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Modded "horizon" files?


76mm

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The background "horizon" views I'm getting in CMRT look like the mediterranean theater to me, or in any rate not like Belorussia.  Has anyone done a mod to replace this background?  I've tried searching this forum but either I'm not using the right search terms or there is nothing out there...

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Thanks, I've installed the mod, but am not sure what it has changed.  For instance, the background still has large hills that don't look much like Belorussia and towns that look suspiciously Mediterranean:

CM%20Red%20Thunder%202015-01-15%2008-12-

CM%20Red%20Thunder%202015-01-15%2008-12-

Is the mod loading correctly?  Or is it simply impossible to "mod out" the hills and Italian town?  Or doesn't the look of the horizon bother anyone else?  :lol:

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Isnt htis Aris´s mod for CMFI? Iam pretty sure it is. Its a landscape in Sicily.

 

I agree. I seem to remember that someone released a horizon mod for CMRT that looked very much like that. I didn´t like it and uninstalled it again.

 

Now I´ve just made a test. I removed all my mods from CMRT - and I couldn´t find the mediterranean horizons anywhere in my game. I feel pretty confident that those horizons are mods - not part of the original game. But it is easy to find out: Do like I did and remove all your mods, then load the game and see.

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It bothers me a little too.

 

How hard is it to make a horizon mod? You need to split the panoramic source picture into 4 different ones, one for the north, south, west and east bmps and make sure there are no seam lines ok, but what else? Does the top half need to be transparent with an alpha layer so that the skies can work with it?

Edited by Zveroboy1
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I feel pretty confident that those horizons are mods - not part of the original game. 

 

You are right.  In Aris' original terrain mods,  for some reason he included a "beta" horizon for CMRT which was the same as for CMFI; later he replaced with the one linked above.  I deleted the beta horizon and now all is good--the beta horizon was overriding the new horizon...  Thanks!

Edited by 76mm
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Yes the top part of the horizon texture must be in Alpha. Anyway, the hardest part of making horizons mod is the lack of high quality pictures, enough to cover all the sides.  

 

Moreover, if you want to improve over the original horizons you really need to go up in texture resolution, thus making even more work necessary.

 

It's a very time consuming modding to do.

Edited by Kieme(ITA)
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Anyway, the hardest part of making horizons mod is the lack of high quality pictures, enough to cover all the sides.  

How would you even go about creating/obtaining pictures for this?  You'd need a 360 degree panorama of an unobstructed horizon, which might not be that easy to get...  Or am I missing something?

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You don't need a real 360° panorama, but surely you'll need a very long picture or a collection of pictures. Just think about this: each original game section for the horizon is 2048 pixel long, you'll need 8192 pixels to cover the entire in game horizon.

 

Now, first of all your reference picture must be at least 8192 pixels long, because merging different pictures is practically impossible (not just for the different sides, but also different colors, etc.).

 

Consider that if you want a better result than the original horizon you most probably want to double the original resolution, otherwise your modded horizon won't be much better than the original one, like a 4096 pixel long file per horizon section, that's 16384 pixels to cover the entire horizon.

 

So, to make a decent horizon mod you nee a picture:

- long at least 16384 pixels

- taken at the right time of the day

- depicting a landscape that fits the game's

- without oddities such as a human face picking from a corner or any kind of foreground obstacle

 

You don't need a 360° view because you can Always stretch the original picture so that it covers the game's fictional horizon, problem is you can stretch a bit not too much, too much stretching and you'll see it by eyes there's something wrong. 

Another problem: preceived distance, you'll need a picture that does not seem too close otherwise either the horizon will be a joke or the battlefield will look like legoland.

 

Now, don't forget about the business, that 16k pixel horizon needs to be cut in detail, because if you skip a 4x4 pixel shape somewhere I guarantee you'll notice that in game, as a UFO in the sky or a hole in the ground.

Suppose you use a 20 pixels large brush to do that, go figure th amount of patience needed to pass that brush all over 16k pixels (16k/20= 800)...

Then you need to make sure the sides are merged perfectly, so you'll need the cloning tool and a lot of cut and paste to align the pictures perfectly.

Then you need to take out all the small oddities that are in the picture, again using the cloning tool at a micro level.

Then you need to adjust color brightness, contrast, saturation. Considering that these operations might ask for more corrections.

All the above while loading the game over and over again to check what it looks like.

 

After all of this, you'll need to make haze and thick haze variants, most probably by adding a mask, making sure it fits the game colors and the sky colors.

Edited by Kieme(ITA)
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Yes this is definitely not easy. I gave it a go, but this is probably too much for my limited photoshop skills.

 

I have a decent source picture, not as HD as it should be but I think the landscape looks better than the original horizon and blends in quite nicely with less houses and more fields and forests. The problem is that no matter what I do, use guides, the slice tool or whatever, I always end up having a 1 pixel gap between each picture and I have no idea why.

 

Thanks for the detailed walkthrough, but what do you mean by this :

"You don't need a 360° view because you can Always stretch the original picture so that it covers the game's fictional horizon"

 

I am just asking out of curiosity because really even if I somehow managed to get past the 1 pixel gap issue, the other steps would probably be beyond my meager skil level.

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Well, what I'd like to say is: keep trying.

I had to do many versions before making something I would use with my game, which was CMSF at the time.

 

Anyway, if your starting picture is a good one you'll have less work to do.

 

Such picture does't need to represent a true 360° horizon, it could be a 180° one and you could still fit it in the game, it's just a matter of perceived distance and in game you have less view depth/range than your eyes have in reality. Moreover, you can make the original picture a little longer and a little shorter, not too much, so you can have it some more pixels longer. Problem is, if you stretch it too much it will look squished, like looking at a 4:3 movie on a 16:9 screen. It all depends on the original picture, and what kind of details are there.

 

About the 1 pixel gap, making strange straight lines between some of the horizon pictures, we belive it's a bug. Aris couldn't solve the problem either, I couldn't, and I tried everything I could.

What I can tell you is that such gap is more visible the higher is your horizon terrain in the picture... let's say your horizon is a mountain, covering all the possible height in the horizon picture, you'll notice the 1 pixel line bug a lot, let's say you have a plain or a gentle hill only, you'll notice the bug much less..

Edited by Kieme(ITA)
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There's Always another option, which I am experimenting with lately, you can leave the original horizons, and mod those, or over-those.

 

For example you can change brightness and saturation, without too much effort.

You can also add or remove details from them.

 

It's a poor man's choice, but lets you do some modding without actually making a Whole new texture from scratch.

 

Example of details just added over the original horizon texture

s13jfc.jpg

Edited by Kieme(ITA)
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