Lucky_Strike

Quite, there's a lot we can do with the flavor objects. I'm thinking two mods: one a simple HedgeHogs to Dragon's Teeth for quick and convenient Westwalls etc. The other a comprehensive flavor object barrier set with an invisible hedgehog as immovable object - all sorts of fun. I think you're right about the metadata. I'm pretty certain that a lot of what you see in Blender is relative positional coordinates for the mesh, but some is related to light, reflection, shade etc, whilst some is probably an absolute mystery. Good news is I managed to maintain the metadata in the dragon's teeth so they should play well. That's pretty much it. AND going forward I will hopefully be applying this to my other mods so no more nasty textures. Lots of fun ... And to top it off I have now done some more work with the textures and, inspired by what I learned doing my multiple bocage texture a few years back I tried using numerical variations in the naming of the texture file - dragon-teeth.bmp, dragon-teeth 2.bmp, dragon-teeth 3.bmp, dragon-teeth 4.bmp etc (how many do we want? Anyone?) and yes it works ... ... a nice new dragon's tooth anyone ... Each set of teeth will be textured the same, so one gets clusters of same textured teeth. What would be interesting to know is do they persist in their different textured groups once placed on a map, could we indeed have a row of just dark ones and a row of sparkly clean ones ... assuming the mod is used to begin with of course. All this has got me thinking ...

I did, but for the hedgehog mod into dragon's teeth I think we are limited to one size and one texture. These are NOT flavor objects ... yet. It's a quick way to build your very own Westwall for a map. If we also do flavor objects then, yes, it's possible to make all sorts of barriers. I had a conversation with @kohlenklau about this and, similar to what @RockinHarry's suggesting, one approach is to use the hedgehog as an invisible, immoveable object with flavor objects as the visible item, if we can make this work as there are caveats as Harry pointed out. It would be similar to the way your wrecks might be based on a barrel or something like that. This then allows us to have maybe half dozen various sizes of teeth, barriers and other gnashers. Soon my friend, soon ... I'll make a version 1 for you to get stuck into then we can see about some others using flavor objects. I'm thinking The Westwall mod set (otherwise known as Mrs Miggins hangs out her Washing on the Siegfried Line) Re: the tram, my latest thoughts on that are an invisible immobilized AFV - a halftrack, or even something like a Bison would do the trick I reckon, so long as it's thinly armoured and not likely to be dangerous. It will provide a kind of core for cover and some concealment, so the pixeltroops would hopefully hide behind it. Course another option that just occurred to me is low bocage - not really a feature of cities so might be a way to mod a straight section into something more useful. Could certainly make the basis for a pile of rubble combined with an impassable ground tile like forrest - who knows. Anyway I digress - your tram if on something like a halftrack could also encourage your pixeltruppen inside ... or what about a small independent building ... no ... could we? I really don't know enough about buildings to say ... Yes, yes, yes, lets not get ahead of ourselves here - those things look like giant jacks ... For the uninitiated, this is how we used to pass the time ... (for @Warts 'n' all I think this is still in your future, although according to Wikipedia you may have been playing with a different material)

A lighter less weathered version ...

Now without further ado ... THANKS AND PRAISE BE TO OUR ALMIGHTY MOD GOD @kohlenklau He took them away, he chewed them up and sent me a beam of dazzling, tantrum-quenching, inspiration ... Here are your dragon's teeth in their proper, glorious form... So what made the difference ... I had completely forgotten that the CM engine does not like planes/faces of objects that are joined across angles. What we have to do is to separate the faces, ALL OF THEM, so that the texture fills the face and doesn't then seemingly smear across to the next face. I don't know why it's set this way, but it is. How does the saying go ...? Ah yes, Where there's a way there's a Phil Next up can someone make some of these gnashers ...

This is a great idea. I had discussed with @NPye the possibility of a tram road block as flavor object earlier but hadn't really applied myself to it. Using invisible, immovable items like the hedgehogs is perfect, though it's very likely that he's used a lot of hedgehogs as is for his maps. In the case of the tram I was thinking of an invisible immobilised AFV - a halftrack or something similar to add a bit of cover value as well. Nevertheless there's still plenty to explore here. And Harry, I like your other blocks - similar to the 'British' versions that @Warts 'n' all posted a picture of. The anti-tank trench would be great for Kursk scenarios!

Thankfully, never tested. Mind you there was always ...

Yes we're all desperate But praise where it's due. Anything you can deliver, just anything, please ... Don't know - with the state of our economy this could be gainful employment, pay per click ... I don't understand how this (the contour generator) wasn't included, and at least a randomising paint brush for terrain features, or the random map maker as @Vergeltungswaffe mentioned. It's kind of a no-brainer IMHO - sorry BF but in this instance I really think this was a corner cut too many. Let's hope it's noticed.

Jealous! I just might have to take a trip down to Somerset ... Sad indeed Ah but PC plod seems to be directing traffic in toy town. Is that noddy he's seeing through his gappy teeth? Thanks guys for some obscure strangeness and beneficial humour, I feel so much better now ... Now where did I put that bottle of single malt ...

Well actually with careful use it can do an fantastic job and can produce some useful results. If only I could sort out some of the issues with UV mapping we would be away. What I'm trying to achieve with the trees is something a bit more naturalistic, not just stick trees and cones, not to mention the bean poles holding up the bocage ... textures certainly go some of the way and a little bit of shaping can make a huge difference. But making it all in a vacuum is quite tough. Absolutely, I actually don't have enough hours in the day to do what I do, let alone create a whole new environment. Anything, no matter the size, that anyone can do is always very welcome. Yes it's a lot to store, good thing is though it's possible to just copy the Data sets for each game installation, back them up and have them at hand to reinstall. I keep all my Data sets on a NAS so I can install them on either my Mac or PC as needed. Also means I can keep everything in sync. My dream is to completely mod each game to my taste then have a master set that can be installed without Z folders filled with so many random tests, just replace all the original textures etc. Strange thing to code in, maybe BF were looking to do something else with it, though I can't think what. Maybe related to basements or tunnels or some such. All black would do it. What I was seeing was shadows when there were not even any 'hidden' leaf branches. They weren't masked out in the alpha channels, they just weren't there at all. It's like the game remembered they were there originally. It's very bizarre and has no rationale as far as I can tell. I wondered if that might be the case. I took a look a some other archive photos and noticed the same thing in other locations. Also noted there were quite a few different shapes. Hah, yes, have to be careful else @Vacillator will insist we get a room. We'll I'm happy that you like it and you're more than welcome to make use of it. Well that one up on me, didn't know it was possible to copy/paste the original metadata. I went and tried building another one up from scratch on top of the original hedgehog model, h kept the original inside the dragon's tooth - bit like a kinda big dragon egg waiting to hatch a little baby hedgehog ... < no that's not hedgehog poop Anyway I could export that with metadata intact but it still didn't work Actually the shadows look much better on your flatter coloured versions. Also they seem to have curved edges. I'll try some much lighter/cleaner texture and even more triangle texels - might ameliorate the issue temporarily until I can solve the UV problem, or not ... I'm pretty certain that there's something, possibly in the export script, that messes up the UV maps sometimes. So hard to know and sadly sbobovyc has moved on from the scripts. Thanks for taking a look at them Harry.

Aragorn my friend you should know the answer to this by now, as long as it takes ... and even longer when distracted ...

Wow, this is awesomeness, I can't say how many clicks I've suffered making 'random' forest and grassland. I really hope that BF see this and pay you a big wedge to incorporate this into the game editor in the future. In the meantime thanks!

Okay - I am just about at the end of my tether re UV maps - I've done everything by the book in terms of Blender - the meshes were cleaned up, made nice and simple, only about 14 triangles. The UV map is laid out in the prescribed manner, such a simple shape -result? Not on your life - they were worse than ever. I've tried multiple iterations, tried to import and export with metadata - not having it, but I really don't think that's the issue. The way UV maps are handled inside the mdr file is the secret sauce, looks lovely in Blender, export it and hey presto it's futzed. I had the same issue with trees and thought I'd cracked it but nope this one takes the proverbial biscuit. Textures smeared all over the place, utter mess. So I tried making the meshes more complex (totally nonsensical) by subdividing the faces, retriangulating, normalising, all that stuff, blahdeblahdeblah. It improves the flat faces mostly but I'm still left with weirdness at edges ... wtf! I've marked seams, some seams, lots of seams, one seam, I've done it without seams, I've let Blender do it's thing without touching the UVs. I've tried everything I can throw at this but still the horrible distortions remain. So I'm at the point where I won't be doing any more on this 'cos without the input of someone who knows what the issue is, NOT well meant guesses, sorry, I'm not learning anything and this is utterly frivolous. BF could probably solve all this nonsense at the drop of a hat but this is not even close to being on their radar. So I'll leave modding to those that care enough, play the games and shut up and ... If anyone above my pay grade - oh I don't get paid, I forgot! - wants to take a look at the Blender files they are here. Meanwhile I'm off to look at kittens on Imgur for half an hour ... Tantrum done ...

Gary, if you can lay your hands on it you probably want this book - Objective Ponyri by Martin Nevshemal, published by Leaping Horseman ISBN: 9780992274917. It is incredibly comprehensive and features superb aerial photos and maps. If you've got it already please ignore me.

Harry what is the pillbox bug you mention? I missed a lot of this type of stuff when I was out of the forums for quite a few years.

That's a bit of a mystery, could well be fire damage but oddly limited to just the front few rows and then some a couple of rows back. Maybe they were cleaning them? A row at a time ... I can see what look like shuttering marks on some of them, I guess they made them by pouring concrete into wooden moulds.

Yes that's a really useful site and has lots of free stuff. I've found many textures on there and they keep adding to it.

Great. Yeah I'm going to look at the texture, I just grabbed a quick one off the net, it's probably a bit too weathered. It also needs to fit properly, the stretching does my head in, it actually offends me that I make it look nice in Blender then the game chews it up! I have to go figure ... The real ones in you photo are very clean looking, and they seem to be joined by some sort of concrete walls - is that to bridge a small gully?

Subtle difference which I hope he appreciates

LOL LOL LOL There's another word the swear detectors can't do much about ... <<< I have no idea what this emoji thing is meant to be, it's what I got when I searched for helmet in the emoji palette, looks like an underdeveloped acorn to me.

Hey welcome to the forums Ham17. I don't think anyone has taken it on. There was a bit of chatter about it, but I haven't seen any scenarios nor maps for it here. Have you looked over on the Few Good Men and its Scenario Depot site? There might be something there. Would be a pretty mammoth undertaking but there's surely a campaign-worth of scenarios that could be made. Stalingrad was started quite a few years ago with a large mod pack since the timeframe is outside the game timeframe setting. If you're thinking of taking on Budapest then you might want to look at some of the work that's gone into the Berlin scenarios and extreme mods made for some of them. A lot of that could be helpful if you wanted to tackle Budapest.

Ooh, does this mean your tool will generate say a forest with a random selection of different tree types to fill the area occupied by forest on a real world map? That's a great addition. Can you do the same with grass areas - meadows, fields, heathland so that they are filled with a random selection of the grass type tiles? Long grass green and yellow with some weeds and flowers for meadows; long grass yellow and green with some extra long grass yellow and green, weeds and brush for steppe? That kind of thing would be a real bonus. Thanks for your superb efforts.

Alright then - here he is: I absolutely agree - it's the conversation that makes a big difference. Your encouragement goes a long way to making it worthwhile, and of course having happy guinea pig testers is always needed and very welcome. Now go play with some dragons teeth - grab Harry's map up above and take them for a spin.

For sure! I can't tell you how many hours I've spent just wandering around empty maps in 3D view - I'm sure there's a word for it somewhere - if not we need to invent one.

Far nicer than some of the crude comments have been received!

That's very nearly an ooh err moment! Phil will no doubt be happy to quash any rumours about the size of said item.