Making forests in ArmA2

[Bushlurker]

You don't need to do all that text editing...
When you add trees or any other object to visitor it uses the "pathname" as the "name"... but you can, and probably should, change that.....



Then, as in the example above - you can just type "pine1S" into maskmapper and it'll know what you mean...

... on the "greyscale" maskmapper point... Rocket's quite clear in his instructions that the value you set - say "6 trees per cell, please" is the maximum number of trees you get - if the cell is 100% white - for greyer values you get less trees... The problem seems to be that it's difficult to see the scaling actually happening since your "maximum" number of trees is likely to be quite small... if 3 trees per 10m^2 is your "maximum", then areas that have effectively greyscaled and only therefore have 2 trees per 10m^2 don't look that different... sadly, the range is too small for it to really operate effectively... and it has to be a fairly dramatic greyscaling to have any effect at all...


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[shezan74]

Great bushLurker, this was a great info, also for simplifying my map making!

[lecholas]

Originally Posted by Bushlurker

The biggest bonus of maskmapper perhaps is the mask itself... suitably resized it can form another layer on your Mask_lco - allowing you easy placement of "forest floor" textures - guaranteed to be in the same places as the trees.
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Or the other way around. If you already have a mask_lco, you can easily create masks for maskmapper and be sure you place trees only on a 'forest floor'. (and as mask_lco is bigger than usual mask for maskmapper it's easier to downsize the mask_lco than upsize mask from maskmapper; the latter can require additional smoothing resized pixel blocks).

[shezan74]

Yes, and it's exactly what i've done in my small island. I've got the forest ground mask and photoshopped until i've obtained a RGB pixelation over a black background.

P.S. the suggestion of having the maskmapper image smaller than the satellite texture image solved all my problems with the forest trees overload!

[Bushlurker]

heheh... I had a quick go with large size masks in MM... it doesn't like them much - tree overload indeed... same size as heightmap is definitely what it prefers...

Yeah... with my realworld map I was essentially "dumbing down" ready made shapefiles from Mask_lco resolution to heightmap res for MM... the original shapefiles were vectors - bitmapped at the Mask_lco res.
As Lecholas suggests tho... this approach starts with a shapefile for the mask - thats a realworld map technique... for an imaginary or fantasy island you can just make your own shapefiles/mask from your high-res mask, or magic-wanding from your satmap...
Another method I fooled with a little was to use L3DT to calculate where trees would be likely to be... mainly based on the "climates" facility and based on the assumptions that trees will mostly be on the bits not suitable for roads/fields/farming/other uses - eg: slopes, etc... that actually worked OK too...
Load in your heightmap - tell it to generate a attributes mask of the same size as your heightmap using the "Temperate" climate - and assign some highly noticable colour - like bright red - to "steep lush grass 3" only - generate and see what you get... try different "steep grass" materials - combinations of several... fool with the settings for slope, etc... then save off the attributes map - black out everything except the red - which you change to white - and you have a mask based on terrain slope...
Worth a try...
So although Rockets original thread, and my personal usage, is all tied up with realworld "shapefiles" they're by no means necessary if you're doing a different style of terrain...


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