This guide assumes that you have completed the initial steps to start your map project, obtained your satellite map, and have a basic understanding of the purpose of your surface mask.
I will be using a gtt_satmap.bmp exported with Game Terrain Tools plugin on QGIS.
- Adobe PhotoShop
- Satellite Map
- RGB references from your
layers.cfgfile - This Reference Image of terrain textures in-game may also help you along the way.
- Credit to BergTheBeard in DZ Academy Discord
Open your sat map image in PhotoShop.
Open your satellite map image in PhotoShop
In your toolbar: Select > Color Range
Go to Select > Color Range in the toolbar
- You'll be presented with the Eyedropper Tool as well as the Color Range modal.
Adjust the Fuzziness slider and select a sample area.
For this guide, I will select the dense forestry area to isolate the majority of trees into their own layer.
Dense forestry area selected with Fuzziness set to 60
-
CTRL+Cto Copy the Selection. -
CTRL+Vto Paste it into a new Layer.
Hide your Alpha layer, select your new one.
- Select > Color Range again, grab a sample from the new pasted layer, click
OKto regain the selection.
With the area selected, open your Color Picker in the top right by double clicking the the two boxes on the side of it.
Enter your desired terrain RGB values in the highlighted areas shown above.
Remember: Reference Image will assist in this, but ensure you're using the values defined in your layers.cfg as they may vary.
- Open the Brush Tool with
B- may help to adjust your size to the maximum. - Start painting away. Only the selection will be applied.
Tip: Rename your layers as the terrain textures as you go to help you easily identfy them.
You'll want to repeat these steps for each area you want to define within your mask.
Doing the same for the Snow covered areas, so on and so forth.
Tips: Allow yourself up to 6 types of materials while doing this.
-
You can further refine & tune in areas where you are certain that the limit of 6 "materials per cell" is not going to be exceeded.
-
Depending on the complexity of your map, you may want to limit yourself to 4-5 layers of terrain colors.
-
This will allow you to add a layer for your Road shapes if you so choose to do so at the end (which I will cover later), as well as consideration of leaving yourself an available layer for a background material to be placed in (i.e.
grass, etc.) -
You can
Quick Export as PNGby right-clicking a layer once it's complete. Save these to yoursourcefolder for safe keeping just in case you need to revert or make some adjustments going forward.
- Once you have completed the process a few times, the results should be something similar.
- Arrange the order of your layers to work as you desire, this will help to cover any areas that you want to be more prominent over any overlapping selections that may have been painted during the process.
-
Once you're happy with the arrangement, you can right-click &
Merge Downeach layer starting from the top of the list and working your way down.- Do NOT merge them into your Alpha satmap image.
-
Go ahead &
Quick Export as PNGthis merged version to your source for safe keeping as well.
- For your background material, copy & paste and existing layer, select it, and open up your Color Picker.
- Set your desired RGB value and paint the entire layer.
-
Arrange the layer between your merged version and Alpha image:
This will fill in any open transparent areas. So far, we are at 5 materials total. -
Merge your merged version down on top of it.
- Hide all
Rasterlayers.
- Hide all
Objectlayers.
- Hide all
Shapeswith the exception of your road shapes.
-
You can refine road shape(s)
outline widthto better outline your actual roads according to their respective parts.-
More information on Chernarus & Enoch road parts & their widths can be found here:
-
-
With the shapes/polylines you wish to adjust selected:
- Apply a terrain texture to your road shapes by right-clicking a
shape layerand selecting your desired choice. (i.e.cp_concrete1)- These are defined in your
layers.cfgfile.
- These are defined in your
- This will apply that assigned terrain texture material's RGB to the shape(s).
- Be mindful:
- If you're applying numerous terrain textures to your shapes; these do count against the limit of total "materials per cell" (tile).
File>Export>Shapes as Imagery..
- Save this export to your
sourcefolder for safe keeping.
- Select
create a surface maskin your TB project. - Apply a background material.
- This should give you a
.pngof your road shapes and a black background. - Drag & Drop this into PhotoShop from where you chose to save the export it to.
Select>Color Range> Grab the black background areas > HitDeletekey.
- You may need to repeat this process or utilize the
Magic Wand Toolto get any background areas that were not auto-selected.
- Once you've removed all the black background areas,
CTRL + Ato select the entire image.- Copy & Paste this as a layer into your active project where your mask is located.
- Place this layer on top of your merged version in the
Layerstab of PhotoShop. - Merge it down so that it overlays everything else.
Importing .png files into Terrain Builder can take a significant amount of time.
In order to expedite the process, you will want to ensure that your .png version is converted to .bmp
This can easily be done on sites like Convertio and Online-Convert for free.
Keep in mind Convertio does have a 100mb file size limit; Online-Convert, does not.
- Usually, your surface mask will meet the file size limit; for Satmaps, utilize Online-Convert
Convert the images; download the results.
Your new .bmp version will be larger in file size than the .png but will import into TB much faster.
Saved As.. .bmp