Lucky_Strike

Thanks for the tune! I did a quick battle test on your map with a reduced force - they seem fine; nothing can touch them, even tried some M7 shelling at 50m, just made big holes around them. Tanks will drive around them, going a long way out of their way just to avoid them. Infantry are happy to run through and around them, seemed to use them as cover to an extent. Breaching doesn't work though, which is also true of the original hedgehogs. So they do their job. I've bundled it up, you (and anyone else interested) can grab it here. Please keep in mind it's a beta and will likely change. Also the concrete texture is a new texture not a replacement, so that can just go in your z folder and won't affect anything else. The mod should work for any game that uses the hedgehog. Have fun!

That's a mod too far ... Thanks and no. You can have this instead ... It's one of my favourite mods - courtesy of our friend and star modder/scenario maker/inventor/dreamer/human dynamo @kohlenklau

Gandalf!

Not sulking too long ... I usually start with an original mdr then import or append found models. Also I've used a Blender add-on which is specifically designed for tree modelling - it basically allows one to grow a tree from scratch until the desired shape is achieved. It's quite good fun growing your own trees from sapling but very hit and miss and can be an utter time leech. With this approach I then have to do a lots of pruning to get the model to a sensible size in terms of polygon count ... then there's the joy of UV mapping, an utter nightmare on organic shapes. Yep, been there ... I'm happy with how your's works, so I leave that alone. The good thing about ReShade is that a lot of the shaders use language I'm more familiar with as they are based on stuff that image editing apps like PhotoShop do and one can also use LUTs to create instant effects, and it does it all in realtime on the fly so there's no need to leave the game to edit some pesky code. Yes those are a bit of a bugbear, but I know they are a limitation. What you've done there certainly improves the look. What I discovered making the burnt ground textures is that it's very difficult to make a convincing tile that will blend nicely with its surroundings, flavor objects don't use 8-bit masks so they have a hard edge which creates a kind of floating look. there's no way to make them blend without editing the 1-bit mask to a silly degree. So what I tried as a compromise is to create a flat texture to replace a ground texture bmp then add detritus in the form of flavor object as you suggested above. It's a reasonable approach, certainly something I want to pursue later. And YES no timber frames in cities, those are looking great. Yes it's very difficult to figure out the best approach with these huge mod sets. But I think using it as a kind of Pick'n'Mix is fine. I usually make a separate install of the game and just dedicate it to these massive sets that way I can keep it all in one place and dip into it for bits to use elsewhere. I have a CMRT normal install, a CMRT Barbarossa for Kohlenklau's massive mod and a CMRT Endkampf for Nigel's Berlin mod. Yes the Heaven & Earth project is a fantastic example of what can be achieved. Not sure why BF don't commission the guys to go full out on that and make it into another module (Vietnam huhhum) I think what you and @37mm have suggested wrt the Brandenburg Gate is the best solution, it'll mean the footprint can be a proportionally correct size and it'll function and a building not just a big lump of eye candy fluff. Maybe @JM Stuff could have a quick go with that model he has, see if it'll work in practice. Would be such an iconic statement piece for the Berlin maps. The Orthodox Church is just the one from CMRT, independent building 306. All I did was change the name of the mdr and LOD mdr to building303.mdr and building303-lod-1.mdr, then dropped them into my CMBN Z folder with their original bmps - the bmps keep their original names so the the mdrs find them. There's no 306 in CMBN, so no problem with that. I knew my thoughts about this couldn't be original. I could go into the mdr and edit the bmp links but there's very little point it was just a proof of concept thing for the cutting room floor. Yes I think it's a shader thing as well, it's very complex stuff and something that probably would need considerable coding effort (money). Trees can work as flavor objects if one dumps the leaf branches, then one can have a lot more on a map without slow downs. It's how part of my burnt textures pack will work eventually. The issue I have at the moment is that when I delete the small leaf branches I'm still left with their shadows! Gotta spend some time working that out.

Trees have a lots of elements, though the leaf branches are grouped into one they are all individual so there must be a lot of metadata associated with them. I suspect that's why trees use so many resources AND why the LODs kick in very quickly, especially when there are a lot of trees on the map. What is also interesting, and please don't quote me on this since that flawed memory may be kicking in again, but I seem to recall exporting tree mdrs from Blender without metadata and they apparently worked fine in game. I've looked at the metadata but really worry about changing anything in there. I think the best approach is what you're doing with individual changes, but it's a lengthy process for sure. I'll be facsinated to see what you discover. It's very frustrating as a modder, I do wish that BF would chip in to our knowledge base a little on the subject of things like metadata, 3D modelling techniques and UV mapping. I feel that the little knowledge we have is more likely to compromise the game than learning a proper approach. It's not like they need to reveal any secret sauce just some advice on best practice would really be helpful and cool. I'm going off now to sulk with my UV maps ...

Just a quickie as I must dash out. I couldn't resist those so had a quick look at the hedgehog objects. Now this is only a first attempt and the texture is distorting like crazy - even though it looks fine in Blender (always happens) but I give you the Westwall ... We're gonna hang out our washing ... These are in your Entering Germany map. As you can see there's a lot of distortion, the need some . Otherwise the objects come in quite well. The size is about the same as a hedgehog so they space out quite well and en masse give a pretty convincing effect. Next would be to test with yer actual tanks and breaching teams to see how they deal with them. If you would like to have a go I can upload this somewhere for you to grab.

JM maybe you need to install the add-on into an older version of Blender. Those games you mention are even older than CMx2 so there's a good chance that the add-on doesn't like the new Blender environment. Worth a punt. Any file you manage to open could be saved as a blend file to open in you normal version. I admire your determination to try and open the mds files, but don't drive yourself nuts over it, remember if you can open them and edit them your next big problem then would be how to get back to a mds that you can use in game.

Well what ever magic potion you sprinkled on that map it works really well. For me I like to keep shadows and shaders on but do wish the boys at CMHQ can include some soft shadows for overcast conditions. Trees do cast and receive, which is why they are such aggressive resource hogs. Which is why we need the game optimised for modern GPUs and CPU multi threading ... either that or we all do our development and modding on old XP machines! The would certainly be complex but still worth a look. I will have to take a look at the mdr at some point ... just add it to the list.

LOL, me too. I'm not the man for this, I just like to shoot stuff with my 37mm Flak. There were some tests being done by someone but I think they were related to the frag / shrapnel effects of HE on targets in the open and in cover. I always do an quick HE test on my tree and foliage mods to see how they work versus the original game models, it's no surprise that it's easy to mess stuff up in Blender so that the new models don't work correctly - getting things like tree branches waving in the wind or progressively disappearing with more HE hits is not simple. ReShade is very clever but I was never able to make a convincing wet-look. It's quite difficult to get the balance right colour-wise as it tends to be a bit all or nothing, easy to darken stuff, but because CM is quite an old engine the way effects are applied is a bit crude so ReShade can only do so much - darken one colour and everything will go dark. What is good is how it can do things like atmospherics, glow, mist that kind of stuff. Nice if one was into making CM movies. I know your movie shader as it's the one I use - you were kind enough to share it with me previously and I still use it as my everyday shader - it rocks! I do think there's more that could be done with shaders but as you say the language is pretty difficult, my poor old brain's just not wired to understand code ... I don't much like the flat textures that have to be applied to small hills to give any semblance to piles of rubble, they just don't work for me. I'm not a big fan of flat textures that try to imitate 3D, but I do realise there are limitations in the game so we must make the most of what is there. I think a lot can be achieved with rubble and wreck flavor objects, JM is doing some work on this that should hopefully bear fruit. When I think of battlefields I always think of the mess and detritus that is left behind, it's something that I really would like to see incorporated into the game from a purely immersive point of view. But I think it's way down on the list of stuff that is important for most players. Yes, playability is what most players are going to complain about, if stuff doesn't work as expected they soon become vocal. I know that Nigel did a lot of reworking to get the Berlin mod into a playable state, again limited by the games underlying geometry and modelling. Inspired by this, and your ruin mod, I had a look at the buildings in Blender - I didn't even know we had the mdrs for buildings! Anyway, yes I can see there's a very complex set of textures to deal with. I'm sure there are things we could do with the buildings that might allow us to create something unique like the Brandenburg Gate. I had a bit of a brainstorm and wondered can we use building models from one game in another, not a unique thought I'm sure, but if we can port game models then, theoretically, we can port new models into the game. I don't know what restrictions there are on the numbering/naming of the models - I think we'd have to steer clear of the modular buildings and just work with the independent buildings. So I tried this ... The First Russian Orthodox Church of Normandy ... What I noticed is that the pixeltruppen happily occupy it but they treat it like it's the original church so they stand where the original windows were. I will fire test it later, but it's got me thinking about a Brandenburg Gate based on something like two reskinned windmills next to each other ...

Ah but we can push it off the top of the forum activity page on occasion ... like this post will do ... edit yes, three posts above it and counting!

It's all grist for the mill! Hehe, you'll be on version 10 of your Berlin mod before you know in N, lots of extras to integrate. The list just keeps getting longer ... I've started to clear a bit of my other RL projects backlog so hopefully will be back onto modding CM real soon.

Yes, I'm gonna go and shoot up some flavour objects with some 37mm flak, see what damage I can do ... Yep we need all this type of stuff. I found creating the burnt ground texture that flavor objects aren't very good at sticking to the ground, they just tend to look a bit off. I ended up using one of the ploughed field textures which work well so long as the texture scale is corrected. I like the idea of all of this. Very interesting models there JM. Dammit, I guess I can put my 37mm away again! This is really useful stuff Harry. I do wish the search engine on the forum was more useful so that we could consult this type of material more easily. I just know I'll forget some of it and not be able to find it easily again... Can this be done on the fly, so one doesn't need to keep saving then reloading a scenario but rather just adding or deleting the mod tag to force the 3D view to show, or not, the tagged mod? I have toyed with the idea of alternative textures for alternative weather conditions. Shed load of work, could perhaps automate it a bit using scripts for darkening ground for wet weather. I wonder if it would be possible to achieve mostly in a shader. So have a wet weather shader (rather than a movie shader), a snow shader. Can shaders be mod tagged? I use ReShade for creating some atmospherics in game, but it's quite time consuming and not very portable, as well as being PC only. I wish that BF would incorporate it into the CM engine somehow, it's great software which can really alter the worldview. I'm not very familiar with buildings, haven't really looked at modding them, though I would dearly love to have some better rubble textures. NPye's Berlin textures are a huge improvement to how urban maps could look. Your building is a great addition, I will have to go and download it to take a look. I looked at your Entering Germany map last night, fantastic map! Really like the way the land undulates and how well you managed to integrate the bunkers . Also, and I have no idea why this would be, I had barely any slow downs panning around the map, even the very dense pine forest didn't cause hardly a judder, and that was with my own heavy tree mods installed. They can cause quite nasty frame rate drops sometimes. I can really see how the dragons teeth could enhance a map like this. We need dragons

Good job Harry, glad to assist. As an aside, I think that PhotoShop Elements (the cheapo, cut-down, consumer PhotoShop) will also open the 32-bmps. I recall using it back in the days of CMx1 to do some modding. I could of course be falling foul of flawed memory, but it would be good to know if it does or doesn't open and save our 32-bit files. I don't have a copy of Elements so if anyone else does perhaps they could give it a go.

It's like being your own drone / landscape photographer / war reporter all rolled into one, the replay mode was made for it. Very nice job. Particularly like them running in column.

This is interesting. I always wanted foxholes that were sunk into the ground even by just a bit more. I tried to do something similar with trenches which did have an obvious effect to the point where the pixeltruppen would actually appear to climb up onto the trench parapets to see out and shoot at their enemies. I think the depth of the floor is dictated by the geometry of the pixeltruppen. There's some limitation to their models that is not just about what looks right to us. With the trench the eye level looked fine but they still wanted to get out and shoot. BUT I never thought of changing the XYZ origin I just lowered the trench floor. I might have to take another look at this ... add's it to the long, and getting longer, mental list of projects... Very cool looking bunker and trenches ... All off this please ... Specifically ... Yes please! Real bugbear! As in Westwall ... nice Started some work on this ... broken trees and flavour objects are on their way ...

Yes it's a bit of a faff for sure. I can't remember what versions I was using, it's been a while. Certainly 2.92. I think I tried 3 but it's so different that I could see that I would have to learn a whole new load of tools. I really only used it so that I could use some modern plug-ins that helped with tree creation. If I get a chance when I'm fully fixed then I might try to do a tutorial, but it'll be a long time coming.

This does sound like a possible approach, I'm pretty certain that some flavor objects provide cover as you say. Do flavor objects suffer damage? I have images in my head of the Brandenburg Gate just suddenly vanishing when hit by some Russian 122mm shells, not even a pile of rubble! I'm gonna have to experiment to see what happens, try shooting up that ME109 wreck which I think is based on a crate object.

That's something I didn't try. Really not familiar with Gimp at all, deleted off my Mac as soon as I finished my last post in this thread My only suggestion is to use the version of PS you have to open the 32-bit files, then immediately save it as a .psd file which should preserve the alpha channel. I'm pretty sure that Gimp can then open the .psd file. Just make sure when you save the psd file from PhotoShop that you check the box that mentions compatibility in the save dialogue. This should ensure the file opens in anything that can read psd files.

What Erwin said - it was made for CMFI. You can grab it off my DropBox temporarily. Let me know when you've got it as it can't stay there. Hopefully Bootie, bless him, will get all these mods up on CMMODS eventually, in the meantime someone usually has them ...

Certainly would, but it is possible to work in newer versions of Blender then append the objects in a file using the older version that we're limited to.

This is also very true of much of the foliage - trees, bushes and bocage - they all have hard-coded values that can't be affected by the visuals. I tried making a very wide tree to see what effect it had on cover and concealment as well as LOS and movement, the answer was none of course. If we go ahead with a building as flavour objects it will really just be eye candy. 'Fo sure! The only other people that really understand ...

Hah, my Amazon order was left on the doorstep and got soggie in the rain. Waiting on reorder plus appropriate LiDAR Scanner to arrive...

That's interesting JM. He does seem to be talking about the same type of mds file, or certainly something very related, even seems to have some of the same nomenclature as our files and looks like he might be breaking down the metadata as well. Trouble is to my (very untrained) eye it's all just so much gobbledygook. Would take a lot of effort and knowledge of 3D/animation/coding to get into the CM mds files. What we actually need is for @Battlefront.com to release an official version of their Blender (or whatever software) plug-in/add-on so we can have even more fun with their wonderful game (that's my Oliver bowl by the way) ...

Great job Butschi - even an eejit like me can follow your instructions! As Artkin said, this is really important and innovative work - thanks.