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[UP~Boomer]

Ok here is a few pics of a WWI template I have been working on recentely

This is what needs to be done to build a template
You will need basic Map Editor "Unlocked FMB" skills

It is totally different than building templates for missions
In Mission Building usually the City and industrial textures (on default maps at least) have buildings already on them.
So Mission Builders usually have to build on textures that are not designed to have buildings on them

In Template building for auto-pop,
you are building on these textures that have usually not been available to build on.

They are specifically designed for buildings to be placed on,
unlike a Field texture or Lowland,Midland texture ete that are not designed for buildings to be placed on

This is an example of what needs to be done,and how it is done
I create a small map from the Online9 map,in an exact location I tile in a square of water,
and inside that I tile the texture to be populated in the correct RGB texture slot of the load.ini that I want to auto-pop

Once the texture inside the square of water is completely built up
Then the DATA of the actors.static file can be extracted and used to auto-pop a map.

This DATA when used with Auto-pop and the map_t.tga of your map to be populated,
will produce the population that was on the Template texture you populated,
whereever that texture is present on your map_t.tga of your map

As many texture slots as you want can be used to make a city
RGB 16 Inner city  which is Big Buildings or downtown,uptown what ever you want to call it
RGB 17 where inner city spreads out into the middle city where big buildings change to housing
RGB 18 Would be where city housing spreads out into rural housing
RGB 19 Would be your industrial area's

For greater diversity you can even use other texture slots for more rural housing or industrial area's 
Different Industrial areas from one country to another,Red/Blue has different industrial area's or whatever

As many texture slots as you want can be used with auto-pop
If this template was finished being built,or when it is
I could auto-pop a map I have overnight,one night for a very fully populated map that has a default look and feel to it

From there you then adjust it,add to it or subtract from it
clean it up a bit as there may be some mess with houses on hill's ete

Add Landmarks such as castles ,harbours,train stations ete
This would all be done by hand in Unlocked by copy paste methods ete

So with this in mind,one has to not get to crazy with building on the template
It is "background" population that is needed for auto-pop
Any thing too big will stand out too much and get repeated over and over so it will be noticeable
Train tracks will look out of place scattered around with nowhere to go ete ete

After auto-pop there is still a lot of work to be done to finish populating a map
but auto-pop gives you a basis to start with that "fills in " the map very quickly

Here is an example of a auto-pop template being built by meself right now for a map I have ready for it,
texture compliments of Viking
vkg_Egypt_downCity_A.tga

As you can see I am working on a desert map at the moment 









Here are some Pics,of a Template map made up and with various templates built on them.

 I believe...
Industrial area template is by Lowfighter




SkCountryMount template by Asheshouse



Notice the detail


SkDownCity and SkMidCity template by someone I can't recall right now I am sad to say,
I will be trying to locate the persons name to edit this post in the future,I have these files on DVD but have failed to find the original source of the files.
Although I have the files installed into my Map Editor install to use and take these Pics

Thanks to these people for there templates to be able to demonstrate how to build an Auto-Pop template






The templates of Asheshouse and Lowfighter are 1600 period textures
The two templates by Author unknown are both 800 period textures
If anything is not clear I can elaborate on it,feel free to ask any questions
I will do my best to help out

[Fusek]

Thanks for the explanation Boomer. Maybe a stupid question, but with UP2.01 i have all I need to build templates for autopop?

[UP~Boomer]

No,you need to unlock the FMB
The larger 4 Gig IL2.exe so FMB will not CTD
Also you need to extract the onlin9 map and set it up with the files included in Auto-pop in order to make a template map
and a firm understanding how to work in Unlocked FMB,how to save files,Texture string associations within the load.ini ete

This is something that is done once they are already comfortable building maps and working in Map Editor


PS:
Here is a template map I have,it is set up with VKG_Vikings desert city texture I am using for my WWI Desert map I am working on.
It is also being used on a map of Agracier's and Kapteeni's

http://www.mediafire.com/?g6z9t14lh6j8aci

Install is like any other map,although to work on it you must understand how to save map files.
You need to run in unlocked and have a Maps folder with another folder with the exact same name as the map you are editing.
In this case it is AP_Template

IL-2/Maps/AP_Template

After building a bit in Unlocked FMB,click "save"
never "save as"

After ,there will be an actors.static created in>
IL-2/Maps/AP_Template
This then needs to be cut and pasted to the actual AP_Template map in>
MODS/MapMods/Maps/AP_Template

Allow to overwrite the actors in there and you will update the template map you are working on

Build another time and save again,transfer the actors overwriting the old and update your work again and again until the template is finished.
The final actors.static is what is needed to be extracted for the info to be added for auto-pop to work


To change textures to work on,one must understand how to associate texture strings in the load.ini

The AP_Template map's load.ini has these entry's for the 4 City texture slot's>
City0    = ag/Palestine_Kap/vkg_Egypt_downCity_A.tga          ;RGB 16 Main city texure
City1    =                                                                       ;RGB 17 downtown or inner city texure
City2    =                                                                       ;RGB 18 edge of city texure
City3    =                                                                       ;RGB 19 industrial texure

If you understand how to change textures,then you can associate other city and industrial textures with these texture RGB slots.
By making copy's of the template map and renaming it you can create other template maps to work on.
I use the name convection of naming the template map after the texture I am working on.
My master template map I copy from I name AP_Template,which is the one I posted above for download
It is just set up for VKG_Vikings Desert City texture for upload hoping some templates are created on this texture 

[UP~Boomer]

WWI Battle of Megiddo City 19-21 Sept 1918

I have added a bit more to this template I am working on,although this pic does not show what I have recentely added
It is a pic of the template I used to run auto-pop on this small map of Megiddo for an example of what auto-pop does  from a template
It is the template from my first post that was featured above in this thread.


I have taken a small WWI Battle map of the attack on Megiddo City


I then superimposed this small WWI Battle map over a map I got from Agracier of Palestine.


I then used all the map files from Palestine,cutting the small Battle specific area out of each of the map files from the Palestine map of Agracier's


This is only one city texture template being used so far,and so far there is only one city texture on the map


It took about 4 hours one night to cut the small Megiddo map out of Agracier's large Palestine map

Then it took about 16 hours I believe to build the template map up enough on this desert city texture so I could trial run the auto-pop on the small map.

As I add more buildings to my template,I will run auto-pop again on the map to add more population.
Once the template is truly full (densely populated),I can then run auto-pop for a final time.

It took about 10 seconds to run auto-pop,and the map was fully populated on this texture 

If I had two more city textures and one industrial texture finished with templates,
I could add those also to the auto-pop and then run it to fully populate three city textures and one industrial area texture.

With the added info for the other textures I think auto-pop would run for about 20 min. then on my Pc to fully auto-pop the whole map.
That would populate three city textures and an industrial area texture and would densely populate the whole map.

Of course the map_t.tga would need the correct RGB Values added to the map for the other added textures to be used.
That is a simply matter of painting in the correct RGB Value to the area's you would like to expand the city's and have rural area's as well as your industrial area's
All this is done with a Graphical Editor like Gimp in layers

Coming soon to SAS WWI,The Battle of Megiddo


Really nothing more than maybe 4 nights work to auto-pop this map so far,
another maybe 20 to 30 hours or so building a few more templates and the map will be fully populated.
Roughly a weeks work to fully auto-pop a map then I suppose rather than Months of copy and pasting

[michel_boonstra1974]

Wow thanks for this insight UP~Boomer! Very interesting. I was already dreading to do the population of the towns on my Netherlands map but this method seems to save a lot of time. Cheers mate!

[UP~Boomer]

Thanks Michel

If you have any questions,or need a hand to get going on some templates for your map
I will try and help out ,if I can
feel free to send me a PM

[michel_boonstra1974]

Thank you UP~Boomer, much appreciated. I'll have a go with it and see if I can get it sorted.

[Avala]

Thank you for this Boomer. It is much clearer to me now. 

But, I must ask you can you perhaps make one even more easier tutorial on how to use auto pop tool? You know, with: "1. do this; 2. do that; 3. now do this . . .etc" because, while I understand how to make template, I cant understand how to put auto pop itself in use.

Or I will cry, until some good soul populate my map   

Thanks again 

[agracier]

If it's any consolation, I finally succeeded in completing several autopop sessions successfully. It can be done, but I was helped by several members along the way ...

[Avala]

I'm really glad to hear that. But if you can make tinny-winsy tutorial about that (like 1. 2. 3 . . . ) I would be really consoled   

[agracier]

I'm really glad to hear that. But if you can make tinny-winsy tutorial about that (like 1. 2. 3 . . . ) I would be really consoled   

I'll see what I can do, but making tutorials is not my strong point. I can give this insight though.

When you decide to use this tool, it seems that everything is fixated on running it, getting results. But I think the most important part is making a good template on those 8x8 pixels way down in that corner and then extracting it with the actorstool so that you can get hold of the inBuildings.txt file.

Once you have the inBuildings.txt file for those 8x8 pixels (and nothing else on the map at all which may end up in the inBuildings.txt) then you can rename the inBuildings.txt file into the correct name so that the autopop tool recognizes it, into - template_city0_1600.txt - for instance.

But first of all concentrate on making a good, halfway believable template and extracting the inBuildings.txt file ... making a template may take a day or two if you are starting from scratch, but while you're doing so, keep all other thoughts about the next steps out of your mind and just make the template as if it were to be a finished map in its own right.

[farang65]

Hi Boomer,

Your thread on Auto Pop is highly interesting.

I'm glad that your one of the few who has sorted out this program.

I hope this thread eventually turns in to an Auto Pop Tutorial kind of like Kevin P's map making tutorials.

I've been fdoing a lot of populating mostly by hand then copy and paste at the moment.

I'll have to learn auto pop myself soon.

Thanks for the insight 

Cheers Kirby