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Table of Contents
ArmA 3 Terrain Processor
Terrain Processor is basically object placer. Its like enhanced version of Shezan74's World Tools (no relation though).
User Guide
Terrain Processor (TP for short) is a bitch, you make one slight wrong configuration and BANG it crashes or freezes without mercy :)
Project *.TPP files are XML format, you can edit them but as bis TP manual states its not advised as its easy to make mistakes and again TP will crash, so be very very careful.
You should name every TPP project file with very descriptive file name (normal rules apply, no spaces, no stupid characters) so you can re-use them with other terrains in the future.
It is cumbersome to add object template names into the projects so once you do it, save the tpp file that you don't have to type in all those templates next time you want to place forests etc. Also inside <ObjectPrototypes> you can use text editor to copy paste from area random into high density cluster.
Area: High-density Cluster, if you drop object probability to 2, it starts to really slow down the object creation.
Road Smoothing
Heightmap: Road integration
Does TP place your smoothed out roads 500m below ground?
Shapefiles must be within the mapframe bounds before using TP to flatten the road surfaces or you will end up with super deep valleys carved into your terrain heightmap.
If your road smoothing will carve almost tunnel like pathway to the terrain even though it is not even that steep, you can fix it by increasing Road Maximal Slope.
If you have problems loading terrain builder exported road shapefiles, try loading and saving them in global mapper (or QGIS?) first.
Object Placement Statistics
This is nice reference read of how many objects some configs place and how long time it takes to import these to terrain builder. Computer used to create these statistics is CPU: AMD Athlon FX-4170 4.2Ghz Quad Core Black Edition, RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB PC3-12800 1600MHz.
Task: Area Random
Trees 12, probability 100%, minimal distance 5m.
Polygon size about 20km x 20km, just slightly below that size but otherwise square area.
| Hectare Density | Objects Placed |
|---|---|
| 1% | 41,000 |
| 10% | 413,000 |
| 20% | 827,000 |
| 30% | 1,240,000 |
| 40% | 1,654,000 |
| 50% | 2,068,000 |
| 60% | 2,481,000 |
| 70% | 2,895,000 |
| 80% | 3,308,000 |
| 90% | 3,722,000 |
| 100% | 4,136,000 |
| 110% | 4,549,000 |
| 120% | 4,963,000 |
| 130% | 5,376,000 |
| 140% | 5,790,000 |
| 150% | 6,204,000 |
Terrain builder imports 2 million object LBT file in about 10 minutes, 3,3 million objects 17 minutes. 4,1 million objects 22 minutes. 5,3 million objects 26 minutes. 6,2 million objects 30 minutes.
Polygon size about 40km x 40km, everything else the same as above.
| Hectare Density | Objects Placed |
|---|---|
| 1% | 167,000 |
| 10% | 1,674,000 |
| 20% | 3,348,000 |
| 30% | 5,023,000 |
| 40% | 6,697,000 |
| 45% | 7,535,000 |
Terrain builder imports 7,5 million object LBT file in 37 minutes.
Polygon size about 81km x 81km, everything else the same as above.
| Hectare Density | Objects Placed |
|---|---|
| 1% | 670,000 |
| 5% | 2,681,000 |
| 9% | 6,033,000 |
| 10% | 6,704,000 |
Terrain builder imports 6,7 million object LBT file in 32 minutes.