Greetings, tankers, pilots, admirals, or bypassers!
This theme is a short manual that explains to novices and interested people main options and settings of Location Editor.
Short introduction by the author
Introduction
You might not be acquainted with me, but I am the one who can guide you through Location Editor and its tricky using. I’ve come from Russian WT Forum where also exist these themes about Location Editor, explanation how to use it, and where I used to help to interested people. I’ve fled from there because it became impossible to log in due to ‘separating the world’ into 2 pieces: people of CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) and people of the rest of the world. And since I’m russian-speaking person but living in Baltic states, whereas Baltic states are not considered as CIS, I had to move to English WT Forum. Besides, I wanted to create themes about Location Editor on English WT Forum also to spread knowledge. So, that’s sort of short story how I am here. Now, let’s begin with the Location Editor itself!
Disclaimer
Disclaimer
You have to put pretty much effort in creating even the simpliest playable location so I do not recommend sloths doing this.
Obtaining the WT CDK itself
Obtaining
For the very beginning, you need WT CDK pack itself which you can find on WT’s Wiki. Here is the link to article with the pack.
Beginning
Beginning
The Location Editor itself looks like WT’s typical icon with name ‘LocationEd’. You can also open Location Editor (further I’ll name it shortly LE) in WarThunderCDK’s folder with programme named ‘dagored’.
After we’ve opened it, we can see a dialogue box which offers us to choose a location we want to work with. It is better to choose the location named ‘location_sample’.
We chose a location. Now can begin pretty long and tiresome location downloading, but don’t try to in some way speed it up by clicking the programme or else LE can crash. You don’t hurry anywhere, it’s better just to sit 1.5 minutes than 3.
If the chosen location downloaded, we will see location of Iwo Jima.
You have opened your first location ever, hooray!
Movement
Movement 101
To fly around a location, firstly, you have to be sure that camera, which shows you a location, is bolded in yellow at the borders. Then press Spacebar so you can move your camera 360 degree.
Movement in location’s space and time is pretty much similar to movement in games:
W - forward, S - backwards, A - left, D - right.
Also there are 4 more keys in movement’s set:
E and C, Q and Z.
E and C are responsible to move the editor-person (you, in this case) perpendicularly relatively the ground. E - moves you up, C - moves you down.
Q and Z are responsible to move the editor-person (you, in this case) perpendicularly relatively your angle of view. Q - moves you conditionally ‘up’, Z - moves you conditionally ‘down’.
The speed of movement is kind of slow so I recommend to use Turbo to move a lot faster. To activate it you have to press Left Shift and above-mentioned movement keys.
Besides all this, you can change speed of moving yourself too! You need to find on the very highest panel of LE tab ‘Settings’, find subtab ‘Cameras…’ and go to tab ‘Free camera’. I recommend to edit only column ‘Speed, ms’.
Panel of instruments
Panel of instruments
After conquering the horse named ‘Movement’, we move to panel of instruments.
Instruments that are in red squares and rectangles, we are not going to discuss right now (except of 19, 20 and 21, which I added into the manual only now), rather we will take a look at those that are numbered.
List of instruments
List of instruments.
1 - opens/closes location settings panel;
2 - brush that makes landscape hilly;
3 - brush that makes landscape more like ravine;
4 - brush that aligns landscape relatively that point what you have taken (you had taken, for instance, point of mountain’s peak, then you started to move it across whole screen. Consequently, all the landscape that was affected by the brush will be aligned to mountain’s peak height. Works vice versa too);
5 - brush that smooths landscape;
6 - cursor itself;
7 - moves an object across location;
8 - moves an object across location relatively the ground;
9 - rotates an object;
10 - edits size of an object;
11 - drops an object on the ground;
12 - opens the list of every existing object;
13 - opens panel that gives you an ability to edit object’s properties;
14 - creates an object;
15 - creates spline (or curvative);
16 - creates polygon;
17 - opens console;
18 - discards textures (I do not recommend to click this. Fix aftermaths will be pretty hard).
Last three instruments (19, 20 and 21) I prefer to disable because they can bother a lot in the future.
Location settings
Location settings
We have acquainted with panel of instruments, now it’s time to meet panel of location settings.
We will review only 7 of all these categories: Mesh (1), Brush (2), Grass (3), Script Parameters (4), Heightmap Parameters (5), Renderer (6) and Textures (7).
Mesh
Mesh itself represents, how I understand, all triangles that form landscape of location. Technically, we need there only two options: ‘Rebuild mesh’ and ‘Vertices’ (or number of triangles).
Option ‘Rebuild mesh’ helps us to download all the changes (they may not sometimes generate properly) we have done by importing heightmap, changing landscape with brushes etc.
Option ‘Vertices’ just makes more landscape-forming triangles. The more number - the more triangles.
Brush
Brushes are our friends that help us change landscape manually.
We will take a look at Power(height), Brush radius, Opacity and Hardness, the rest we don’t need yet.
Power(height). The bigger number is set, the higher will terrain tower up.
Brush radius. Everything is apparent, I guess - the bigger number is, the bigger brush radius is.
Opacity. I understand this option like: the smaller number is set, the less changes will be done to terrain.
Hardness. This is the option that I don’t understand really well and what it does, but I think it changes how ‘sharpy’ will terrain look like after changing it.
Grass
I took this category just to say that I don’t know what’s that and I don’t want you to mess with it. Last time my LE crashed when I tried to do something in there.
Script Parameters
There are located settings such as layers that will be useful in our future journey in LE. But we will discuss this category later, in the next article-tutorial/manual.
Heightmap Parameters
This is the place where all the magic happens, at least in editor’s boundaries. All location size and position in the world depends on this category, though.
So, we need only those settings that are numbered, except of 4, what don’t really need.
Cell size (1). This setting makes location’s size. In the picture there are number 16. In general, 1 = 1,024m, so this picture was taken on location that goes north, south, west and east from the centre to boundaries exactly 16,384 meters. Thus, we have got a square 32,768m*32,768m.
Height scale (2). This option represents what’s the distance from the lowest point of location to the highest point. It’s better just leave it like that or set to some random number, but not 0, or else terrain changes won’t occur.
Height offset (3). That option makes our location go below or above water surface, which locates at 0m.
Renderer
Technically, this is category where need only 1 setting - ‘Show heightmap’. The rest I don’t want to touch. Put the parameter ‘initial’ in ‘Show heightmap’ to ‘final (after modifiers)’.
Textures
We have arrived our last destination in the first part of my article-tutorial/manual. This is the category where textures of steep slopes locate, but we will get here later, in the second or may be third part. I don’t know what I can say more about this category now.
Summary
Now you know how to use Location Editor at beginner’s level. Probably, you can make something sort of location now.
The next part of the entire tutorial will be devoted to explanation to other pretty important stuff that helps make location look a lot more beautiful.
That’s it, folks. Thank you for your attention. See you next time!