BF42 Pathmapping Part 3D

**Back to Photoshop Editing**

Where is that Pathmap you Promised me ?
Hehe ... we are nearly done with the textures, as its now time to put it all back together ... literally. We are going to do the same merging process that we did in the previous tutorial, so if you need to refresh your memory, you know where to find the details. Browse to the Textures folder of the level, as we did last time, convert the the TX\*.dds tiles to .TGA and then use TGA Merge to stitch the tiles together, and save the file to your working directory. Use the same filename, Infantry1level0map24bit.tga, but if your feeling nervous make a copy of the original before merging.
Now open the freshly merged file in your favorite image editor.

Image File: PM3\_38.png

You first task here is to make sure that all the area that we intended to be pathed out and have painted in Ed42, is Pure White and nothing less. To do this we will Mask the white and near white colours, you could call this tool Digital Masking Tape. This will allow us to simply paint the whole thing with a brush, and the mask will protect the remaining unmasked area from change.
First, select the Tool in your image editor that creates/selects a colour to mask.

- PHOTOSHOP -

Image File: PM3\_39.png

In Photoshop, selecting Colour Range from the Select Menu will do the trick. Use the Eyedropper to select a section of White from the Pathmap. The “Fuzziness” is a Tolerance setting that allows us to include “off-white” colours in the Mask. Higher values for fuzziness will included darker shades of colours within the Mask. To start with just use the default value.

Image File: PM3\_40.png

Here you can see the areas that have been Masked (dotted lines), and unfortunately there are quite a few bits missing. You will need to increase the “fuzziness” until all the odd bits are selected.
Removed the the Mask (Select Menu -> Deselect or [Ctrl]+[D]) and Select the Colour Range again with a increased fuzziness.
(the following images are enlarged 600%)

Image File: PM3\_41.png

I had to use the maximum value of 200, to get all the bits i wanted ...
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Image File: PM3\_42.png

- COREL PHOTO PAINT & Other Software -

Image File: PM3\_43.png

Funnily enough, the Colour Mask tool we want is called Colour Mask and it is in the Mask menu.

Image File: PM3\_44.png

The requester maybe different, but the idea is the same. Use the Eyedropper on a section of the Pathmap Image to sample the white, set a reasonable value for the Tolerance, here i have used 50 (%) and the result is the same.

Image File: PM3\_45.png

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You can see in the previous images that quite a lot of the area we painted in Ed42 is not pure white, this is due to the texture blending that Ed42 was designed to do and something we have to live with when pathmapping. By doing this routine of Colour masking each time we convert our textures from Ed42 editing for pathmaps, we ensure that no important pixels go missing leaving an opportunity for Bots to test walking though brick walls.

Ok, grab a tool to paint with, select a BIG brush, and White as the colour. You may need to check that the White from the Colour palette is pure White, ie: (RGB 255,255,255)
The next step is a bit hard to show in a screenshot ... just paint, making sure you cover everything, especially edges & fine details. Don't worry about trying to be neat, you don't need to be if the Colour Mask does its job.

Image File: PM3\_46.png

Last thing to do is some spak-filling ... scroll around the image looking for “holes” that is pixels or even areas of non-white that are in the middle of nowhere. If the hole is anywhere a Bot cannot or should not get to, fill it in with white
When you have finished the touch-ups, flip the image vertically (like we always have to do) and save it.

Image File: PM3\_47.png

I use these 24bit.TGAs as a “Master Pathmap Images” and at any stage, should you need to make changes to our pathmaps, this .TGA can be converted to tiles again and edited in Ed42 or you could of course edit this image by hand.
In another Tutorial Part we will need this .TGA again for some evil things i hope to show you for the “smallones”

Now down to business. We have made sure the pathed out area is all white, now we need to make the rest of the pathmap is pure black, before converting this image to 8-bit greyscale. To do this we use the Colour Mask again, however this time set the “Fuzziness” to Zero as anything that isn't Pure white now, is about to become black. Last time we protected the background so we could paint the white, this time around we need to protect the white by Inverting the Colour Mask.
- PHOTOSHOP -

Image File: PM3\_48.png

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- COREL PHOTO PAINT & Other Software -

Image File: PM3\_49.png

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Grab your paint tool again with, select a BIG brush, but with Black as the colour. You may need to check that the Black from the Colour palette is pure Black ie: (RGB 0,0,0)
Then slap on the paint, & make sure you cover everything!

Image File: PM3\_50.png

and it looks like we are on the right path.

Not far to go now. Convert the image to 8-Bit Greyscale.
- PHOTOSHOP -

Image File: PM3\_51.png

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- COREL PHOTO PAINT & Other Software -

Image File: PM3\_52.png

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Finally we have our pathmap, all ready to go, the file just needs to be saved as .RAW (or .BMP and use flyrawgui) and Packed with the Ai tools.
If you need to jog your memory, this was covered in Part 1 of the Pathmapping Tutorials.
- END OF PATH 3 -

Gone\_Botty.png

Credits:

Arc D'Wraith – Author

White Thunder – Title Banner

Special Thanks to the toolmakers, for without your work modding Battlefield would be a joke.

Resources:

Bf1942 Modder's Wiki

bf42.com Editing Forums

Original Battlefield Maps

Tools Used:

Battlefield 1942

Corel Photo-Paint 8

Ed42

FlyRawGui

Notepad

NVDXT.exe

Rexman's Ai Tools

RFA Extractor

tgaMerge

TGA Splitter

Open Office

undxt.exe

Please excuse my english, i'm Australian ; )