Custom 3D Models and Mods Compilation

[Vinnart]

Wow! Really great work and creativity Aquila. Love the boats!

[Sequoia]

It would be awesome to get infantry landing craft and gliders for CMBN and CMFI.

[sburke]

8 hours ago, Aquila-CM said:

Everything the same just updated the link after it went down. If I update something there I´ll attach an "V2" or something to it or let you know.

 

MIG-21 Crashed + Parked. You can also turn it into a vehicle (example rename it to taxi-vehicle.mdr) to simulate taxiing aircraft that attempt to flee/takeoff which could be simulated by an extraction zone in the editor.

However I can´t get the textures to show up and don´t know why. Converted them and did 24bit and "no not write (...)" but still doesn´t work. I am out of ideas but did upload everything including the blender project files as "MIG-21 Flavor Pack" to the Dropbox. Perhaps one can solve the riddle. As with my other stuff feel free to fix, modify, use it for whatever you need it.  

Too cool, if you look in google at al houdayduh airfield you can see the remains of MIGs

[Sequoia]

The MiGs would be cool to put into Chris aka Normal Dudes first mission of his airborne campaign if some one redid it for CMSF 2.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

On ‎7‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 5:43 PM, Aquila-CM said:

MIG-21 Crashed + Parked. You can also turn it into a vehicle (example rename it to taxi-vehicle.mdr) to simulate taxiing aircraft that attempt to flee/takeoff which could be simulated by an extraction zone in the editor.

Not only am I in awe of the work you've done.....I really like the way you think too! 

Funnily enough I extracted a rather nice map of Aleppo Airport from a CM:SF1 campaign. 

18 hours ago, Sequoia said:

The MiGs would be cool to put into Chris aka Normal Dudes first mission of his airborne campaign if some one redid it for CMSF 2.

I have a feeling this may be where I got the map.....Kudos to author, it's a fine piece of work. 

Edited July 23, 2019 by Sgt.Squarehead

[contrails]

Impressive work! Took a look at the MiG-21. Culprit is that the mdr requires texture files to be lowercase. Suggest you incorporate sbobovyc's 'exporting checklist' to your written tutorial  https://github.com/sbobovyc/CM2Tools/wiki/Blender-plugins

[Sequoia]

I don't recall however if the Aleppo airport in Chris's CMSF 1 US airborne campaign is a military or civilian airport.

[sburke]

2 hours ago, Sequoia said:

I don't recall however if the Aleppo airport in Chris's CMSF 1 US airborne campaign is a military or civilian airport.

I think Chris just made a runway map, ya gotta remember there were no overlays back then and I think the Aleppo map is not his. I’ll need to double check but if I recall correctly the Aleppo map is much larger with a different layout. 

I have started a Sana’a airport map and the google images have wrecks of various aircraft, some quite large. There are also a few Russian helos as well. 

[Aquila-SmartWargames]

7 hours ago, contrails said:

Impressive work! Took a look at the MiG-21. Culprit is that the mdr requires texture files to be lowercase. Suggest you incorporate sbobovyc's 'exporting checklist' to your written tutorial  https://github.com/sbobovyc/CM2Tools/wiki/Blender-plugins

Great work too!

You fixed it by simply renaming the texture file to lower case?

Edited July 24, 2019 by Aquila-CM

[contrails]

yep renamed "Default.bmp" to "default.bmp" and adjusted to match in blender before exporting

[Aquila-SmartWargames]

I dismissed several models because I couldn´t get their textures to work. There is a chance that it was caused by the simple mundane issue.Thanks to contrails´ tip I fixed two models:

MIG-21 Pack V2:

V2:

- fixed texture issue

- better glass texture

- now comes with a vehicle version including a "driver" seat and exhaust.fumes.

 

UH-1 Huey

It was a challenge to find a free Huey 3D model in one of the Blender formats. This is the best I could find. The texture got distorted either because GIMP required some strange compatibilty formating on importing or due to the model causing some scaling issues in Blender. Its definitely not a beauty but in my opinion still looks decent enought to fullfill its role as a flavor object. It was primarly made with the H&E mod in mind but as most of my work it is kept neutral without markings. The UH-1 thus fits plenty of modern scenarios as it is still in use by alot of the world´s armies.

Both are in the Dropbox/OneDrive

Edited July 24, 2019 by Aquila-CM

[37mm]

I think I'll grab the Huey!

[Mord]

Damn, man! I was so mesmerized watching those planes I half expected them to take off.

A couple mid-size passenger plane models would really do the trick for Aleppo and Donetsk scenarios. 

With this revolution in modding it would be killer if BF somehow could incorporate a way to add these flavor objects into the game without having to overwrite other assets. THAT would truly be a great "feature" for an upgrade. This new style can change CM gaming forever. The ability to effect the atmosphere of scenarios is simply amazing! The sky is the limit. In all my years of CM gaming, collecting and creating mods, this is the single greatest discovery I have witnessed.

Mord.

[Aragorn2002]

28 minutes ago, Mord said:

With this revolution in modding it would be killer if BF somehow could incorporate a way to add these flavor objects into the game without having to overwrite other assets. THAT would truly be a great "feature" for an upgrade. This new style can change CM gaming forever. The ability to effect the atmosphere of scenarios is simply amazing! The sky is the limit. In all my years of CM gaming, collecting and creating mods, this is the single greatest discovery I have witnessed.

Mord.

I agree. Imagine all possibilities. Personally I most of all would like to see the possibility to place fallen soldiers (yes, dead) on the ground in the editor. I've noticed that some people find that morbid, which I don't understand since this is a wargame, but it would be very cool in my opinion. It would make the battlefield look more fought over and add a lot of atmosphere to scenarios and campaigns.  Most of all for CMRT, CMFB and the other WW2 titles.

[JM Stuff]

35 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

I agree. Imagine all possibilities. Personally I most of all would like to see the possibility to place fallen soldiers (yes, dead) on the ground in the editor. I've noticed that some people find that morbid, which I don't understand since this is a wargame, but it would be very cool in my opinion. It would make the battlefield look more fought over and add a lot of atmosphere to scenarios and campaigns.  Most of all for CMRT, CMFB and the other WW2 titles.

This was perhaps already in the new project of CM3 ?

This is why so much secret like area51

Edited July 24, 2019 by 3j2m7

[Aquila-SmartWargames]

Medium Airliner:

As you can see there is an issue with the texture when I export it to .mdr. I had the exact same issue with the Huey helo. I hope one of you can find the root of this problem as I have no idea whats the cause. The complete project folder with .mdr and blender file are in the online clouds.

I noticed on this model that the invisible shelter1.mdr primer is especially hard to "hit" with the cusor in the editor in order to move/rotate the model. In the future I will check the other shelters if they´re better suited.

And it would be definitely great if BF would add some "extra slots" for custom flavor objects (with good draw distance etc.). For the time being we have to use the modtag system.

Creating a dead corpse or a "group" of them as an flavor object is perfectly doable with this method. I recommend to keep the bodies in a neutral appearance so that it doesn´t become so noticeable that it is always the same flavor object. Despite the visualization of a deadly battlefield, this could also come with some interesting options for scenario designers. This could be utilized for scenarios ala "we´ve send a squad an hour ago to check the Northern woods and didn´t hear back from them. Find out what happened to them" or as an ambush/killzone hint for players. AFAIK flavor objects are always visible but if one replaces an unimportant vehicle or emplacement with the fallen soldiers and (then sets the vehicle to "destroyed" and) places it on the map, the fallen soldiers need to be spotted.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Aquila-CM

[Aragorn2002]

6 minutes ago, Aquila-CM said:

Creating a dead corpse or a "group" of them as an flavor object is perfectly doable with this method. I recommend to keep the bodies in a neutral appearance so that it doesn´t become so noticeable that it is always the same flavor object. Despite the visualization of a deadly battlefield, this could also come with some interesting options for scenario designers. This could be utilized for scenarios ala "we´ve send a squad an hour ago to check the Northern woods and didn´t hear back from them. Find out what happened to them" or as an ambush/killzone hint for players.

Great minds think alike. Yes, that would be awesome. Also imagine bodies in front of the trenches or between the foxholes. If we can have burning and destroyed vehicles, why not fallen soldiers.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

9 hours ago, Mord said:

With this revolution in modding it would be killer if BF somehow could incorporate a way to add these flavor objects into the game without having to overwrite other assets.

There are 162 flavour object slots, so we can always have a few new items with no loss there.

TBH many of these items are so specialised that a tagged mod for a given scenario may well actually be the best bet (until the advent of CM3, which could perhaps be designed to facilitate such things).

 

[Sequoia]

Do I assume correctly that the cover (no concealment as I understand) provided by these modified flavor objects is the dimensions of the added 3-d object and not that of the original replaced 3-d flavor object?

[Mord]

13 hours ago, Aquila-CM said:

Medium Airliner:

 

Holy crap, that was quick! SWEET!

 

Mord.

 

[The Steppenwulf]

10 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

TBH many of these items are so specialised that a tagged mod for a given scenario may well actually be the best bet (until the advent of CM3, which could perhaps be designed to facilitate such things).

I think that tags only work with textures, not models. If I'm right this is not possible.

[Aquila-SmartWargames]

We know that you can place visible wrecks and walls into flavor objects to give them blocking properities.

We also know that you can place invisible wrecks and invisible walls into flavor objects to give them blocking properities with blank texture files (For walls I tested and confirmed this)

 

But what about buildings?

 

Buildings + Flavor Objects Ideas

Buildings like everything else can placed "in" custom flavor objects. What options and dis-/advantages I came up with:

1) Where walls and wrecks aren´t tall enough multi story buildings could give tall flavor objects like the Cargo Ship or the Radar Station proper LOS/Fire blocking properities without being visible from outside.

2) By combining a flavor object and a building in a smart way you could create a flavor object that can be occupied. For example you could add a multi-story building tower into the "cargo ship" to simulate personell firing from the ship´s bridge. You could place a fitting building into the Radar Station so it can be occupied. This of course makes the most sense for custom flavor buildings. I did just create the Radar Station but there are countless options to add new flavor buildings.

3) I was curious if you could turn an entire building invisible which then produced this result:

For some reasons the windows and doors turn black (not shown) when modded with blank.bmp texture files. Perhaps I missed something but even so if a building could be setup without doors and windows it could be used as a complete invisible LOS/fire blocking tool for tall flavor objects. However due to the modularity and randomization of buildings it looks like an overcomplicated solution for little gain. I have little knowledge about buildings in Combat Mission but noticed that scenario and map designers come up with pretty tricky building setups. They should evaluate if this method is viable. But like already explained you can use regular visible buildings and "hide" them in flavor objects.

4) AFAIK enemy personell can´t be prevented from leaving higher building levels. I also know no method to "lock" guys in higher levels. Under suppressive fire for example the Cargo Ship´s bridge guys thus would leave and descent "into the ship" i. e. into the lower levels of the building placed inside the flavor object. Keep that in mind when working with this idea.

5) Obviously flavor objects do not turn transparent when entering or enemy activity is spotted in them like buildings do. So for a "who´s there" peek you need to zoom into the flavor object.

 

Buildings Related Stuff in the Editor

I couldn´t locate the "complete blueprints" of the buildings in the files and suspect that they´re are located in the internal (hidden) part of the game files which would make sense. But CM2 Tools allows you to access several parts of buildings like walls, windows, doors, balconies in order to modify their models.  When it comes to building walls/faces I suspect one can edit/mod the doors (entry points) and windows (observation/firing ports) which then might be correctly identified by infantry. Interesting would be to know how infantry would behave on changing the shape of the balcony. However overall I have no idea what possibilities CM2 tools might provide for us in this department but perhaps one of you will find out.

Texture Problem with the Airliner and Huey Bump:

  

When converting to .mdr it looks like the texture "rips apart". Perhaps I missed a CM2 tools exporting prerequisite again but one looking into it would be appreaciated. Projects are in the cloud.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Aquila-CM

[MOS:96B2P]

6 hours ago, The Steppenwulf said:

I think that tags only work with textures, not models. If I'm right this is not possible.

Hmmm, if I understand what your talking about.....   Tags can also work with flavor objects and swapping files.  Example: Swap an AKM for an M16 and tag this swap so it only shows up in the desired scenario.  New flavor objects can be tagged to overwrite vanilla flavor objects.  So, after all the unused flavor object slots have been filled with new flavor objects then tags can be used (when necessary) to overwrite an existing flavor object.    

 

3 hours ago, Aquila-CM said:

For some reasons the windows and doors turn black (not shown) when modded with blank.bmp texture files. Perhaps I missed something but even so if a building could be setup without doors and windows it could be used as a complete invisible LOS/fire blocking tool for tall flavor objects. 

 

+1.  More good information. 

@LongLeftFlank has a building mod with invisible windows.  This invisible window works well for any building window, it just needs to be re-named.  I've never tried it with a door.   However I recall playing a MOUT training type scenario where all the doors were removed (made invisible).  So it's possible.  However, as you said using an invisible building may be an over complicated solution for little gain.    

[The Steppenwulf]

2 hours ago, MOS:96B2P said:

New flavor objects can be tagged to overwrite vanilla flavor objects.  So, after all the unused flavor object slots have been filled with new flavor objects then tags can be used (when necessary) to overwrite an existing flavor object.  

You are correct, I just tested tagged models to be sure and it does work!

With regard to the cover aspect of flavour objects (specifically hard cover), I have spent some time running tests. Placing a wall, building or defensive work inside a flavour object does not appear to result in the flavour object taking on the cover aspects of the object. So much so that I believe that code governing hard cover is hard-coded into those particular objects and it is probably identified by the name of the .mdr file (for example only bunker.mdr will have the hard cover properties of a bunker). Any cover and concealment properties that may be experienced with flavour objects are governed by the soft cover code that apply to terrain & doodads (i.e. number of objects in an action square). Naturally I could be wrong about all this too, I'd be interested to see any tests that challenge my present deductions, or cast a better light on this.

 

Edited July 25, 2019 by The Steppenwulf

[Aquila-SmartWargames]

Not sure if I get what you´ve tested but you can´t change the replaced original model´s internal properities by model swapping/Blender. This is basically true to everything in CM. An Abrams tank will keep its armor, hit zones, cannon, and its ammo no matter if its model looks like a fishing boat, donkey, or like an Nimitz Aircraft Carrier filling the complete map (no joke everything would be possible). A MG bunker will keep its MG, and a replaced flavor object will just keep its basic soft cover attributes. There is some exception to it as you can move driver seats, disembark zones etc so if you replace a Taxi with a Mig you can move the driver into the cockpit or when you replace a bunker with a different bunker you can adjust the gunners position.

In the CM scenario editor you need to place visible or invisible walls, wrecks, emplacements, or buildings into the flavor objects to give them the hard cover from fire and LOS you desire and ofc in order to impede infantry/vehicle movement.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Aquila-CM