ArmA 2 Converting Layers\*.png Fast

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If you get tired of waiting Visitor 3 buldozer to finish converting layers directory PNG files to PAA format, then you can setup pal2pace to run this faster.

Make a .bat file in your data\ directory, write these lines into it (in this example our path is c:\armatools\texview2\):

rem mask - quick, as they are simple images with few colors
START "" /D"%CD%" /B "c:\armatools\texview2\pal2pace" layers\m_*.png

rem satellite texture
rem 1st
START "" /D"%CD%" /B "c:\armatools\texview2\pal2pace" layers\s_00*.png

rem 2nd
START "" /D"%CD%" /B "c:\armatools\texview2\pal2pace" layers\s_01*.png

rem 3rd
START "" /D"%CD%" /B "c:\armatools\texview2\pal2pace" layers\s_02*.png

rem 4th
START "" /D"%CD%" /B "c:\armatools\texview2\pal2pace" layers\s_03*.png

rem 5th
START "" /D"%CD%" /B "c:\armatools\texview2\pal2pace" layers\s_04*.png

Now run the batch file. What happens now is that six (6) pal2pace processes are run at the same time. You can see the PNG's get converted much faster than what buldozer does, or single pal2pace would do alone.

The trick is that when buldozer does one PNG at the time, these pal2pace's will convert six at the time. This means that you need to have Dual or Quad Core processor so it spreads out the load to the separate cores.

Of course you can tweak the number of processes run, but on large satellite texture sizes the PNG's range from 000 up to 042 or even more. Please adjust the .bat file to meet PNG's of your project.

m1lkm8n created youtube video version of this guide.