some questions

[mcbeth]

I've been using this a few now and like very much but I have some questions

1. if work with sapphire can the changes made there get written to the design map somehow doesn't seem to apply automatically.

2. sapphire's point grab, raise and lower brushes are great but the others have caused some real issues for me and there seems to be no undo, so how about smoothing and leveling brushes that work similar to earthsculptor's they would be a big help in fixing "my" mistakes. earthsculpor's realtime tools are greatespecially the ramp tool, but the thing is extremely crashy and the interface tough to use "on large maps"

[Aaron]

Hi McBeth,

Thanks for the questions/suggestions.

1. I'll need a bit of help here. Why do you want changes in the heightfield to be reflected back into the design map? The design map is only a mask used to generate the heightfield, so once you have your heightfield the design map doesn't really do anything (other than climate, but that's not editable in Sapphire anyhoo). Unless, of course, you intend to generate your heightfield, edit it in sapphire, mirror the changes back to the design map, then re-generate the heightfield. In that case, wouldn't you use the design map brush instead? I might also add that direct editing of the design map in Sapphire is also on the dev plan.

2. The tools I've implemented so far were just the 'easy' ones to prove the concept, and I plan to revisit the issue in v2.5c (the release after next) and add more sophisticated tools. 'Undo' is currently being worked on too.

Cheers,
Aaron.

[mcbeth]

the things is sapphire gives a bit more visual choice/control but the terrain effects editing erosion etc seems to be handled by the design map..............so you find situations where I have done stuff in sapphire and then decide....."hmmm! maybe a bit more erosion", I don' know but the design map seems the best place to do that kind of thing anyway,

perhaps I'm wrong though.

[Aaron]

Hi McBeth,

Okay, that sounds quite reasonable. What you may want to use then is the 'Operations->Design map->Generate from HF' option, which will re-calculate the design map based on the heightfield and a few other parameters. Will this suffice?

Cheers,
Aaron.

[mcbeth]

yeah that sounds goods, I'll try that.

thanks

[mcbeth]

well it didn't quite ork as expected so I decide to simple rework the design map instead and regenerated the height maps and do work with sapphire only when I'm satisfied with with the base map, that worked out well


I also recently applied for and got a pro trial license, couple of question

had a weird problem with build 10 the design maps in a couple of my projects just stopped loading which seemed to render the project useless
can't remeber the exact error but was something like "invalid design algorithm" the map itself was copied and continued from L3dt standard.

[Aaron]

Hi McBeth,

It sounds like either L3DT can't find the map definition file (.def.xml), or the file is invalid somehow. Can you please load one of these projects and then send me the logfile. It's in the start menu under 'All programs->Bundysoft->L3DT [version]->L3DT log file'.

Best regards,
Aaron.

[mcbeth]

I completely screwed up, without thinking I over wrote those files with backups

guess I'll to wait and see if it happens again though I hope it wont.
but basically the design and heightmap disappeared and the project would directly to the attribute map

[Aaron]

Hmmm...that sounds like the project file was invalid too, as that file contains the index of maps in the project.