you import real data or if you edit, your edits are in L2!!, unless you are insane enough to edit in L0 over a million meshes manually,
thus, if you want to create accurate .mea, map and On (n1, n2, etc) files and recalculate the radars later in tacedit …you need to have first a correct e0.One could generally choose pathes:
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either importing real elv. data and trying to design elevation-appropiate tiles and graphics in respect (NUTS!, because of repetitions and really low quali mesh)
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or using (creating) plain tiles and adjusting the elevation in regards to those (NUTS! too, but with hope for acceptable results, lol).
But carefull with this option aswell, as i have seen couple korea texture mods out there meanwhile where the rivers are not where the bridges are i.e :mrgreen:
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The PS settings that I put up work. I just tested/verified with the original heights and modified heights. Lets take the guess work out of it.
I also got around to checking out the “make elv from loaded terrain” and had no problems with it when I imported it back into falcon.
I’m not sure if I’m importing the elevations correctly. Here’s how I’ve been doing it so far:
In the folder that I’m importing I’ve put all of the exported files into it. Had to change the e2 and e0 files in order to see the changes. I was under the assumption that you’s were creating the L2 from the L0 in Terrain Editor. I had to scale my 4096 image down to 1024 to create the L2 manually. So my modified folder has altered e0 and e2 files only. When scaling I used the preserve edges option.
I also tried the “import elv data from raw” option but that one would quit working on me every time I tried. Looked at monster’s help section but didn’t grasp the concept of how to do it from what I read, anyone have success building the elevations from the .elv file? I would like to use that option since it’d auto build the other L’s and it gives us a few more options.
Also learned to make multiple saves on important PS files, my transitions file was corrupted and now have to start them over, had 16 tiles done. I do periodic backups but have now added in the save copy option whenever I save something important or time consuming.
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Can you please explain at which point ModTerrain failed and if there were any messages about it?
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Stops and gives me the windows app crash window after I click on run;
Settings used;
Command prompt window appears;
Then app crash window pops up.
OS: Windows Vista 64
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Yes I confirm this, I’m very sorry, it was just a little typo in th code that caused this.
I’ve made a new version (v1.3.1) that you can find in http://sakgiok.gr/downloads and must be working.
Just replace the files in TerrainEditor’s folder with the content of the zip file. The new version will be distributed with any future new version of TerrainEditor as well.
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Have never used the import function, but thanks for the quick fix Monster.
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I believe it was Lukas that brought to my attention that our theaters use the Sinusoidal projection which creates a problem for my data set. I need to convert the projection into the mentioned one but have not figured out how I’m going to do it yet. I have QGIS and plan on looking up how to convert from wgs84 to sinusoidal; once I figure that out, I’ll be able to extract the srtm data from the TIFF I made in QGIS and will be able to put it into the raw for TE to use.
The ‘dem2terrain projection’ was discussed years ago. It was written in these posts:
http://tactical.nekromantix.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=20922&start=40 -
Thank you very much, will read through it when I get the time and report back.
The ‘dem2terrain projection’ was discussed years ago. It was written in these posts:
http://tactical.nekromantix.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=20922&start=40 -
Spent my night reading/researching and only thing I came away with is that sinusoidal or similar projection is used with dem2terrain but the original Korea theater does not use this projection. Instead it’s mentioned that possibly Mercator is the projection type. There was talk of some tools being used/made too but nothing published and I doubt they were designed for working with “.raw”.
I see a Mercator projection in qgis, but I still have not taken the time to learn how to convert projections and extract them using that program. I keep putting that part on hold.
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You are walking a path i did aswell… trying desperatly to import real elv data… and you cant imagine how hard i tried…till i understood the results will always suck this way and the only way is to create an artificial semi-realistic one. But i also know you are passionate - like i was - and that you have to find your own way.
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I realize that, and I’ll more then likely use what you have and modify it to line up with my placement of tiles.
Still interested in figuring this out and if I do, perhaps it’ll help someone else in the future.
The other reason I want to figure it out is so that I get a better understanding of qgis which will help me whenever I start working on my side project again.
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It will be released soon. Just doint testflight infact.
QGis…never heart of it…but just looked it up - interesting. I have ArcGis here… nice, but complex stuff. -
KR, are you using Zaggy’s converted SRTM data ? They should be available.
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@A.S:
It will be released soon. Just doint testflight infact.
QGis…never heart of it…but just looked it up - interesting. I have ArcGis here… nice, but complex stuff.Free version of what you have then. Nifty program but just like photoshop vs gimp or 3ds vs blender, ease of use and tutorials aren’t really tailored for beginners.
KR, are you using Zaggy’s converted SRTM data ? They should be available.
Nope, I’m using the default korea data at the moment and patiently waiting to get A.S.'s improvements. I searched but did not find anything and from what I read, the data that he has is at a better resolution compared to what I have from nasa. Would love to see it if it’s available though, especially since this projection deal just isn’t working for me.
I’ve tried a slew of projections and nothing is lining up correctly. The only other option I see is to use the “extract projection” function in QGis, which would require me to plot more coordinates on the original image I have of the Korean theater. Than it’s just a matter of how accurate I get the coordinates. But I’ve got to get back to texturing and tiling before I start falling behind.