Normandy island Options

[jones]

Here is my entry for my upcoming Normandy island for ArmA.

Size of the map: 20480 x 20480 px

Area includes: St. mere Eglise and Utah beach.
Map boundaries: Montebourg (north), Carentan (south)

Progress so far:
- 1/4 of terrain texturing using Google Earth 1m/px and 5m/px maps,
- height map (version beta)


I have two major problems as far.

1. getting textures from google is a pain in the ass. I found Google Maps Images Downloader but in trial version you can save only 13XZoom maps, and I need 18Xzoom. Cant afford a full version right now. Anyone mayby can help me with that? With that program working I would have textures for my island overnight.

2. cant find good height data of Normandy, somehow Ive found a height map for it 6 years ago when I tried to make island for OFP but this lacks a lot of data near the shore. I manually paint that part in Photoshop but it lacks a lot of detail. I would be very apreciated for any help on that matter.

3. textures doesnt show up in main editor window in Visitor3, I can see them in Buldozer only. that is a pain cos setting up building and trees would be much faster in main window right on a satelite images and then tweaking it in buldozer. somehow I cant add new objects in buldozer. Is all that normal behaviour for Visitor?

[jones]

update: I decided to include full Carentan town and exclude Montebourg


Carentan is a important feature for all 101st fans and as far as I remember montebourg have no role in Airborne activities

[Deadeye]

update: I decided to include full Carentan town and exclude Montebourg
Carentan is a important feature for all 101st fans and as far as I remember montebourg have no role in Airborne activities

Sounds good but please do not doublepost Use the Edit Button instead.


Any pics already?

[Bence]

My answer to your question no1. I've got that Google Maps Images Downloader!
If you need my help.....

[jones]

http://www.paraglite.org/download/WIP_normandy_height.jpg
http://www.paraglite.org/download/WIP_buldozer_normandy.jpg

theese are picts of current version of my island.
only scale testing objects added.

shore and causeways section need a lot of work as this part was made by hand for OFP (much lower grid resolution) and I have no height map for that piece

[Jojimbo]

hey jonesy,nice job there and good luck with the utah/st-mer project.to enable the map in visitor go to
background images,and add a .bmp overlay,you can then turn it off and on as you wish in properties.

[jones]

man! thanks for that tip


is there limitation of size for a background image? i was able to use only 2048px bmp

update: I also managed to use 10240px image. but full 20480 image doesnt work... i will try to set resolution for 20000, maybe the image has to be smaller then the island itself

update: visitor seems to have memory limits so I can only load 10240 background. but the workaround for it is to work on four 10240 maps loaded for only one of four quadrants for the map. Visitor actually can load two 10240 maps (in my case, I think it is system dependent) so i can work on particular image borders without switching beetween images every time

update: I managed to run my island in ArmA for tests purposes. Ive got typical rvmat paths problem so as far I had no textures on my terrain. I will fix that when all textures are ready. Also Google Downloader dont want to download more then 10 or so textures (it seems to be google blocking connections for too much downloading attempts) and as I would need 300000+ of them I think I will stick to the manual way of saving images from google earth (it still a lot of work but I can save much larger area in one file then Google Downloader)

[TankCommander]

Great Very interested to see where this goes and all the best of luck to you.

Now show more updates!

[jones]

I got half of the area covered with satelitte images. Assembling them from google by hand is slow as hell.

update: i have all of the sattelite images on place. Currently I am working on the layers map - nothing too fancy, just a simple gradient map in photoshop, but it adds the four colors pretty close to original satelite colors. onlu the coast line need some work by hand, and i think i will need to adjust the cities.

update: I made the first version of the height map. It still need lot of tweaking, but it handled the causeways and small canals quite well. I will work on it after finishing the historical version of the satelite map. Currently buldozer is working on converting of the modern version of the satellite image. 14 hours, and doestn seems to be finishing :/ But I need to do a lot of testing before I go to the historical version so I need to wait for it.

update: whole terrain is ready, with historically acurate satelite map and height map. Height map will need some small tweaks here and there but I will do that when building the roads network. Now I must somehow repair my buldozer setup so I can start placing objects. If any of you want to put his custom objects into my map be sure to contact me.
I also managed to made a test map with 12 different ground detail maps... so all tutorials that states that you can use only four maps are wrong Thanks to that my island would be properly detailed similarry to original BI maps. If anybody intrested I can send him this project files to look how it can be done (what colors could be used, layer.cfg file and sample island)
I will post some screenshots soon.

update on the detail maps: it seems that masks are created only for five colors - red green blue brown and black. this is strange as Sara island has 12 types of them. I will try to find the rest of the colors somehow.

update on detail maps: I've checked the documentation again and made some tests and I finally figured out the whole system for detail maps - you can use any number of detail maps (colors) on the source image as long as you put them into layers.cfg file and the colors matches the legend map, but after visitor splits it to mask texture images there can be only five types (black, red, green, blue, brown) on single texture image. Any types exceeding this will be set to default (brown type )

[armavidz]

That's awesome Jones. Good to see people are workingon the normandy maps. I'm trying(for my first) the Omaha Beach Area, from Saint Laurent Sur Mer to just past Veirville Sur Mer...

I still have to repaint the sat mask to better match the WWII era, and experiment with different brushes to create teh bluffs and terrain but slowly but surely.

Have you any plans to do further inland? Say Caen, Hill 123?

[BigglesTrevor]

great job guys, maybe you should team up.

[jones]

I dont think I will go further. It is hard enough to create 20 square km terrain with such density of objects. Painting roads only on layer mask took me more than 24 hours (24h straight, by the way i went insane with that task ) And i still have to place them all in visitor...


here are some screenshots of the terrain (only two objects placed as far for testing reasons.) :

utah beach in visitor

and in game








causeway_to_carentan

dead_mans_corner


as you can see I am using Vilas models and LCU by bk1276 but this is only for testing puposes. If I will have the time I will try to make some models of my own but that is only if I finish with the island.

[TankCommander]

Yeah so it really is that hard to create a map in Arma... Too bad there isn't a tool with an interactive terrain builder like that of, for example, Crysis etc. We can only hope such a thing is released in Arma2 but doubtfully.

Looks good otherwise but if it really is that big a strain just to get elevation, roads etc minus the objects, giving up isn't so bad.

[jones]

Oh I dont give up making the island, I just wont go further inland cos this area is huge already

[armavidz]

Wow, those shots look amazing Jones.

[d@nte]

you make buildings (farms, houses etc etc etc) for your map?

[rommel]

Looking Great

Have you tried looking for some DEMs of the area? Theirs plenty around, but getting your hands ones without paying top dollar that are 10m will be incredibly difficult, but I wish you all the best of luck.

Maybe these could help, ones overlooking vierville sur - mer, and others further down looking up, and also shows low tide versus high tide.




If you want some more photos or need some help with Visitor 3, add me on MSN, rommelvonrichtofen@bigpond.com

[armavidz]

Those photo's are FANTASTIC rommel. It'd be really great to see you upload them to imageshack and link them all for anyone making Normandy maps.

[jones]

I will made custom for sure, because there is a lot of buildings like St Mere Eglise church which are recognisable for a lot of people. But I will start with standard ones and replace them with customs where needed. I wll also need custom bridges, railroads, etc. A lot of work to be done yet.

[jocelyn]

Hi Jones, i as just reading with great interest the topic you initiated, it's impressive work you do !
i am newbie about visitor, and currently i am suffering on the subject of texture usage in order to get proper texture for fields, forests, beaches, mountains, rocky mountains. Have you found a good manual which explain how to mix textures properly for good rendering. Currently i can include properlythe satellite map, but i have very poor rendering ofthe textures i am using. Any recommendation ?

Thanks