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Howto use OpenStreetMap (OSM) shapefile areas to place objects automatically with terrain processor (TP).

Disclaimer: this method is used basically for vegetation objects, however we will show you how to do buildings as well. Please understand that it looks very ugly when you randomly place city / village buildings to large shapefile area.

For reference: OSM attributes which designate different area coverage.

FCLASS Attributes:

allotments
basin
beach
brownfield
cemetery
cliff
commercial
construction
farm
farmland
forest
glacier
grass
greenfield
hamlet
heath
industrial
landfill
meadow
military
nature_reserve
orchard
park
quarry
recreation_groun
religious
residential
retail
riverbank
scrub
spring
suburb
town
village
vineyard
water

How would this perhaps translate to ArmA 3, if you have more detailed info please share with us.

This tutorial assumes you know the basics from road shapefiles usage so we dont have to repeat the same stuff again.

In global mapper load landuse_a and natural_a shapefiles, the _a designates area, there are ones without but those are just vertices which have no use for us.

Crop these areas and export the cropped features to “cropped_areas” shapefile.

Use QGIS to v.transform them.

Global mapper load transformed areas. file → export → export vector/lidar format → shapefile, use dropdown on “split export based on:” to choose FCLASS, then export to filename “obj”, yes obj, nothing more nothing less.

please note: bbbike OSM downloads have different feature attributes, instead of FCLASS you have to use TYPE. But always try to get stuff from geofabrik which is proper SHP downloads.

Now you have bunch of obj_<something> files in the directory, like below.

Good shapefile naming:

obj_commercial
obj_farm
obj_forest
obj_grass
obj_industrial
obj_meadow
obj_military
obj_orchard
obj_quarry
obj_residential

obj_ prefix is good indication to you that this is object placement shapefile and not a road etc.

If you get obj_trees you should merge these into obj_forest. In global mapper just load first one into empty project, then the another one and export everything to obj_forest.shp shapefile.

There are bunch of unused shapefiles along with the stuff we want to use. You can use this simple batch file to delete the unused ones, create TerrainProcessor directory and moving our obj files there.

Hey every bit helps when you tweak your tool pipeline

_run_delete_useless_area_shapefiles_and_create_TerrainProcessor_dir.bat

if exist obj_allotments.* del obj_allotments.*
if exist obj_beach.* del obj_beach.*
if exist obj_cave_entrance.* del obj_cave_entrance.*
if exist obj_cemetery.* del obj_cemetery.*
if exist obj_cliff.* del obj_cliff.*
if exist obj_glacier.* del obj_glacier.*
if exist obj_heath.* del obj_heath.*
if exist obj_nature_reserve.* del obj_nature_reserve.*
if exist obj_park.* del obj_park.*
if exist obj_peak.* del obj_peak.*
if exist obj_recreation_ground.* del obj_recreation_ground.*
if exist obj_retail.* del obj_retail.*
if exist obj_scrub.* del obj_scrub.*
if exist obj_spring.* del obj_spring.*
if exist obj_vineyard.* del obj_vineyard.*
 
md TerrainProcessor
move obj_*.* TerrainProcessor

Move the TerrainProcessor directory into your terrain projects NameOfYourTerrain\Source\ directory.

Download terrain processor templates and place these TPP files into the NameOfYourTerrain\Source\TerrainProcessor\ directory.

Now you are ready to start running the TP TPP projects (tp tpp? haha). Our github TPP files run without editing when using this obj_<NAME>.shp shapefile naming.

If you had the additional task of Mask: Linear, that requires you to browse into the road shapefile, if you fail to do so TP will crash. If you dont want that task, just delete it from the TP GUI.

Start terrain builder, make sure you have proper template libraries loaded.

Next is to import the TP LBT files, first disable all (yes, All) views from terrain builder so the import process is fast. This is essential especially if you have large amounts of objects in the millions.

Click import objects icon on the menu header or use file → import → objects, then select all the LBT files in NameOfYourTerrain\Source\TerrainProcessor\ directory.

Then wait … depending on the amount of objects this will take a long time.

LBT files are exported under layers manager → objects.

This is basic summary of how arma3 objects suit to different OSM areas.

Summary for arma3 shapefiles:

Please note that if you place buildings with area shapefiles using TP area random feature, it doesn't look very nice, real populated places object placement is always done by hand