Road Painter 2

[Homer Johnston]

Current Version: 0.3 (BETA) May 25, 2012

DOWNLOAD v0.3 (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4621600/ArmA/RoadPainter/RoadPainter2_v0.3.zip)
-Download Mirrors/news posts welcome!

This should be considered "beta" software - backup your work frequently before and during use!

Caution: the tool uses your clipboard to transfer data. It's possible to get large amounts of data on your clipboard (80+ MB in some cases)... I've noticed this causes some programs (like mIRC) to lag strangely. You may want to copy something else small onto the clipboard after you finish using the tool, to "clear it off".

CHANGELOG:
v0.3 - added terrain smoother, file in/out operations (saving session, exporting road paths to file), several misc. UI improvements and bug fixes
v0.2 - added Operation Arrowhead road definitions, fixed panning issue with windowed or 3D res other than 100%
v0.1 - initial release


DEMO VIDEO OF INSTALLATION AND USAGE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4drDsJiHrLg&hd=1


INSTALLATION:
1) Move the included folder, "_Road_Painter2.TerrainName", into your "...\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\Username\Missions" folder
2) Rename the suffix ".TerrainName" to your own terrain
3) Move the included folder, "@<hidden>", into your "...\ArmA 2 Operation Arrowhead" folder
4) Launch ArmA loading 1.60 Beta, plus @<hidden> and your terrain as addons. The supplied .cmd file is optional to help with this (all you should have to do is edit it to include your @<hidden>)


Questions, comments, bugs, suggestions, maybe even offers for help are welcome! Currently on the future to-do list, in order of priority, are:
1) See if I can add train tracks to the system


Cheers.
------------
Old Versions for archive/backup
v0.2 alpha (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4621600/ArmA/RoadPainter/RoadPainter2_v0.2.zip)
v0.1 alpha (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4621600/ArmA/RoadPainter/RoadPainter2_v0.1.zip)

[droogs]

Many thanks Homer, will have a play and let you know and whohoo beat Bushy to the post :P

[Foxhound]

I would like to forward your release to the community by writting some news about it and update our pages (no mirroring, only info) but I got a little confused just now.

Is this supposed to be an update of your previous release ( http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=10346 ) or is this a completely new tool and the linked one should stay as a different tool?
I ask cause they have the same name except this is an early alpha and the one released was already a beta.

Sorry if this is a stupid question but I rather not delete our page while it should have stayed ;)

[Homer Johnston]

My fault, I should have explained this in the root post...

I consider them completely separate tools, however I expect the original one will soon be considered obsolete. The two tools work on very different methods: Road Painter 1 produced a file which you could import in Visitor using "road networks". Road Painter 2 generates dumb objects, the same as houses and fences - quite a drastic difference. I eventually abandoned the original project because it gave me so many limitations (and because I didn't quite have enough experience to code something as complex)... this rewrite gives me more freedom.

There may still be people who wish to use the original tool while this one is developed a bit more (maybe for a week or two). If the original tool was likened to ArmA1, this tool in its current state would be like an "open beta" of the sequel, ArmA2. Locking the original thread was fine :)

[Foxhound]

Thanks for the clearification mate :)
I wrote a news item about the release on the Armaholic homepage (http://www.armaholic.com/index.php). I hope this gives you some extra feedback!

I will keep the old pages for now, in case you ever want them removed just let me know!

[Minimalaco]

excellent, supports OA roads ?

I will try and then comment, thanks for your work

[Synide]

Good job. On mine the rmb to rotate the camera was wildly sensitive for some reason.
I noticed your comment about the old A1 road part 'kos10 75.p3d' - that's funny. If you open the model the poly's in the 0.5 LoD have been inadvertently inverted so there facing down into the ground. The QA guys back then must have missed that one.
Placing road-like 'artifical' objects is the only sane way to create roads in .pews imo, roadnets are a complete pain.
You're going the right way about it and it's comming along great. Again, good job.

Cheers, Sy.

[Homer Johnston]

excellent, supports OA roads ?
Yes, it should support any MLOD road models just fine - I actually forgot to add the OA road families into the definition list (RoadParts.sqf)... I'll do it next update. :)


On mine the rmb to rotate the camera was wildly sensitive for some reason.
I think I know how to solve that, but not why it happens: make sure you run the game in "fullscreen" and at 100% 3D Resolution, and it should behave normal. Forgot to mention that in the initial post as well... I'll find a solution for that next update. If that wasn't your issue, then let me know and I'll just add a mouse sensitivity slider to the side panel...

[Synide]

...run the game in "fullscreen" and at 100% 3D Resolution, and it should behave normal.

Yip, that fixed it. Maybe, down the track you can get it to behave a little nicer in Windowed mode. Defintely, not an issue that needs attention atm.

Cheers, Sy.

[Hotzenplotz]

Ho very nice work , i like Roadpainter. Makes Streets so easy to my island.
The new version is Great.
Greez Hotze

[Minimalaco]

This version is very good, waiting for the OA roads.

I try to add in "RoadParts.sqf", but no luck. :(

[Homer Johnston]

I'm hoping to post my next update by end of next weekend... currently swamped with another project I need to get out the door. In addition to defining roads in roadparts.sqf, you'd need to add them in the HOMJ roads addon... the addon adds them to the mission editor as spawnable/placeable objects, then the RoadParts.sqf file defines their geometry for the tool.

Naturally you'd be welcome to see if you could figure that out for yourself - I might be able to find time to do that and post it up this weekend but no guarantees at this point; might have to wait just a *bit* longer!

[edit] I'll almost definitely post a small update adding in OA roads this weekend plus one or two other small fixes. Turns out to be a bit of a nuisance because BIS randomly rotated one of the konec pieces (only one!) by 180 degrees... :yuck: then I'll hopefully have something capable of smoothing the terrain by end of next weekend, fingers are crossed.

[Homer Johnston]

Minor update; OA roads added. Haven't tried importing them into visitor yet - let me know if anything doesn't work (please pay particular attention to the konec piece of OA asf2). Next update will be something for terrain smoothing, end of next weekend if I'm lucky. I should mention that if you import any roads with the tool as-is, you won't be able to smooth the terrain for them (at least not with what I'm currently making... )

[Wessix]

Hi Homer, i use youre tool an it is so great. Is there any news about the smoothing? i played around with some blurring in my heightmap but i had no breakthrough right now.

thx for your great work

[Homer Johnston]

Progress is slower than I hoped, but I finally figured out a smoothing algorithm that should work, it's approximately the same as the process Visitor uses... except hopefully I'll be able to make it more user-friendly.

Since I can't modify the terrain in-game, I'm going to overlay a point-cloud showing the revised terrain shape, above the actual terrain. In theory, I'll be able to make it so you can generate a preview, change settings, re-generate preview, and if you're happy with it then you can export a new heightmap file for Visitor.

Planned settings at the moment could be:
1) flat-width (any vertices within this distance of the road will be "flattened"
2) total width (any vertices beyond the flat-distance will be "blended" smoothly)
3) platform height (to allow you to give roads a raised center)
4) ditch depth (to drop terrain beside road)

Naturally the effectiveness of these settings will depend on the terrain cell size. The platform height & ditch depth may be useless if the cell size isn't very small, but on fine maps might give you the ability to easily make more realistic looking road terrain (http://www.greenbergaccidentlawyer.com/_layouts/images/20RoadDefects.jpg).

Here's a video showing where I've made it to so far; I just got the flat-width portion working. At this rate, it looks like it may still be a few weeks before this tool can really be as effective as I intend it to be.

4ZEsOUIfYNk

[droogs]

Looking good Homer. This will be a must have tool for every map maker's toolbox for a long time to come. well done

[[APS]Gnat]

Wow!
And having a ditch feature would be great!

[Robster]

Your are a genius Mr. Johnston!

OFF-TOPIC: Sometime ago, I did realise that not being able to modify terrain in-game is a shame...

As long as you could modify terrain on the go you could get holes when bombs explode, trenches wherever might be needed, and a lot of stuff that happens in RL and infantry men see on a regular basis... y'know your shovel as your main weapon...

In fact, this kind of requirement would really make a difference between FPS war game and an infy simulator...

[Wessix]

Hey Homer, that looks so promising.

Have you thought of making your tool for buldozer.exe instead of making it as an mission in game? With buldozer opened and v3 in background it is possible to change the height of vertices.
It is also interesting that instead of buldozer.exe you can copy your arma2.exe or arma2oa.exe to your P:\ drive and change the setting in v3 and it works.

an in the v3 readme:


Viewer setup
============
First thing you should do is to click "Tools" > "System Preferences" to set the path to realtime viewer working directory (standard is P:\). All path indications will be relative to this path, so if something does not work as expected you should check there first.

Also define the call parameters for the viewer.

Path to viewer (Commands in [] are optional; leave [] away when using that command):
PathToArmaDir\Arma.exe -buldozer [-window] [-addons=addons.txt] [-cfg=PathToConfig] [-maxmem=1024]

-window : Starts Buldozer in window instead of fullscreen.

-cfg=PathToConfig : Forces Buldozer to use a certain config.

-addons=addons.txt : File containing necessary addons, if you want to see correct clutter settings for edited world, its folder must be mentioned in such file. Also, some UI elements might be missing if they are not called for by the TXT file and unpacked to viewer's working directory.

Example of addons.txt:
***start***
addons[] =
{
"ca\", "ca\data\", "ca\UI\", "ca\UIFonts\"
};
***end***

Visitor 3 PE allows user to use Visitor scripting language, which shares common features with engine scripting language. Some scripts may cause viewer or Visitor crash if viewer is connected.


just had some kind of brainstorming, not knowing if that would be possible at all.

Wessix

[Homer Johnston]

I would gladly make it for Buldozer, but I'm led to believe that dialogs (i.e. a custom UI) and maybe handling SQF scripts are not possible with it. I haven't actually investigated it and I could be wrong... If there is any documented info which might suggest it's possible, I'd love to find it!

[Wessix]

Ok, and another possibility if the scripts in buldozer don't work perhaps also not possible, but it came to my thoughts:
perhaps it is possible to change the .xyz heighmap files out of your script, since they are only textfiles??

just another thought


Wessix

[Synide]

I would gladly make it for Buldozer, but I'm led to believe that dialogs (i.e. a custom UI) and maybe handling SQF scripts are not possible with it. I haven't actually investigated it and I could be wrong... If there is any documented info which might suggest it's possible, I'd love to find it!

While watching your original thread unfold the other week I felt you should be doing this for buldozer instead too.
And, like you I wasn't sure that scripting etc. would be supported well while running in buldozer mode.
So, a few weeks back I did a couple of limited tests. Well, I sorta only did 1 & half tests.
In Buldozer when you hit F1 you get the plain unadourned game 'Options' menu. I modified the Rsc in the P:\bin folder to have an additional button that launched Gaia's debug console.
This worked fine. The debug console was entirely functional. I could run scripting commands like 'createVehicle' for instance.

So...Yes, you can run .sqf & do a customized user interface for buldozer. But, of course you won't be able to 'play' a character model for instance. And, scripting commands that are simulation centric would be problematic. Oh, and I'm not sure about 'mouse' related scripting in the context of buldozer-mode. You'll have to test that yourself. If you're inclined to go down this route that is.


I'm not much up on the UI side of modding. But, if you can get your scripts to 'fire' keypresses on the buldozer controls for moving the terrain up and down then those alterations will instantly feed back into visitor3.

Of course the roads you 'paint' (like when your in mission-mode in your current effort) will only exist for the duration of running buldozer and will not feed back into visitor3.
However, you should be able to run Jaynus' ArmA2Lib tool with buldozer and save/load persistent data to disk while you're in buldozer.
Then shut buldozer and flip back to V3 and import that text file - instant V3 road and/or placed building/tree etc.... :)

Food for thought eh?

[Homer Johnston]

Very ingenious Synide... hm, If enough of the scripting and dialog features work in buldozer, and if we can use the sleep and copyFromClipboard commands in a visitor script... a visitor script could theoretically loop, acting as a pipe from Buldozer into Visitor. I think just about anything would be possible then... these are very big "Ifs"!

[Minimalaco]

OA roads run fine, thanks mate !

[Old Bear]

I am wondering ... I am dreaming of a tool allowing to lay railways tracks as we are laying roads in your marvelous "Road Painter" tool.

I am dreaming of a tool to lay rivers as well.
Of course, we will need an addon featuring straight and curved parts !

Do you think such enhancements are conceivable ?

[Robster]

@<hidden> Old Bear: I've seen some guys making rivers over a plain surface with roads set to absolute height to -1 meter (in example) and then applying smooth roads script... I know it's a trick but may work

[Old Bear]

@<hidden> : Thanks. I am already using "roads" in various undocumented ways on my maps, for example to get navigable rivers as well as building small islets as on Tigeria island.

What I mean in my "dream" is to have a way to lay river as we are laying roads so we can have rivers not made from sea water nor from BI ponds objects, so we can get rivers in hills without the side effects the ponds objects are producing.

[Homer Johnston]

Hmm, after a small amount of testing I've discovered:
1) the "map" control seems to crash buldozer (expectable, I guess)
2) buldozer doesn't seem to support pictures in the dialog

Assuming I don't run into any further issues, technically I could port the tool into Buldozer without either of those... but it's seeming like an even bigger hack-solution than my current method :\

Railway tracks are something I didn't think of, I don't know why they wouldn't be possible... but stations and other interchanges might have to be done manually. I'm not sure what railway objects are available. I'll have to look into it after I get this smoother done. Speaking of which, I've managed to fix it up the algorithm a little more; it blends with terrain correctly now. I have to develop the GUI/in-out side of it next, then I'll be able to post another update.

I think I'm going to start work on a new little .exe program as I had in the original tool for supporting file in/out with ArmA. If possible, I'll probably look into hooking depbo.dll onto it to load info from PEW files... Mikero, if you read this, I might have to get in contact with you in the new year. :) I'll be exploring the depths of your dev-heaven page and documentation for a bit...

[[APS]Gnat]

Homer, are you running the actual ArmA2OA exe as your buldozer viewer?
Just wondering if that would work with ALL features .......

Yes .... Railroads! Of courses! Yeh, just the straight bits would be great.

[Wessix]

any news about the Project?

any possibility to support you?

[Homer Johnston]

Sorry, Real Life (TM) got really busy after the new year.

Since the last post, I've improved my smoothing algorithm a bit (it blends nicely with surrounding vertices now), and started working on the GUI elements to control the smoothing. My next big task before I can release something is to get data transferring from PEW files to the in-game tool, so that I can read the actual elevation matrix and use it in the smoother. The biggest challenge I will face is figuring out how to use the new callExtension function - there seems to be no documentation how to actually make use of it. Once I figure that out, I hope it's possible to write a small, convenient plugin to handle my specific needs.

Expect a better update in about 2 weeks, I have to finish up one or two more things through this weekend before I can get focused on this again. :)

Unfortunately I'm not really in need of help at the moment, unless there is someone who can help me learn callExtension, and/or is decent enough at C++ to help me get started on a data in-out plugin tailored for my needs...

[Synide]

Unfortunately I'm not really in need of help at the moment, unless there is someone who can help me learn callExtension, and/or is decent enough at C++ to help me get started on a data in-out plugin tailored for my needs...

Ask someone you have on skype and is already in this channel to add you to the 'ArmA2 Tool Makers Channel'.
There are people in there that have already made use of 'callExtension' extensively and others that know the .pew file, c++ etc., etc.

Although I'm sure you could probably glean what you need from this DH page... Official support for 3rd party plugins (dll's) (https://dev-heaven.net/issues/25915).

[[APS]Gnat]

Great, sounds good Homer
Question: Is the code making optimal use of the longest road bits, when a user appears to be making a long straight road?

Not 100% myself, but seems I'm getting far more shorter bits joined together than maybe I should when I'm making a long straight road.
If if isn't optimal (I can image the code might be a serious problem, "is he trying to make a long road or not" ), I'd suggest maybe something like a Key-down-hold trigger to force the current stretch of road to be only the longest straight bits.

[Homer Johnston]

Synide, thanks for the link. I didn't know that ticket existed; it looks like it may answer everything I need.

Gnat, I'll check that out. Right now the algorithm is supposed to simply pick the piece which brings it closest to the cursor over and over until it can't get any closer, but it might be bugged or need some other sort of conditioning.

[Homer Johnston]

I said I'd post something, so I'd better post something. I've got the callExtension / DLL system working, it was really easy and looks like it's going to work perfectly :) right now I'm still preoccupied with another project; will be for a few more days, then I plan to get back on this. Mikero's kindly offered me some help to use his PBODLL to work with PEW files, so we'll see what I can come up with. Sorry for the slowdown, but progress will resume soon!

[Robster]

Good to hear from you, Sir!

[[APS]Gnat]

Sounding good !

[Wessix]

Yeah sounds good. i check this thread every day twice to see if there are news :-) Keep on going!

[Minimalaco]

Any new Homer ? this tool is fantastic !

[Homer Johnston]

Sure, but not much! I've been spending every spare hour helping Invasion '44 get version 2.6 and just a few hours ago patch 2.61 released :)

However - now that those are done, I get a break from it. I spent today getting my DLL plugin working nicely, and added my own self-explanatory functions to the game:
["filepath"] call HOMJ_DLL_IO_newFile;
["filepath", "data"] call HOMJ_DLL_IO_write;
["filepath"] call HOMJ_DLL_IO_read;

Using these, I've got it set up now that the "Export" buttons will create .txt files ready for Visitor. Now I'm working on a system to save/load work-paths so that you can close/reopen a project.

Pictures: I draw two roads and use "Save Paths to File" + "Export All", and it makes files under subfolders within "ArmA2OA\@<hidden>\DataFolder\". For now I'm hardcoding it to only work on files in this subfolder, to prevent the chance of wrecking other files on your HDD ;). Once I have this all working, I have to make a little dialog for the Smoother... then I have to tackle the heightmap, loading the elevation matrix of the terrain so I can modify it and export it. My dream is to load data from a PEW file into ArmA (and inject data back into it!), but for a speedier release I might do something more simple, like export XYZ from Visitor and manually load that into RoadPainter, and vice-versa. Hoping for something usable by the end of the month, but we'll see how it goes after I dedicate a few more nights to it.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4621600/ArmA/RoadPainter/demo_exportstuff.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4621600/ArmA/RoadPainter/demo_savedfiles.jpg

[[APS]Gnat]

*drools* at the thought ......... :yay:

[Minimalaco]

Nice !

[Robster]

Afaik visitor does not have a native XYZ file export function but import only, if you can manage that somebody would be tempted to make a statue in your honor Mr. Johnston :P

[.kju [PvPscene]]

mikero's tool can export xyz data from wrp and pew I think. If not, suggest it to him. :)

[Homer Johnston]

Yeah it looks like you're right - no XYZ export from Visitor. However, I've got the DePBO source now (thanks Mikero!) and it looks like it may have all the capability I'll need to plug it into my program. I'll be able to do a test later this week - fingers crossed.

[.kju [PvPscene]]

Check: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?132348-Hill-smoothing-trick&p=2118756&viewfull=1#post2118756

[Robster]

I had forgotten to tell about these news... looking forward to be surprised as usual :p

[Homer Johnston]

Sigh, time passes too fast... here's a new little video to tide you folks over, and hopefully buy me just another week or so to run this thing through some rigorous tests and finalize some needed import/export options :)

CGA2KnFN3DM

[.kju [PvPscene]]

Did you consider loadingScreen to speed up things? (disables the visual computation to run scripts as fast as possible)

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/startLoadingScreen
http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/endLoadingScreen

[Homer Johnston]

Nice thought; I wasn't really aware of those commands. I'll be able to use them to speed one or two things up, but sadly the actual smoother algorithm simply involves millions (literally) of point->point distance calculations and it just isn't that fast. However, I'm also using a near-3-year-old CPU, and the number of calculations required depends on both the map cell size & your total smoothing width (i.e. 20m in my test). Proving Grounds is a pretty brutal heightmap to work on, compared to e.g. a 10m grid. There are a couple things I'll be able to do to speed it up, but it's still going to be a pretty slow process. Users will hopefully be able to quickly learn some settings they like (or just draw a short "test" path) and reuse them without needing to try out a bunch of different settings...

[[APS]Gnat]

Difficult to see via the blue dots, but get the idea ..... very impressive.

[101para]

Found this really usefull cheers :)

[IceBreakr]

video
Damn, with that tool I would consider remaking Panthera in realsize 1:1 or continue to work on Balkania ;)

[DMarkwick]

Damn, with that tool I would consider remaking Panthera in realsize 1:1 or continue to work on Balkania ;)

Hell with that tool I would reconsider redoing my abandoned Savine Vode map :D roads were one of the PITA.

[Synide]

Nice stuff...


...simply involves millions (literally) of point->point distance calculations and it just isn't that fast.

Seeing as you're doing a .dll to get your data out to V3. Perhaps you could have spawned sqf threads that concentrate on interacting with additional .dll's that tear through some of the heavy data a bit quicker out in c++. Whether it'd actually end up giving you much of a boost when you have to manage the flow into and out of A2/OA I dunno. Just a arbitrary thought.

Cheers, Sy.

[Homer Johnston]

Root post updated, v0.3 download link posted. god help us all. Let me know in this thread if you find any nasty issues, if needed I'll try to do a maintenance update within a couple weeks.

[Robster]

:yay:

[[APS]Gnat]

A W E S O M E ! !
Can't wait to test.

(BTW ..... why does Ray Romano come to mind when I listen to you ;) )

[Pfhaota]

v0.3 - added terrain smoother, file in/out operations (saving session, exporting road paths to file), several misc. UI improvements and bug fixes

Terrain smoother and the ability to save sessions! Thank you!

[Jeza]

Thank you Thank you Thank you! Should get Kent roads looking less.....split!

[Foxhound]

Updated release frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage (http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=15706).


http://www.armaholic.com/datas/users/news_download_a2_4.png (http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=15705)
Road Painter 2 v0.3 alpha (http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=15705)

[Minimalaco]

Fantastic! thanks for your work :bounce3: :bounce3:

[Bushlurker]

Excenllent work Homer!!!

This looks superb! Very polished and logical interface, and the integrated roads selection system is just lovely!
I've used the old "camtest Beta" version endlessly on every terrain I've been involved with since it was released, and its been an absolute godsend! Looking forward to trying this one out! - I'm just putting together a little test terrain specially! ;)


Thanks for all your hard work mate! This looks set to revolutionise our little terrain-making world!

B

[Wessix]

Hi,
i have a Problem, i have not installed arma2 and oa via steam, so i have only an arma2 folder in wich all files are located, your tool seems to export the xyz to an arma2oa folder. thin i have to correct the path for my installation setup. where can i do this?

[=KCT=BlackMamba]

woow this tool realy good now.

i considered to redo the road network on fayshkhabur, as i did them all by hand the first time wich cost me atleast several weeks.
with your road tool i did 3/4 of the whole map in just a few hours the corners are so much better now.
thnx .

[IceBreakr]

Thank for your the update. I'll test it on my new map (although I probably won't release it for A2) tonight ;)

[Homer Johnston]

IMPORTANT NOTE: The file export/import functions require you to be using the latest beta version of Arma, not just 1.60 retail. Sorry for forgetting to mention earlier!

Also, there may be bugs with the terrain smoother if roads pass under-water; I have to find time to test this (or hope one of you guys does :P) and will try to fix for next release

[Wessix]

sorry i have a problem again, now i have the beta, an launch it via armaIIlauncher, i can start the road painter 2 mission and make roads end smooth them, then i press export xyz and now he makes a file, but it is empty. 0 bytes
any suggestion what i made wrong?

[Homer Johnston]

Hmm... some questions for you:
1) does the "save session" button work and create a file with some data or is it also empty?
2) are you sure the export process is done when you check? (arma freezes while it is working, it unfreezes when done)
3) what OS are you using?

The process of operations is:
1) Arma tells plugin "make new file"
2) Plugin makes new file, empty (0 bytes)
3) Arma copies data to windows clipboard
4) Arma tells plugin to write data from clipboard to file
5) plugin transfers data from clipboard to file (0 bytes should almost instantly change to XX megabytes)

[MugAben]

Nice tool.

I have a few questions aswell.

1: When placing the red road-objects as artificial objects instead of roads; will they be marked on the map as proper roads and will the AI still recognize it?
2: When I import a road, my visitor says 0 rejected and all imported. It shows the whole road in buldozer, but in visitor I can only see, grab and delete roughly half of them. It simply doesnt show some of the sections and I have no possible way to remove them. If I where to press SAVE after an import, it would in theory destroy my whole map unless I find a way to unhide those sections that magically has dissapeared. Any ideas of why this happens?
Screenshot here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1576479/Work/wierd.jpg
3: The Smooth Paths, import export XYZ never seems to un-grey them selves.

Bonus question: Is there any possibility that in future versions we will be able to place other objects than roads?

I am using latest beta patch.

[Homer Johnston]

1: When placing the red road-objects as artificial objects instead of roads; will they ...
2: When I import a road, my visitor says 0 rejected and all imported. It shows the whole road in buldozer, but in visitor I can only see, grab and delete roughly half of them ...
3: The Smooth Paths, import export XYZ never seems to un-grey them selves.
Bonus question: Is there any possibility that in future versions we will be able to place other objects than roads?

1. Yes
2. Hmm, not something I noticed in my tests. Do you know which road family you were using? Maybe some of them are bugged
3. I'm guessing you're working with a 2048x2048 heightmap, it will take some time (maybe several minutes). Longer especially if you have a very slow CPU.
4. not in the near future, I may have further interest in tool dev later on, or possibly for A3.

[Wessix]

ok now it seems to work, i don't really know what was the problem i deleted the 0 byte files and made some Changes with user rights and write Protection Settings under windows 7 x64 and did a reboot, not i get the xyz file. Thx for your Help, THink it was some weird configuration Issue in my pC. Now i can play with the settings and see the results, perhaps we can collect some parameters for special circumstances, for example, what parameters are best for making a double serpentine down a cliffy hill ....

[MugAben]

Thank you for your answers Jonston.

I where using the mud road tree (those who in fact are the dirt ones, the lighter colored). Maybe I should try with a few other roads and see what happens.

EDIT: Just tried with ASF 3. Same thing. :( Dont know whats going on here..

My map is 10240x10240..
In your settings.sqf Ive set it to 1024 and 10 in cell size.

[Homer Johnston]

Sounds like another annoying bug in Visitor... possibly a small error inside your PEW file that occurred earlier. I know I've heard of objects being non-selectable in Visitor but this is much worse than "normal" :(

Perhaps we'll also need a Visitor script to search for and delete road p3ds too :icon11:

[Wessix]

ok after i have now suceeded in running the Road Painter 2 i got a question. The exportet txt for "export all" looks similiar to the one the old tool produces. is it possible to import such a txt so i can use my old already placed roads ?
before i start double posting posting all the time wich way of communication do you prefer skype or here?

[Varanon]

I love the tool, it makes painting roads so much easier. One problem, though, is that the resulting roads are not "real" roads, i.e. the AI doesn't seem to drive along the roads. Is there any way to fix that, or does the require manual road painting ?

[Homer Johnston]

There's no such thing as "real" roads... Once they're exported to the WRP file, the roads made by this are no different than any other road you've made. If the AI aren't following them, it's because of some other reason (combat behaviour, road doesn't benefit their pathfinding, etc). In any of my tests, they'll follow these roads just fine.

[Varanon]

Ah, thanks for the info. I'll have to find out why they driver off the road then. I have made a mountainous terrain with a serpentine road, I guess the AI can't handle it then :|

Anyway, thanks for the tool, it's invaluable and very easy to use.

By the way, I had trouble initially saving sessions or exporting. I keep all my modes sorted into categories, like islands, units, editing tools etc in subdirectories. If your addon is in a subdirectory, it will not be found by the exporter. Just thought you might want to mention it in the readme.

[Homer Johnston]

Ah, yes; it is hardcoded to use ...ArmA 2\@<hidden> I'll clarify that at some point. Thanks.

[Rip31st]

Ah, thanks for the info. I'll have to find out why they driver off the road then. I have made a mountainous terrain with a serpentine road, I guess the AI can't handle it then :|

Anyway, thanks for the tool, it's invaluable and very easy to use.

By the way, I had trouble initially saving sessions or exporting. I keep all my modes sorted into categories, like islands, units, editing tools etc in subdirectories. If your addon is in a subdirectory, it will not be found by the exporter. Just thought you might want to mention it in the readme.

ai+ narrow roads with no shoulder = dead ai, or a lot of flipped vehicles stuck in a ditch. This looks like a great tool. I plan on using it!

[Varanon]

ai+ narrow roads with no shoulder = dead ai, or a lot of flipped vehicles stuck in a ditch.

Made a second road that does not have too sharp turns, and the AI follows it perfectly.


This looks like a great tool. I plan on using it!

It is great, manually placing a road is horror. I hope it will be available for Arma 3 as well

[[APS]Gnat]

Made a second road that does not have too sharp turns, and the AI follows it perfectly.


Yeh, very hard to tell sometimes, but it does seem like sharp & short turns (i.e. turns that use a fair few shorter & large angle bits) cause the AI to start searching for a x-country short-cut.

[[APS]Gnat]

Per
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?133224-Problem-with-custom-road&p=2176376&viewfull=1#post2176376

Any chance your tool is flexible enough that a user can add a custom set of road (or rail) objects into your exist config set?

[Homer Johnston]

Gnat;2176705']Any chance your tool is flexible enough that a user can add a custom set of road (or rail) objects into your exist config set?

First, you need an addon defining your roads so that they can be spawned in-game via createVehicle (or placed with the editor)

Second, you have to define it for the tool in roadpainter.terrain\RoadParts.sqf... it's fairly well commented and a motivated person should be able to figure it out; add a new "Master" entry into the HOMJ_RP_RoadListMaster array, and then define your new road family by that name down below, similar to the other existing ones. I'm hoping to try adding the basic BIS rail pieces in the next update, I'm not sure yet how they'll work!

[[APS]Gnat]

Wow .... very well commented ! Thanks


..... Should always be 0, but BIS decided to reverse one arrowhead piece... (wtf!)
LOL

[Icewindo]

Very nice tool, I used the previous version for my island. :bounce3:

However I'm at a loss with the xxx_0 2000 and xxx_0 1000 road pieces. I just don't know how to configure them in visitor. They seem like very mild curves but in visitor I can only define curves with a radius of 25/50/75/100. In the previous version these parts weren't used so I had no problem with them.

Or are these parts actually straight parts? Then I can't configure them either as visitor only offers 6,12.5 and 25m parts. But the roads are 20m long according to O2.

edit:
Ah ok... seen the video, so you don't use the road system anymore

[dragonsyr]

I have problem with saved files .I get 0 kb exports but not every time , i must press export 2-3 times to get the export file. i noticed that if i make many roads , never get the right file . some times i get half objects and other times i get 0kb.
yesterday i lost 6 hours work . i have a 2048x2048 island. only if i make 1 part at time i get the right files on export. i try with 2 roads session (smooth terrain) and i get 0 kb also.
ps. with one road only the xyz file is 88mb.
The session that i lost was 20 road paths.(i have the paths as txt , the session was lost (0kb file) but i dont know how i get it back in new session, see question 2) i smooth all roads and i press export xyz. After 15-20mins the arma2 crash to desktop and say to me that i have low memory (something like that, next time i get a snapshot of the warning for posting it here) i ll try today to make 3-4 roads again , smooth and export xyz , to see if i do something wrong.
my pc is 2 quad , 6gb ram , vista

2. how can i import the roads that i have extracted from painter2 in new session? import road paths is possible?

thanks in advance and sorry for my english.. :-))) i thing that you understand the situation i describe here.....

edit: i dont know how i can post an image but the error say
"Out of memory (requested 287737 kb).
footprint 485179392 kb.
pages 393216 kb."

[Odyseus]

Hey Homer does it work on TOH??

[soldier2390]

I have a problem, I can lay the roads but when I try to do the "smoth" tool the blue dots do not show up...and its not clear if it smothed the terrain out? I then exported everything as in the demo vid, but when I try to open the file in visitor throw the "Scripts" option on the top I have no "Import Objects" icon, just the "add/run scripts" and "manage scripts"...but no "Import Objects"???

[Bushlurker]

I'd try "add&run scripts" - navigate to the "Scripts" folder in the Visitor 3 installation folder - choose "Import Objects" script....

That's for one-off useage... or you could try the other option - "manage scripts" and add "Import Objects" permanently to the "Scripts" menu if you prefer.....

There's a complete Manual for Visitor 3 HERE (http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Visitor_3_Manual) which you should check out thoroughly.....


B

[soldier2390]

Ok thanks I have got the "import script" option to show. But I am havingstill the same problem with the "smooth" tool...no blue dots appear, and it does not actually smooth anything? However it does allow me to draw the roads and import them to visitor 3 now, just no "smoothing" happening even tho I got the file from when I exported it from the road painter tool?

Oh and also there is no "view distance" slider on my road painter screen ingame...the mini map box seems to expand over top where the view distance slider would be, from how I seen it on the demo vid for the road painter tool 2

[HorribleGoat]

Hello and first of all THANK YOU Homer for this amazing tool! It has been a huge success so far with my map project. (around 100km of road in place already and a lot more to go)

Anyhow I've begun to wonder if there is a way to smooth all the roads at once for I have quite a numerous amount of them and smoothing them one by one will be quite slow, also as there are crossroads and such, the intersecting roads might break each others smoothing (or not, not there yet so just speculating).

I am planning to do some tweaking on the heightfield after roads are in place and preliminary smoothing is done (using L3DT) and am quite anxious to get there.. :D This being my first serious Arma map and all that.

If the smoothing tool could be used on multiple roads it would be awesome.

Oh and as off topic thought, is there any way to calculate the amount of road in kilometers on a map? Would just be neat to know.

HG

[DanWelch]

Great tool Homer, Now how do I add runways to it?? I would love to place runways the same way as roads.

[SmokeDog3PARA]

Be good if we could get side walks to go next to roads for city builds to ease the pain

i have noticed when i import roads to vis it shows them in bulldozer fine i put it in game and half the roads are missing its patchy on half my island the other half shows fine any one get this as well

[HorribleGoat]

Ported my roads to visitor on took a closer look on them yesterday and noticed that some straight(ish) stretches have tiny little gaps between some parts! I've been painting quite long pieces from high view and didn't notice them before.

I didn't notice any gaps in curves tho.

Has anyone else encountered such?

Im going to try to repaint them with shorter strokes and see if that helps. Some preliminary testing suggested so..

[Snake Man]

I noticed tiny gaps when porting ArmA terrain to use from arma to arma2 roads. I haven't done exhaustive investigating why this happens.

BTW this has nothing to do with Road Painter.

[HorribleGoat]

Roger that snake. Gonna have to manually fix them then. :D

[Snake Man]

I'm using Road Painter with custom road models. Here is my configs:

RoadParts.sqf


HOMJ_RP_Road_VTE_trailpath =
[
// "name" you will see in-game for the road
"pmc\vte_objects\VTE_trailpath",
// picture for listbox
"pictures\asf.paa",
/*
This is the starter-piece... currently the tool is hard coded to start every road path with this item in this list.
The last number is whether to reverse the item (rotate it 180 degrees) for drawing. Should always be 0, but BIS
decided to reverse one arrowhead piece... (wtf!)
*/
["Land_VTE_trailpath6konec", 6.25, 0],
[
// These are all of the pieces available to draw with.
// The string is the CLASSNAME used to createVehicle the piece (defined in config.cpp)
// Straight pieces have one NUMBER ... which is how long the piece is
// Angle pieces have two NUMBERS ... which are the TURN ANGLE, and TURN RADIUS
["Land_VTE_trailpath25", 25], // Straight piece, 25 meters long
["Land_VTE_trailpath12", 12.5],
["Land_VTE_trailpath6", 6.25],
["Land_VTE_trailpath10_100", 10, 100], // Angled piece, 10 degrees heading change and 100m radius
["Land_VTE_trailpath10_75", 10, 75],
["Land_VTE_trailpath10_50", 10, 50],
["Land_VTE_trailpath10_25", 10, 25]
],
[ // These are "special" pieces - currently not implemented
["HOMJ_asf_6_crosswalk", 6.25, 0]
]
];


Roads config.cpp model part:


model = "\pmc\vte_objects\VTE_trailpath12.p3d";


Then when I'm creating roads and Export All them, I get this:


"\pmc\vte_objects\vte_trailpath12";9595.73;7668.81;0;0.639944;
"ca\roads2\asf1_0 2000";10005.2;23940.2;0;256.713;


Notice the difference on your default configured BIS roads and mine, the leading \

Its not a big deal to fix that in text editor, but it would be nice if Road Painter kept the export format same for all road types.

[HorribleGoat]

Got back to planning the roads and made some modifications to the layout.

This lead to starting anew with the roads completely and as I did, I found out the cause for the gaps I wondered about before. It seems that the save/load function breaks the alignment of some road pieces. :C
I am going to try if exporting the roads out on one go will be affected, if not then I just have to get them right the first time and port them to visitor.

I wonder if Homer is still working on this though? Would be awesome to see how far this can go.

[FreakJoe]

Great tool from what I've experienced so far :)

[Bushlurker]

I've had a few people asking me recently about these "roadgaps" problems... deFRAGer's thread (http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?144883-Flattening-Ground-T-intersections-and-gaps-in-roads&p=2278895#post2278895) is a typical example, as well as numerous other posts here it seems...

I was chatting to deFRAGer on Skype recently about his
I have got lots of ~2 metre gaps in my roads, as well as hairline ones. problem, as well as a couple of other small issues...

Since he was struggling badly with this "large random gaps" issue, and had been for a while, I suggested he take a look at Homer's previous RoadPainter 1, which I'd used extensively myself without problems...

Curiously, he encountered exactly the same random large gaps in his road that he'd been having with RoadPainter 2!

I'd used RoadPainter 1 a lot without any problems, so we started looking elsewhere for the cause...

Eventually, after much checking and confirming of basic structure and parameters, we discovered that his "Base Texture Layer" size was set too low...

This is one of those dodgy BI "default values" which are set to incorrect values by default... Another classic example being the default inclusion of "*.wrp" in BinPbo's "list of files to copy directly"

For anyone who's unsure it's this parameter here...

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b272/Bushlurker/BaseTextureLayer_zps77a6c3ab.png

First thing to notice about this parameter is that it's tied to your heightmap cell size (and, indirectly, your Sat & Mask size too)... In the example above I've got a simple 1024x1024 heightmap with 5 meter cells, giving a mapsize of 5120 meters. (Though you can't tell from the picture, I've also set a basic-sized 1m/px 5120x5120 to be the satellite image size...

When you highlight "Base (active) and hit "edit" you'll see the popout window on the right - the popdown menu will offer you a range of sizes - based on multiples of your heightmap cell size... In this case the cell size is 5 meters, and this parameters default value is that size - in this case "5m x 5m"...

This is wrong! - And it'll cause multiple problems unless you change it!

Since my heightmap cell size is 5 meters, the available sizes on offer here are - 5x5m, 10x10m, 20x20m, 40x40m, 80x80m, etc, etc...

Notice I've set this parameter to 40m x 40m - now look at the "Main" parameters window above... see the "(Valid)" flag next to "Satellite Segment"??

You should set this "Base Texture Size" parameter to the Highest value you can, without it causing that "(Valid)" parameter to become "(Invalid)"...

It's VERY important that this Base Texture Layer size be BIGGER than your heightmap cell size...

Resetting this parameter to proper values fixed deFRAGer's "big road gaps" problem completely, so - for anyone with a "big gaps" problem, can I suggest you check the Base Texture Layer size on your terrain - make sure it's higher than your heightmap size, preferably "several notches" higher if possible... see if it fixes your "intermittent big gaps" issue...

PS - Remember! - If you change this parameter you MUST reimport your Sat & Mask layer afterwards, and resave a .wrp before doing any binarizing...

B

[Wilsdorf]

I have some trouble when I want to smooth road. When I import the .xyz into visitor, my map is completly out of scale with my previous map.

[mentlyill]

Can somone please give me a step by step on how to get the roads that i paint in roadpainter transferred to the map editor. got a few already existing maps i want to add some new roads and towns to. give them a "new life"


Paul

aka
mently^ill

[dragonsyr]

paint your roads and smooth if you want. export the roads and if you use smooth export the xyz terrain.
open visitor and use import script tool from the drop down menu.
select import objects script and pick your export file from painter.
if you use smooth import to your map the exported xyz from painter.

edit: in visitor , you must add all the road pieces as artificial objects and not as road networks..
after that you can import your roads from painter