Terrain Buildings

[+hi ho silver 179]

I have been here many years and there have been some great mod's but for some reason the the buildings still suck big time looks like someone tipped suger cubes on terrain .There was some talk of modeling streets and blocks is anyone out there working on them? im willing to help !

[+daddyairplanes 8,641]

if your running a high power rig that would be a really cool mod to do. however those of us will more utilitarian systems would be swamped by the framerates it would consumer i think . also quite frankly i alway felt that TW sims were bout the aircraft and associated systems and the look of the terrain towns and roads is part of the TW experience at least to me. not sayin it would be a bad mod to do just not sure it wouldnt be a system killer

[MigBuster 2,861]

Some of the terrains have high rise, skyscrapers and other buildings now I have noticed - although the only terrain mod I have seen with them arranged in streets is on a recent FE2 mod .

[+hi ho silver 179]

I have stary's germany terrain with the skyscrapers looks bettter but mappping not working right ive repainted them but there streched out. from what little i know about modeling there are 12 triangles to make a box(house) and proberly 50 to make one control knob in cockpit so getting rid of the old boxes and replace them larger better laid out boxes won't hit the frame rates that much ?

[Wrench 9,427]

are you talking terrain object buildings (hangars, bunkers, barracks and the like)?

 

OR TOD buildings (those built into the terrain -sorta- itself)?

 

The Skyscrapers MigBuster mentioned, and Stary's building are TOD objects. New ones can be created (as has obviously been done), but they can only be placed with the Terrain Editor, in the "Edit Texture Map List" function, editing EACH individual tile and adding the solid and alpha objects.

 

However, said objects must be built OUTSIDE the TE, and then imported to it. (I'm sure Stary or Brain32 could chime in with the 'how to' -- something I haven't mastered)

 

To place individual solid objects that match street layout (and I've done this MANY times -- look at the new Libya city tiles, and several others) is done via the above mentioned TE function. And is a mind-bogglingly brain numbing, eye-crossing, time consuming process. AND ... there's an upper limit to how many alpha and solid objects allowed on each tile (less on the Desert than on GermanyCE and VietnamSEA)

 

wrench

kevin stein

[serverandenforcer 33]

Hey Wrench, I have a question on this subject too... Is it possible to build the geographical features of a terrain in max and then import them into the terrain as objects? Thought of doing this to make accurate mountains and hills for terrains. The only thing that would be the actual terrain would be the base level of those mountains and hills. My other reason for asking of this technique is because I noticed that the current geographical features in the terrains do not cast any kind of shadow. Sure, the have shade, but no shadow.

[+hi ho silver 179]

I would like to turn of the city tod's and replace them 6 or 8 new models crossroads ,right turn ,left turn,street ,skyscraper and maybe some lights.. :) oh oh collision points lol

[Wrench 9,427]

s&e:

the terrain engine itself seem a bit limited as to 'shadow casting'. Yes, terrain object cast shadows (barracks, hangars, bunkers, Hanger Ho's Hangouts,etc) Yes, you can add terrain features (see baltka's Kamchatka for The Elder One hiself as part of the terrain). But you'd have to paint 'shading' INTO the tile or object itself for create the more 3-D look. Look at the Himilaya or DBS terrain -- full of mountains; ASW has plenty of hills in Mexico, too.

Another 'issue' that mountains cause, is during fully overcast or inclement weather any object or target area that is within or above the cloud deck essentially 'vanishes'. Meaning: runways and other tga objects will NOT be appearing if they are within the clouds; on the same vein, any mountains that are above the cloud deck (this is MOST prevelant on the Himilaya terrain - where the mountains are most definatly above the clouds in Real Life™, and to some extent on the ASW at Escobedo International airport at Monterrey), no longer exist. You can still fly into the side of mountain (done this, decorated the south face of K2 with my MiG), but they are NOT visible in game due to the cloud tgas taking precedence over any terrain features. It's been that way since Day 1, and I doubt it will ever change (unless the upcoming F-14 game has a completly NEW terrain engine)

 

Unfortunately, it's IMPOSSIBLE to make a 100% realistic featured map, due to tiles being square. If they were hexes (remember SquadLeader or other Avalon Hill board games?), maybe. Shading is another matter altogether

 

(with refernce to the screenie below)One can always edit the height field in Photoshop, Gimp, Paint.net, etc, by "Export Height Map as BMP", --there's an article in the 1stGen KB on the color pallette--, and reimporting it back into the terrain editor. But again, it can be a hit or miss proposition. A 1 pixel brush 'dot' creates a terrain feature approx 5km in size on a 1000x1000 km map. I had to do this quite a few time in Korea, to fix major issues in the central part of the country near Hwachon, and the Yalu river valley -- the mountains were just too far away, and shaped incorrently

 

But I doubt it can ever be gotten "exactly" right. We can get pretty damn close ... (example, look at the river in the screenie ... it's waaaay to square....every angle is either 45 or 90. The Mississippi don't look like that in the Real World ™ )

 

hhs:

start learing the TE ... you'll find what you ask is impossible. Every single object MUST be placed, by hand, individually. You can change the facing, to any compass point -individually! Unless, like Stary and Brain, you create 'clusters' of bulding, but they MUST match the street layout and spacing, bringing us back to the original problem.

And that adds yet another problem ... no leftover space for targetable objects. The things Dave loves to bomb. Too many buildings make it almost impossible to add these objects; which EVERY city in the world contains - train station, factories, (evildamn) comm buildings, brewreys; the list is endless. We had to have Stary thin down the city TODs in Korea just so I place them.

 

So, it's all a trade off. You want eye candy or playability (ie: targets to hit)?

 

wrench

kevin stein

[+hi ho silver 179]

Im back i've beem messing around with the city bmp's trying to make then more modern take out lot of red and brown buildings and adding some brighter gray concrete and glass ..