OHM Elv Tile Splitter

[OrbitHangar]

Author: astrogull

About
ElvTileSplitter can do all the operations on an elevation tile which you need when you want to make your own detailed elevation tiles and integrate them into the existing Orbiter 2016 elevation folders.
This program can stitch tiles together, repair borders when necessary, merge a tile with a background tile, work with Elev_mod tiles, convert dtype -16 to dtype 8, meaning halve the size, when possible,
scale them so they have the right height as the surroundings, and not only with 259 x 259 tiles.
It accepts large images and .elv maps (maximum 20.000 x 20.000 pixels) and after scaling , split them into 259 x 259 .elv files and place them in the right level-band folders with the right filenames.
For this you can use the Tile Calculator. In this way you can cover an entire planet with elevation tiles, as long as you have the elevation data. You can also import and export tiles or larger maps to 16-bit grayscale transparent png images to work on them in a photo editor.

Requirements
-  Windows XP SP3 or Windows 7 (x86 or x64)
-  VisualBasicPowerPacks10. (included in this package)
-  Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client

Although this program will work under windows XP, windows 7 is advised for full functionality.
Under windows XP Import PNG and Export as PNG will not work as Magick.net requires windows 7.
If you want to do this you can use ele2png (http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=37452).
All other functionality is kept intact, so you can do all sorts off modifications on an elevation tile and export them to a new or existing .elv tile. Windows 8 etc. is not tested, but may work.

Recommended

- treeman to extract .elv tiles in Archive\Elev.tree and ele2png under Windows XP and as reference


Installation
1. Unzip elvtilesplitter.zip in a preferred location

2.  Run VisualBasicPowerPacks10Setup.exe if it is not already installed (just click).
     Required for rectangle shape in Tile Calculator.

3.  Check if Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile is installed.
     For Standalone Installer see https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=24872
     There is also a Web Installer. Choose the right version: x86 or x64, depending on your windows
     Installation (32 bit or 64 bit). The program itself is 32 bit.

4.  Magick.NET-Q16-AnyCPU.dll must be in the same folder as ElvTileSplitter.exe.

That’s all. Click ElvTileSplitter.exe and enjoy.
The manual will explains how to work with this program, under tab Help, Manual to open it.

 



DOWNLOAD

 

[Voyager_VI]

Runways?

Read thru the documentation and was a little overwhelmed by it. Can this be used to flatten existing runways?

 

[BEEP]

Read thru the documentation and was a little overwhelmed by it. Can this be used to flatten existing runways?

I'd love to have a tutorial on this particular subject. Thanks!

Beep

 

[Abloheet]

Much thanks

 

[astrogull]

Read thru the documentation and was a little overwhelmed by it. Can this be used to flatten existing runways?

Yes if you have a photo editor. Read Maps, some tips. You may need a surf tile with the runway, and resize it to 257x257, extend the canvas on each side to 259x 259 and use this as background. (but you can do without it if the elv tile can show the area of the runway) Change to 16-bit grayscale mode, then paste an elv. tile of the same area as a layer over it. Add a 3-rd transparent layer on top if you want an elv_mod tile.

Use a colorpicker or read the pixel value (in Photoshop under Info). Use this as gray color and with a brush do the modifications on the runway in 2-nd or 3-rd layer. Change the opacity of the layers if you want to see the background or 2-nd layer. export the 2-nd or 3-rd layer after flatten image as 16-bit grayscale png image. Then in Elv Tile Splitter import PNG, (with Elv_mod checked). This will generate the elv Tile. This tile must be scaled and ready.

 

[Gogakl]

Astrogull, it is possible to make correct .elv files from (for example) this source - https://astrogeology.usgs.gov/search/map/Pluto/NewHorizons/Pluto_NewHorizons_Global_DEM_300m_Jul2017 (or another map) with this program? Yes, splitting happens, but result some wrong. How to prepare .png/tiff and what parameters to specify in Tile/Band (I not absolutely understood the enclosed instruction)?
Elv2png works normally, but demands too much handwork. But works.

 

[Thinker55]

I've been trying to update bases in 2016 -- and while I'm having some luck, there are way too many instances of objects -- buildings, etc. -- hanging anywhere from several inches to several feet in the air. Altering the y coordinate of the object appears to accomplish exactly nothing. I'd really love to have someone explain how to correct this behavior!

 

[Thinker55]

I, too, have been overwhelmed by the tile splitter instructions. I think they take too much basic knowledge for granted. I tried to replace some surf tiles and ended up with a big, blue ball for the Earth. Clearly, I was doing something wrong. I converted some tiles from ar81 using the documentation from the Orbiter User Manual. No matter whether I put the directory structure in Textures or Textures2, I got a black surface -- and when I dialed back out, everything went blue. You don't have to extract the entire Earth using Treeman, do you? I got the impression that you didn't.

 

[Thinker55]

More on the Tile Splitter

I'm a lot further along. It's amazing how quickly tools go out of vogue. Been using satellite data from GloVis, but dunno if I can get elevations from it. Still puzzling out the instructions for the elevation tile splitter. I managed to at least get some level n+1 tiles out of it, but not without a lot of fumbling. How important some functions are isn't always obvious from the docs, even given the examples -- stitching, for instance. Do I gotta? When? Ther are a lot of controls there that are not adequately explained.
Using Gimp for graphics work -- and it's generally going well. Gimp does DDS, but Orbiter doesn't like the results, so I save as bmp and let tileedit do the conversion. You can't trust satellite data to be EXACTLY the shape of the terrain, due to angles and such -- I had to overlay my satellite photos over existing tiles to size match and ended up increasing the horizontal to vertical scale by 1.3.
Some hard-won tips: If TileEdit just refuses to open, delete the tiledit.mat file. Plsplit64.exe can be EXTREMELY picky and will blow up over a typo. BMP cannot be 32-bit. Gimp tends to create them, so you have to watch for that and change the settings. Color levels and curves in Gimp are VERY handy for matching terrain colors and for creating the night and mask layers.
Anyone who has done serious work with the Elv Tile Spitter, let us know...