Lucky_Strike

Just thought those, @Dan Dare, @ASL Veteran, who might be interested in the SturmTiger, and following on from the conversations back in April, would like to know there's a new unit history which is about to be published by PanzerWrecks: Sturmtiger: The Combat History of Sturmmörser Kompanies 1000-1002 Due out on 26th, should be a very welcome addition to unit histories if the previous books by Lee Archer of PanzerWrecks are anything to go by.

+1 Kohl has a real talent for these short, highly energetic actions. Great video as well, thanks 37mm.

Thanks Erwin. Just looking at another potential models style, so there won't be anything imminently, but I do favour the tree packs approach, maybe tailored to terrain type, mountain, forest, steppe, farmland etc, as well as for each base game. Then players can have a kinda tree pick'n'mix.

Thanks Sgt I don't have SF2 but if it's a bush or tree rather than brush you can send me the models (mdr files and bmp textures) and a ref of what you might want. I haven't done much with bushes (no jokes please ), but they're essentially little trees, so no reason why they can't be improved. I do know that some of the tree models in SF2 (from the demo) use a different structure than other CM games but I'm pretty sure the engine will handle the older style as well if needs be, let's try. Blimey is that the time, must go and get a sandwich ...

We can probably make that, but might look odd in a forest! The ideal would be a heavy forest without brush option. But then again you'd have nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon if it were so easy!

under a mountain of drivel ...

Fo'sure. I doubt there's anything you haven't tried. ? can heavy forest be used in some way, stops vehicles in their tracks. Trouble is even if you can put it underwater, you'll end up with brush in the water as well. I don't think we can mod out the brush other than by making it invisible which is not ideal for the rest of the map. Tall bocage? but that would be an issue for your pixeltroops. LOL, precisely, always a silver lining.

Tagging would be a good idea for sure. Nice little jetty on a beach for them to enjoy a cocktail or two ...? I can see a good looking beach at the middle left of your pic. Can we get usable stairs outside?

Here's another tree that someone might like to see - Hammy Hamster perhaps? Once again this is a found model brung into CM with lots of wrangling. In practice it works quite well, but the leaves do not sway, leads me to think there's something in the leaf models I missed which determines movement. This is good as I might be able to isolate the setting that gives us sway. Or probably not! The leaf models here are very differnt than normal BF leaf models so that may also be the issue. I don't actually think I could model this with our standard leaf model. The trunk texture is messed up again, but now I know roughly what causes it I can hopefully remedy the issue. So thinking about what @Erwin asked regarding releasing these - I'm leaning more towards tree packs rather than full terrain mods. Most of the models I've made lately can be used in any of the games, with little or even no interaction from the player they can be dumped into your Z folders and off you go. Any thoughts out there? Ta

This is amazing work, there's nothing trivial about this level of modding! Nice, very James Bond, Phang Nga Bay. I wonder if the sea colour can be modded, probably would upset colour of rivers though, forget it, bad idea.

Are you sure they're not washing their dirty undies? The detail on their uniforms looks great.

Thanks Slippy, your support is much appreciated. Would be nice to know if @Battlefront.com have any intention of adding extra tree slots to BN, though I doubt they will, not really much demand for it, most players, aside from map makers, have probably never even noticed. But would, nevertheless be a welcome addition, pretty please , for arborists.

Tony's of course, we don't like crooners here.

It's amazing what a wee dram of the good stuff will do ... feeling all warm and fuzzy inside reminded me of winter so off I went to explore what could we do with winter trees (yes I know it's not CMBN). Found a real beauty online that needed to get into the game. Quite a few nips and tucks later, some swearing, a bit more of the tonic and I think we could be onto something. The textures need to be massaged a bit, but in principal ... we may get four seasons yet ... ... it's the big one on the left

I appreciate the encouragement you give Erwin, and know you aren't pressuring . I will try to give you some idea once I get over all the excitement of Blender and have learnt enough to feel confident in my products. There is just so much to explore ...

The mix of trees has to be right to achieve player LOS at level 1, too many 'hairy' old spruces and one can't see a thing. Of course the graphics don't affect game LOS, that's writ in stone. I don't really know when I can release this lot. Normally when I do a mod I like to make a complete pack because I will often revisit earlier drafts to get the colour a little more coordinated for instance. However these might come out as single tree mods or possibly a forest mod for use across various games. I need to do some more testing to make sure I don't break anything, then I can think a bit more about how best to bring them to you all.

Hmm, the limit is whether I can make things work in Blender. There have been a LOT of trials and failures on the way, BUT we are learning more all the time so we shall see. And yes, improved performance will be a great boost for the game. En avant!

Thanks Alex. I made a hawthorn bush, it's in my Hedgerow Hell mod, also added quite a bit of hawthorn to the bocage. Problem with BN is the limited number of tree models we have to play with, the existing set is only five strong and so far as I know it's not possible to expand on this number. The other games feature up to 8 models; I was hoping BF would bring BN in line with the others since the engine is now the same throughout and can obviously handle more variety. I could change the existing small tree to hawthorn, but that is often used for orchards. May do it anyway ... or make a bigger bush ... either way will need a new base model to make it good and gnarly.

Hah! Hmmm, deciduous evergreen contradiction might be a bit of a pain ... but then again ...

Feeling ambitious, and buoyed up by some success working with the 3D models in Blender, I decided to experiment with a bit more scratch modelling. I remembered that someone had mentioned having pine trees that reached down to the ground, that looked a bit more wild and less like plantation trees. So here I give you an old spruce. You're either going to love it or hate it depending on how you play and what you like to do in forests. I've staged these in CMRT because that has eight tree varieties so it's easier to mix in two types of spruce, my new old one interspersed with the type with a very bare trunk. Mixed in this way creates a much more dynamic forest. I can even see an excuse for replacing all the tree models with spruces and pines in various stages of growth, even some tiddlers - image ... ... new spruce on the left, spruce with bare trunk on the right ... the view out from underneath - probably needs a little bit more foliage ... ideal for mountainous scenarios ... So there you have it. The model I've made is a combination of reworked found and original BF. Interestingly the found was much higher detailed than the normal models we have, meaning a lot of extra info is stored in the file to create a more naturalistic tree. I thought these would fail miserably in game, leading to poor performance and lots of stuttering if they worked at all. To my delight they are fine on my system which is fairly conservative in terms of GPU. This bodes well for future model making and I hope it's a sign that I can push the envelope a bit further than before ... guess what's coming next ...

Thanks JM and Kohl. I was lucky enough to have an sneaky peak at this and playthrough earlier versions of the scenarios - they were great adrenalin rushes and I got soundly beat by the AI several times! Great stuff!

Thanks, Aragorn, we're getting there. Now I've cracked this particular nut I can progress with my main projects.

Not so far off what my old school's pitches were like - helped to cushion the impact on a freezing cold January sports afternoon ... supposedly!

Thanks LongLeftFlank, bad foot left me with extra time and having to spend most of it sitting down, shame Tulip trees are uncommon in Europe, mostly ornamental reserved for parks and the like. From the time I've spent working on the mods - this and Hedgerow Hell - I do know that we are seriously lacking in tree variety in CM. The games, by necessity have to limit the number of models, the newer releases do have more and I hope that we may get more for BN one day. It's true that much of the ancient forest of Europe has disappeared even by the time of WW2, but actually there are/were still many pockets of woodland with trees well over several hundred years old. As a child growing up in southern England, very similar countryside to the Bocage in Normandy, I spent many a happy day playing in woodlands comprised of massive beech, sycamore, ash, elm etc and the hedgerows were dotted with many ancient trees. Large plantations of conifers tending to be more of a northern European thing, though they have become more widespread over the post WW2 years. Interestingly that trend is starting to reverse in a progressively more environmentally aware world where the negative impact of these monocultures is seen on the diversity of other species of flora and fauna. Yes, again here we are limited by how the game engine works. I am able to mod the trees, and indeed bushes and bocage, to give the impression of very dense undergrowth but mostly it has no impact on how the mechanics work, whether I make a sapling or a behemoth out of a regular tree the engine still sees a regular tree. The only real effect in-game is if one plays mostly at ground level with visual aids turned off, then one looses track very quickly of where the enemy is and where one left that MG squad!

So after a bit of a bocage distraction, I've been messing around with the oak once more, trying to perfect how the textures are applied in the 3D model's file. To say it's not been easy would be an understatement, but finally at about version 15.3i (I started at 01.0a so you do the maths) I finally had a breakthrough, or rather I had the breakthrough whilst cleaning my teeth last night, this morning, whatever ... Now we can have nicely textured wonky trees, like what grow in nature, or at least a model of a tree that's wonky ... perhaps more ... ... Fritz and his comrades were grateful for the (Re)shade provided by the old oaks that grew in the corner of the field ... ... no Reshade ... ... and debated the question so many had pondered before ... ... why have just one texture on a tree trunk when you can have two? (maybe) The point of making a wonky tree was to have an, urm, wonky tree, something a bit more naturalistic. The process of getting there has been painful, but we're all born of pain and why should the oak be any different? As a side effect I think it's time to introduce a tree model that has an extra texture, here an old wound, which won't randomly appear on other parts of the tree which reuse the basic bark texture, it's a texture of it's own only appearing on part of the trunk; think of some ivy perhaps climbing up one side of the tree, or a smattering of moss just around the base, or maybe a dead branch on a pine, devoid of bark completely ... all maybe possible now. As it stands I have to look at refining the shape a little, the compromise of achieving tree-nirvana is much more work on the shape than I had hoped, the harder lines need to be softened so that our trees are as pretty as can be.