Dense foliage models, how to make jungle?

[Snake Man]

In ArmA there is no "forest block" objects featured officially by BIS, they have said(?) that those objects should not be used, instead use single objects repeatedly to create forest areas.

Users in the community have complained that the northern sahrani forests are very heavy on CPU/lags, I have not investigated this myself yet.

As some of you know, all VTE dense jungle vegetation themes are created by these "forest blocks" which are; grass on the ground and then perhaps even two types of "canopy" on top of it, this counts to three (3) different vegetation models in one cell (50m x 50m). We did alot of work for the objects and I dare to say VTE v0.4 in OFP runs pretty nicely even on the dense vegetation parts.

Anyways...

I am not sure how the ArmA VTE future will be, if we must drop all the "forest block" vegetation objects, then we have to use the individual trees and bushes, also we must anyway what ever we do, create new grass as the existing one is too simple now. If we create Vietnam themed grass and hook it up like the default ArmA grass, that would be pretty good I think. If we also can setup several grass types for different parts of the island (terrain types?) that would be awesome, dunno if default sahrani does this already, havent noticed/checked.

Summary of VTE "jungle blocks"

VTE_low_canopy2 and VTE_canopy3: creates nice compromise between wide open area and thick bush where you cant see through. In this setup you can see maybe 25m or so, the grass (lowest canopy) is perhaps knee height and sparsely placed. The higher canopy is big bushes and small tree type bushes. No high trees/canopy here.

[T_Rex]

Is there some way to script the placement of vegetation, like trees.

I guy I knew (Panther, from the F4 forums) had some terrain generation programs - which I know would probably not be directly useful - but he described techniques they used to basically generate vegetation. Maybe something like that would be useful.

[Snake Man]

Yeah we can place random trees with no problem.

[Solus]

One problem with high grass using the new ArmA grass is that the height of the AI view blocking terrain layer doesn't seem to change, it stays the same no matter how high the grass objects are. Maybe it would be possible to place view blocker objects in the high grass areas, maybe a grid like view blocker like the SLX_Grass addon had but invisible to players.

Another problem is that the grass fades out in the distance, maybe the view blocker objects could have a visual part that fades out up close but fades in over distance. Maybe it could just be LOD's or maybe some kind of mipmap trick, or try using the reverse of the ArmA foliage shader that fades the textures at a distance.

[Snake Man]

Hmm thats a good point, didn't think of the fading grass over distance.

Anyways as I understand it now, ArmA wont handle those large objects properly as they are not "skewed to ground" like in OFP, I'm not sure about this but WrpTool and Visitor 3 (well at least in buldozer, but should be identical to ingame view) placed VTE grassfield/forest objects get floating edges often depending on the terrain.

Indeed needs more investigating. Keep up the ideas flowing.

[Pedersen]

In my opinion and as a suggestion I think there should be 4 typs of grass.

Heigt of grass:

1. Grass to your knee. ( think the AmrA grass is in that heigt now)

2. Grass up to your waste/chest. you should be abel to hide when you get down on your knee. This is the grass that I really missing in VTE right know.

3.Grass up to your shoulder, only your head/helmet should stick up above the grass.

4. Tall grass as there allready is ingame.

The ARMA grass is awsome that you got ingame, maby make it taller or does it create FPS drops then?


Palmtree Jungel:

Another thing Im missing is a really big Jungel with only Large palmtrees as the MAIN-tree in the Jungel and the kind of grass I just mention above( grass 1 - 3 ) And stick some nice bushes you allready got in it and you got a amazing looking jungel I belive.

There is lots of Palmtrees around every VTE-map, but NO map has that kind of jungel I just mention with a thick Jungel with only Palmtrees in it.


For now the jungelfeeling cloud be better in the thick Treejungel.
Now either you dont see 1 meter infront of you or you see to far. I hope you get my point here too.



Diffrent kind of hill:

Hill that has sand/dirt kind of feeling or bombed out feeling?
Burnd out trees Static?

A burned out hill or somthing, I hope you all get my point if not, check out the Moive Hamburger Hill.



NVA/VC-Tunnels:

This one is hard, the only thing I could think of is making one HUGE hill as a static model with tunnels inside of it
Or maby smal statics Models as entrenced-bunkers.
And then Import them to VTE.
Dont know about the FPS drop if you do this, and how it might look. Maby it will look bad ingame.



/cheers!