Bf2_tpaint - Terrain Painting Made Easy

[Lainer]

I fail at tpaint.

It is throwing down the textures just fine but not the color. Before it was at least painting the surrounding terrain just fine but now it is doing nothing with the surrounding terrain and still leaving my playable area with just textures and no color. So where do you think I failed?

[Catbox]

what are the steps you used? Did you activate all the surrounding terrain?

[Lainer]

Problem sorta solved. Still had to paint all of my color in the editor but the surrounding terrain is now fine....

[coonerboy]

the link to the instructions doesn't work. How do you use it? But it looks great and will save HOURS of work..

[mschoeldgen[Xww2]]

1. copy the complete 'bf2_tpaint' folder into the uncompressed map folder and check if you like the textures in the 'data' subfolder.

2. Start Tpaint in this folder and check all boxes ( mirror terrain , create surrounding ) . Start the process in the Tpaint dialog box.

3. Close Tpaint and copy the 'Detailmaps' , LowDetailMaps' and 'Colormaps' folders into the /Editor folder of your map.

4. Start the BF2Editor and setup 3 texture layers : 1st layer is 'steep' layer which means you should check 'planeMap' and lowdetailtype 2 in it. 2nd layer is 'low' and the 3rd layers is 'high' if i remember right Enter at least a detail and a lowdetailtype into all of these layers.

5. By using one of the paint tools , paint a tiny area in the map with color and detail.

6. Press 'Generate Lowdetail' in the window on the right.

6. Press Ctrl-S or use the 'Save' menu to save all textures ( Editor should already suggest the correct save settings ) . As always don't use the 'Save All' menu !

Forgot something ?

You now should have a textured map when launching with the game.

Edited August 26, 2009 by mschoeldgen[Xww2]

[coonerboy]

i have followed your instructions and many more, but whenever i launch my level it quits at 66%. This only happens when i use Tpaint, why is this and how can i fix it?

[Catbox]

Did you activate any or all of the surrounding terrain?

and did you run bf2 in windowed mode so that you can see when the error pops up?

[coonerboy]

how do run bf2 in windowed mode? Do you right click and select? because if so its not there.

Also, i dont think i activated the terrain because i dont know how and i was never told to in the tutorials.

[Catbox]

right click on the bf2 game icon... and change the 1 at the end of the path to a 0

and hit ok... then BF2 will run in windowed mode...

and check out the basic tutorials on getting a map started... it's a lot less frustrating if you do...

[coonerboy]

The thing is, i have read over all those tutorials. I have made maps with proper spawn points vehicles, assets and everything. the only difference is i painted on my textures by hand. But when i use T Paint it stops. So i know how to get a basic map started, i am just wondering why it quits at 66%. Also when i run in windowed mode and it quits, it doesn't show what the problem is. Any other ideas?

Thanks for the help anyways.

[Catbox]

Did you check any extra boxes when you saved your map?

Usually when a map crashes at 62-63 percent it's a missing terrain texture file...

Are you sure that the surrounding terrain is all activated? check in the editor...

Do you have the .dds thumbnail viewer installed... so you can see the thumbnail of the color terrain tiles...

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/dds_thumbnail_viewer.html

[Freeworld]

Fantastic tool saves hours painting the base terrain, im using it for 2142 maps and it works like a dream....its easy to use all you need to is follow the steps in the tutorial if all the steps are followed you cant go wrong....excellent tool......

Edited September 7, 2009 by Freeworld

[Catbox]

what the heck are you doing following the instructions in the tutorial... are you one of those common sense guys...? lol

[TNE26]

lol.. he's weird lol. j/k

[gamer.supreme.1]

After trying this lil app, i no longer have to mouse around a 1024-4096 map anymore. Thanks, much needed.

[Bossgator]

Yes, people still are trying to use tpaint, or at least there are those who still don't know how to use it like myself! So lets stir up an old thread...

The issues I have I suspect is really my fault before I installed tpaint. I'm not entirely clear on the required steps to the terrain texture and getting it to work properly, such as activating the surrounding terrain, have light maps been done yet, are the texture layers correct, dont do save all, etc.

There's several things to check off a mental to-do list before you do tpaint, but once it's done, it's pretty nice stuff right out of the box.

Here's a link to my texture issues involving black areas where the detail doesn't want to show and the famous glaring sands!

(scroll down the page past the wall issue)

TPaint Texture Issues

Edited July 2, 2010 by Bossgator

[Cassio]

Looks like your detail textures from tpaint are not compiled for the game.

Make sure when you run tpaint that you remove these from your level:

\editor\detailmaps, \editor\colormaps and \editor\lowdetailmaps

and then copy all the 3 folders created by tpaint in the \editor folder.

Then start up the terrain editor and resave

Color Texture, Compiled Detail-and Color Textures, Compiled Terrain, Detail Texture and Terrain.

Basicly you follow the tpaint instructions step by step.

[Bossgator]

Thanks Cassio. I did read the instructions as many have, and like many have, I still had an issue. It happens. I did note that it is most likely my fault that I had something go wrong. Because it did just shows I may have misapplied what I read. And it may be an indication that the instructions need clarification and a little more details, like a complete file path listed where the stuff goes.

Having been around game development for a few years now, one thing I've noticed is a disconnect between artists and coders. I'm an artist by trade and a computer hardware guy via military training. I sucked at programming classes in college and back in my Navy days when I worked on mainframes then, thus I'm no coder and so I have a slower time understanding code-related things.

I have no doubt that programmers think this stuff is child's play, and may be for a coder, but for others it gets confusing sometimes, and the younger crowd tends to be too proud and get all puffed up when challenged on something they don't really know rather than admit they don't know, humble themselves and ask questions.

I've always heard that no question is stupid.

EDIT:

Did as you said, and went back over the instructions, and the issue was with not saving all the items per the intructions. Indeed as I suspected, my fault.

Apparently this time I followed the instructions properly as it worked. For what they are worth, the terrain texture now seems to be operating correctly. I really need to get at those textures and spruce them up.

However, one thing I'd like clarified; the surrounding terrain is slightly lighter than the primary, which I suspect is due to the fact that though a bsic lightmap was done early on, I have not done any since activating the surrounding terrain or TPaint install. So, is the lighter shade due to lightmaps not done? Or a lighting setting for the surrounding terrain?

Edited July 3, 2010 by Bossgator

[Catbox]

The lighter surrounding terrain files are ok... you can open the surrounding color terrain files in your maps folder (tx_s0 through tx_s7)(not the surrounding colormap files in the editor folder of your map) with photoshop and darken them to match the color terrain files on the main part of the terrain...

then you can right click on them and make them read only so they wont

be changed when you open the map in the editor.

[Bossgator]

Cool, thanks!