bgl priority question...?

[Gridley 257]

I apologize for this question in advance, I know this information must be right under my nose, but I just can't seem to find it.For my New England and Florida projects, I'm using Slarti to generate rivers and lakes/bays/oceans separately, meaning they're in separate bgls. I make the rivers without shores, and the lakes/bays/oceans with. My rivers should extend into the lakes/bays/oceans with the hypothesis that the river polys should cover the lwm beach from the lake/bay/ocean that it flows into. At first, this worked perfectly. Now after a couple of builds, I'm finding a number of exceptions that I can't seem to get around, where the beach seems to be on top of the river no matter what I do.Is there a simple rule-of-thumb for priority of lwm vs. vtp, or file names for this type of scenery?Thanks in advance!sg

[Guest luissa]

Hi,I think you have a problem of VTP priority.The important points are: VTP layers up to 3 are used in "building" the WATER layer; VTP layers 4 to 7 are used in "building" the LAND layer; layers greater than 7 are used after FS builds (are placed on top of) the FINAL layer. FS builds the FINAL (visible) layer using parts of the WATER layer and parts od the LAND layer. LWM masks is a process of forcing FS to use one or the other.Therefore for shorelines I use layer 8 since I want the beach to appear on top of the WATER and on top of LAND. VTP River lines to be on top of the shoreline should be layer 9 or higher.I am assuming (could not understanding from your post) that you are using VTP lines for the rivers (not LWM masks). If you are doing the river as a WATER maks, then either you interrupt the VTP shore line or you draw it to make a left and a right bank (somewhere you will need to break it!).Hope this is useful,Luis

[Gridley 257]

Thanks for the reply Luis - my rivers are water mask polys, not vtp lines. I was hoping that by simply extending the end of the river past the shoreline, I could obscure the vtp line below with the river water mask. I tested this a couple of times, and it really seemed to work, but as I said, I've got a few instances where the river water mask is always beneath the vtp shoreline. Manually interrupting the line is not an option as I'm relying on Slarti to rapidly and semi-automatically generate the scenery.Now, Slarti defaults to vtp layer 7 - maybe using layer 6 or lower might help? Or will I just be opening a can of worms by lowering my beaches?Thanks again!sg

[Gridley 257]

too late to edit, so I'll ask another way:LWM polygons should layer on top of VTP lines, even if they're in a separate bgl, regardless of the vtp layer, no? For example, you need to set the high-bit on vtp roads to get them to appear over water, right?That's why I'm confused as to why I can't get my rivers to obscure the lake shorelines - I'm sure that I'm missing something...Best,sg

[Guest luissa]

Hi,I think that if you have a VTP line in layer 3 (or 2 or 1) then a mask of type=land will cover the VTP layer. I also think this is the only case of a LWM mask "covering" a VTP line.I refer again to the process described in my previous post (my interpretation of the MS SDK). It is as if the VTP polygons (or lines) were mixed with the class textures on 2 phases. On a 1st phase, VTP layers 1 to 3 are mixed with the water textures to form a layer of water. Also VTP layers 4 to 7 are mixed with ground textures to form a layer of water. Then, on a 2nd phase, and on a particular location, FS uses the texture of the water layer or the texture of the land layer depending on several things, one of which is the dominant mask on that location.Say that you have a VTP line that covers the union between a "LWM land" region on the right and "LWM water" region on the left as in the following picture:http://www.ptsim.com/images/vtplayers.gifOn the top the line has a layer priority of 1 up to 3. On the center it has a priority of 4 up to 7. On the bottom the layer is 8 or greater. I am sorry if I am wrong,Regards, Luis