L3DT Users' Community

Hi David,

I've included the first draft of the mask editor in the latest developmental build of L3DT (v2.8 build 20), which is on the downloads page now.

To edit a mask file, select the 'Resources->Masks->Edit mask' menu option*. This will open a list box, where you may choose which of the installed masks you would like to edit**. Once you click OK, L3DT will open the new mask editor window. Once you've made your changes, you can click on the 'save as' button to save the mask in a new file. Otherwise, pressing the OK button will automatically save changes.

The list of things still to be done include

• I'm planning to build a nice manager window (a la climates and materials), which should provide a better interface for organising and importing/exporting masks. This will also allow L3DT to load/edit masks that are stored in locations outside than the resources folder.
• I've also yet to build any of the help pages for the mask editor windows, but I will attempt to do so in the next week or so.
• I will, but have not yet, added a 'Generate masks' option to the 'Operations' menu, which should allow users to generate a set of masks in one go from the L3DT menu, without having to mess around in ZeoGraph.

Anyway, please let me know if you find any problems with the mask editor, or if you would like to suggest any changes.

Cheers,
Aaron.


* Note the 'climates' and 'materials' menus have also been moved into the new 'resources' menu, to save on top-level menu space.

** By 'installed masks', I mean mask files stored in the 'C:\[username]\L3DT\resources\[version]\Masks\' folder.

Hey Aaron, thanks very much for this new build! Mask generation is now really straightforward with this new dialog box.

In terms of suggestions actually I don't have many! Here's all I could think of, none of it major:

* Having a nudge up/down button for items in the land type listbox would be useful, especially if you're making something complex with the multiplicative mode and need to shuffle things around.

* When I went to save the mask, I typed in 'rock.mask' into the file selector. This created a file called 'rock.mask.mask' -- this file also didn't show up in the edit mask list box window. Can you protect against this sort of erroneous file name, I could see it happening often.

* When I entered a filter into the land type edit box, I wanted a complete wildcard, so I typed in * - however, this caused me to get a filter '**' showing. I'm not sure if this is exactly something handle in code, but it might be something to explain in the help as it seemed weird to leave the box empty.

* Finally, I thought maybe the land type tab could go first, as to me that is the primary control for the mask, with the other tabs for gradient, etc. being secondary 'tweaks'? This might not be right thinking though - and it's just an opinion on what you might want to be looking for first.


I'm looking forward to having vegetation integrated in the operations menu - but it's already way more convenient already!

Anyway thanks again for continuing to develop this excellent new feature!

Regards,
David

Hi David,

Thanks muchly for the suggestions. In the latest dev build (v2.8 build 22) you will find:

• Up/Dn buttons for moving land types up/down.
• Better handling of file extensions. If the extension entered is not '.mask.xml', the entered extension will be stripped off, and '.mask.xml' will be appended. Previously, the existing extension wasn't stripped off before appending '.mask.xml' if the extension of the filename given wasn't '.mask.xml'.
• I've modified the land type dialog to support wildcards (these are converted back to null strings behind the scenes).
• I haven't re-ordered the tabs, but I have made the editor dialog remember your last used tab, and automatically jump to that tab when you open the window.

Please let me know if you find any problems or if you have further suggestions. Thanks again.

Best regards,
Aaron.

Look super.

Hi Guys,

In the latest dev build (v2.8 build 24) you may now also generate multiple masks simultaneously using the 'Operations->Mask maps->Generate masks' menu option. This option generates 8-bit greyscale masks. To combine them into RGB or RGBA mask images, you may use the new 'ColourMap.MergeComponents' filter in ZeoGraph.

Cheerio,
Aaron.

Wow, that's so much more convenient!

I would definitely say this is the last piece of the puzzle for me*, certainly for this 'phase one'. Thanks very much Aaron!

* I do look forward to reading the documentation to understand the specifics of things like what 'ramp' really means, etc. and for new users a high-level preamble explaining what the mask actually is, and how it has combined each of the stages would be useful. Admittedly it's a bit of a complex system in some ways, so I don't envy you - manual writing is not task I enjoy!


In terms of 'phase two' where it takes masks and generates vegetation instances in some form, currently I have my own simple (and limited) command line tool for that. I definitely think it's going to be a challenge for you to make something for all users, but it'll be fun to identify the common and/or complex elements that L3DT can automate.

For starters (re-iterating) - one thing I'm not happy with at the moment with my own tool is the placement of trees is very simplistic -- it just plants them randomly on the grass with a hard coded minimum seperation, and it keeps them away from the edges of the mask. It's not able to generate localised clumps of trees (or 'woods' as I believe they're more commonly known ) and I don't even know right now how I'd control that - so that's something I'd be interested in solving (I have no idea if the words 'game of life' I used, all those months ago, translate easily into an actual dialog box though)

Thanks again!