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====== Beton's Ground Texture Tutorial ======

//This tutorial is missing few images.//

Making custom Groundtextures:

Load the desired image in Gimp, make sure it's a .tga:

Size it 1024x1024 or 2048x2048 the smaller the size, the more tiling you have in game so I prefer 2048x2048

If necessary make it seamless (play around until it suits you)

Make two more layers from background and rename them (just for orientation)

Select the first layer ...

... and desaturate it....

... rise contrast, lower brightness (play till it suits you)...

Make first layer invisible and select the second layer (for me nohq)... go to Filter

Select 3d preview...

Select the colormap as background in diffusemap....

Now play around and see the changes... In "filter" you can adjust the shaperecognition, in "scale" you can adjust how much the structures stick out or are sunk in. If I want the darker parts to stick out I use negative scale. Make sure you don't use too much scale because this makes the texture look weird in game. I normally use -4 up to +4.

If you think you are satisfied click ok and you are done...

Now select and make visible only one layer at once and choose "save as"... always use "save as" so you have more control in the next steps.

Save as tga and make sure to provide the correct name: in game you need xxx_mco.paa, xxx_detail_nohq.paa and xxx_detail_co.paa makes it easier later....

In ArmA 2 nopx (parallax occlusion) is used instead of nohq (normal mapping) but nohq also works. Have not figured out how to use nopx so i use nohq instead.

If you choose save, you will see this... ...choose export.

Don't use RLE compression! Disable it otherwise texview2 wont open it

Do this with the next layers too....

Now you are finished with gimp.. by the way you could apply bumpmap to the colormap if you wanted.

Now open your tga's in texview and save them with the correct name in .paa format.

Copy your paa's to your islands Data folder "p:\namespace\Islandname\Data"

Open one oft he rvmats provided in the folder, rename it like your texture name and choose your textures.

Now go to your islands source path and open the layers.cfg and add a line to the class layers with the correct names and paths... 

Add a line to the class legend, make sure the RGB color corresponds to the desired one in your mask_lco file...

In your island's data dir open the s_satout_co.paa with texview2, save it as .tga (not as .tga.paa) like texview2 does it in standard. Open it in Gimp, desaturate it, make it lighter and whitish (needs some testing as I don't claim to have the perfect solution) and save it as tga again (don't use RLE compression!). Open it in texview2 again and save it as .paa.

Open your islands config.cpp and change this lines

Now you have to define all your class clutter by renaming them like in the pic above. Here you assign a classname to the plant you can see in game. If you don't rename you will have no clutter on Chernarus and Utes if your Island is mounted (bt is my own prefix, you should use another one so once our islands meet on someones computer one day they shall not interfere)

Now you have to rename the class config surfaces like this. Here you create a class which describes the kind of clutter you want to have on a specific ground texture. Like "btgroundfroz" is my frozen ground. I could call it Summerbreeze or Charles if I wanted but I usually take names that give me a hint what to expect. I want this style of clutter to be displayed on my new wintergroundtexture, so in the line "files" i put in the name of the texture in my Data dir grfroz_detail_co.paa becomes grfroz_* In the line "character" I put the name of he mix of plants I want on this texture in game.

In the line "character" I put the name of he mix of plants i want on this texture in game.

And this mix of plants i can configure here in the "class cfgsurfacecharacters" ...remember the names for clutter models in class clutter? Now i need them again. For my class i have defined in the pic before i can now assign the plants i want to grow on. The line "probability" correspond to the plants in the line below and its o understand in % ground coverage. Of course the sum of the numbers must not exceed 100% otherwise Arma2 may have problems. For my winterground i have reduced the plant density as you don't see so many plants if there is snow. A nice side effect is a higher frame rate from not having so much clutter to render in game.

If you have finished this step all you have to do is make your sat_lso.png much more whitish to have the horizon white in game too... maybe like this.. it looks all white but it isn't... Play around with it... save as png...

Now you are done... proceed with importing sat and mask into your map, start bulldozer and binarize it.
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