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twinbrook ... heightmap + aerial view without water layer :s
drowssap
Posts: 2,007 Member
so iv been extracting all sorts of files, im in the middle of putting a few others together, this is a transparent image on a white background, it seems as though its a sort of 'negative' though where the rivers are, im putting together the over head view now, which fits perfectly onto this,
but im wondering if anyone knows what this sort of file is for/represents,
[IMG]http://i35.tinypic.com/2d7bkow.jpg "width=600"[/IMG]
now it cant be a height map, because different levels are all the same colour, only the areas where theres some variation goin on in the level like a slope are shown,
does anyone know of any type of program which could use an image like this, its DDS format atm, but im showing a prnt screen, so thats why the image quality is abit off :?
mm :roll: i think iv found the object files, but thats another step for me to figure out, few of my previous attempts to get it working well, lets just say i have no idea what its saying but its not working, anyway if i can get the heightmap, and check out the water level i will be onto something
but im wondering if anyone knows what this sort of file is for/represents,
[IMG]http://i35.tinypic.com/2d7bkow.jpg "width=600"[/IMG]
now it cant be a height map, because different levels are all the same colour, only the areas where theres some variation goin on in the level like a slope are shown,
does anyone know of any type of program which could use an image like this, its DDS format atm, but im showing a prnt screen, so thats why the image quality is abit off :?
mm :roll: i think iv found the object files, but thats another step for me to figure out, few of my previous attempts to get it working well, lets just say i have no idea what its saying but its not working, anyway if i can get the heightmap, and check out the water level i will be onto something
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seems to be an aerial view only without the water layer,
might have a look elsewhere online for answers
I feel really sorry for you ... no one's helping you ..and Im afraid to say that I can't either ...yeah, maybe checking elsewhere will help :oops:
i dont know where to begin, i will start looking through those unknown flies now, only problem is whatever code it contains CAW seems to recognized as packaged, so i cant see inside, and i havent a clue how or if i can change that, guess work i guess ...
Maybe modthesims, maybe at Custom Sims 3 or another modding site.
Good luck though. It'll be great to know what you find.
im testing out a theory now in CAW, moment of truth ...
i will give it a couple more days, if i dont find anything usefull i will just carry on as usual,i can see the file i think contains the world objects, but i dont know what to do with it ... :?
Jeez, drowssap, you're probably the bravest person I know right now. I wouldn't even dare touch or click any files or stuff like that! I'm afraid I'll break the game and the disc'll explode or something ... I'm really clumsy with stuff ... once I dropped an old sims game and it fell down behind a radiator. I couldn't get it. Ah, I didn't really like Pet Stories anyway
mm so iv got the flie to open in CAW, but its not looking great, having to convert the file to 16bit from 8bit does not look right :? does photoshop deal with 16bit ? :?
think i need to keep searching anyway, im not quite sure what these transparent files are for, but making a height map out of it would be tricky
drowssap, I've studied cartography, and that looks like a shaded relief map. A shaded relief map is a method of presenting height information so we can see the contours of the land. The height information is treated as if it were illuminated by a light source and lit and shaded slopes are calculated. The convention is to place the light source top left as this makes the illusion simplest and most durable.
In this example, the light source is to the left. At first glance, it looks to be to the right, but our knowledge of the terrain tells us the plateau is actually a lake bottom and the canyon to the left of the plateau is actually a dam. Our first impression is altitude inverted.
The only use I can think the program would have for an East-West shaded relief map is to reduce the processing overhead. Rather than calculate the illumination on the terrain each tick, one fixed illumination is calculated ahead of time which represents the maximum values of departure from mid-gray (flat lighting). Each tick between dawn and noon the values of this map are adjusted towards mid-gray by a percentage and away from mid-gray by a percentage for each tick between noon and dusk. If that's what it is, it's a clever efficiency trick, but not useful to us.
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=425205
For the texture that you uncovered, it may be information the game used with the differing LOD renders. There are also some files containing the information for the terrain textures in the world file too- fragments of the alphamaps that you get if you export the terrain textures from in CAW.
RUSH
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