IWTE - World editing - (General Discussion)

[makanyane]

OK thanks - have changed title of this thread to include (general discussion) to suit that.

Think I can manage the copy/moving stuff if necessary (might practice on own posts first...)

There are some useful bits buried in this thread but it's probably more helpful if I try and append the "how to" bits onto a relevant tutorial rather than copy the whole chunks of discussion out. A lot of the earlier in depth discussions, that might at first look useful, actually resulted in changes to the tool to simplify things, so are no longer relevant (e.g. repeated explanations of how to change merge values via alpha channels in GIMP > tool doesn't use alpha channels in the .tga conversions any more...)

[Arandir Tur-Anion de Bodemloze]

You may also move this tutorial, which is linked to ITWE. it is a great thing that ITWE now have is own forum

[Gigantus]

Done

[Rorarii]

Fantastic tool guys, did some terrain editing for M2TW generic settlements - added some ditches for towns, all worked well.

But i'm having problems now with Large towns. Downloaded the terrain grid in MS3D ok, checked it out in Milkshape 1.8.4 ok but then needed to see wall & building locations on the terrain, to see where to cut ditches. This is where I had problems, first tried to skin the terrain with world 2D map, or path finding TGA but could not get them to line up properly. Then tried MERGE Building structures MS3D onto the terrain but either this tool or milkshape has screwed up the buildings.ms3d file, as half of them came out all screwed up, vertices everywhere. i had this same problem with IWTE 5.4.3

any help thanks

R

[makanyane]

I think the mess up in milkshape isn't to do with IWTE - it's just that you've merged together too many large structures - so you've exceeded the limits for an ms3d file.

you could reduce down the building models before merging them - so you just keep enough to show the outline...


or do the terrain modification in the 2d window with also "view" "view world 2d" on to see the building positions.

[Rorarii]

your right Milkshape bust, so i tried to edit the terrain in 2D window of IWTE, it worked ok but I don't know how to save the changes back to the Terrain file ? "amend terrain in 2D window" doesn't work, neither does "Save 3 binary Files" under "worldFile" .. Help!

Editing on 2D window is good but needs to highlight terrain selected, and terrain modified. Selecting a building in 2D window should be highlighted too and in Structure list.

EXCELLENT tool overall. - love the 3D window to see results.

R

[leo.civil.uefs]

your right Milkshape bust, so i tried to edit the terrain in 2D window of IWTE, it worked ok but I don't know how to save the changes back to the Terrain file ? "amend terrain in 2D window" doesn't work

It works perfectly, make your edits and click "ok", IWTE will save a new terrain file in the settlement folder, OR NOT, it can also just replace the original one.

[wilddog]

"amend terrain in 2D window" doesn't work, neither does "Save 3 binary Files" under "worldFile" .. Help!

Editing on 2D window is good but needs to highlight terrain selected, and terrain modified. Selecting a building in 2D window should be highlighted too and in Structure list.

Hi, currently when you press the amend terrain in 2D window button it first asks for a terrain file if one has not yet been read. It then asks you for the name of the new file. When you press Ok it saves against the newfile name. Never really checked if you made the names the same whether it overrides.

The save 3 files only refers to .world. the collission and the animinstance ones.

In the 2D view it currently highlights the height value of the selected points ... but if zoomed too far out you really only see the grey. I'm thinking of making some changes to this process as its still quite slow. Not sure if it will fully replace the process or simply give another alternative method to amending the heights.

[Rorarii]

FANTASTIC TOOL ! just made some terrain and path finding changes within the tool, easily, and didn't once need to access Milkshape or picture editor.

Once i zoomed, i could see the height numbers, from then on it was alot easier.

I'm getting the hang of this

R

[wilddog]

I'm adding a new process into the specials tab to allow editing of the .lighting files. It will be available on the next release.

[leo.civil.uefs]

I'm adding a new process into the specials tab to allow editing of the .lighting files. It will be available on the next release.

!!!!!


Looking fowrd to be able to edit the bits responsible for making the ground textures totally black under shadows at night.

[wilddog]

Looking fowrd to be able to edit the bits responsible for making the ground textures totally black under shadows at night.

The names are simple direction/ RGB component names. What exactly needs to be changed to achieve the description you've given is basically down to you. I don't even know which vanilla files actually do what you've described.

The tool will however recalculate some of the data to avoid some of the miscalculations simply hex editing may of given. (eg it will normalise the light direction vector values and calculate the distance increment value.

Did you identify wich bits are responsible for making the ground textures
totally black under shadows at night? Like here:

Sorry that's not a vanilla picture so no idea if its a vanilla file which was used or whether someone typed something in which was invalid.

[wilddog]

I'm also amending the world pathfinding processes to make the routines a little more common so I can then incorporate them into processes to amend other 'painting' type processes eg the world vegetation (first) and then likley the various other TGA based items. I just need to get sufficient through this before the next release.

[Rorarii]

BUG , Altered some "Road Markers" on the generic "Large Town" settlement (mesomerican - Divide and conquer) and lost the walls, see picture. i retried this afew times, same result. Moving Road markers requires saving of binary files, wonder if this has a problem ? Funny because when i did the same on "Town Settlement" (smaller walls), it worked FINE! ???????????

R

[wilddog]

@Rorarii - Can you post the world, collision and animinstance file somewhere so I I can pick up. If you have before corruption and after corruption that would be great. I should then be able to pick up tomorrow and see what the issue is. The road markers are a separate section to the objects in the files so need to see if its really related and of course find the cause.

[Rorarii]

https://mega.co.nz/#!7YslxAjR!C2qM2o...XmXbFHj0HgCoG4

files with "_o" extension are original, working files.

R

[makanyane]

Rorarii - it's looking like the problem is another variant on the problem with settlements done with JohnWhile's 3dsMax tool - basically that tool splits things down into 100's of complexes whereas CA's design was for 64 complexes maximum (which we stayed with). WD did fix that issue before so IWTE coped with JW's multiple grandchild/child/parent versions - but that one doesn't seem to have it's complexes set up in any correct child/parent set up in the first place. Am surprised the original version actually works in game...

So it's not the roadmarkers themselves it's IWTE trying to 'correct' what from its point of view is a corrupt file. Not sure there's anything we can do about that particular one... Wouldn't be imminent anyway.

Do you know the history of the original file? i.e. who did what to it with which versions of any tools...

[Rorarii]

Thanks Makanyane, the original tool i used was IWTE 5-4-3 but i only played around with terrain, making hills and ditches for "town" model, which worked, i never changed the binary files. Now i'm doing something similar but with version 14-4-B, digging ditches etc. it's only when i started resetting road markers, and had to save binaries, that the problem reared it's head.

So your saying, if i want to change anything that is binary related, Don't. if i want to change walls etc, better just to start from scratch and do a complete new settlement in Milkshape / IWTE 24 ?

R

[wilddog]

@Rorarii - also a quick test to see if a settlement is already corrupt is simply. Open the files. Save the files. Open the saved files. The ones I put in a correction process for from the DBM mod had at least the right info for the breakdown of the complex child/parent setup. Its just they were broken down way more than the vanilla ones and not consistent. The problem here is the set up says it has only the standard grandparent, parent, child set up ie levels 0, 1 and 2. However the level 1 (parents) actually are pointing to other parents also given the same level 1 number so the identification of the parents is corrupt. ie level 0 should point to level 1 and level 1 to level 2 only.

We're guessing the models were made via JW's 3DSmax tool but whether that a version prior to the one used for the DBM mod or a version after I can't tell as the corruptions are different. I haven't checked but I'm guessing the collission file is also corrupt as his tool used the same process for the collision table (although in the collision process it should actually be at different levels dependent on settlement size).

[Rorarii]

Thanks Wilddog, so ... don't touch old models, i was just lucky only altering terrain so far.

i would like to see the generic town and Large town models modernized, how do recommend doing this ? or has it already been done ?

R