Lucky_Strike

Tee-hee! Errr ... I made Hedgerow Hell But thanks for your concern. Yes I agree, the original game bark which Aris modded was very nice, then along came a couple of others and they were also improvements; my Hedgerow Hell tree barks were mostly brand new textures which I hoped took the art of bark texturing to the next level, with identifiable species of tree. However, the point of this one is not so much bark, but rather to have tree trunk shapes which are not constructed simply from straight, elongated cone shapes interlocking with each other; the trunk is a cone, the branches are also cones, albeit with non-circular cross-sections. What I've done here is a very different and, dare I say it, new way of making trees for CM (though of course we don't know if BF may have tried this in the past). As I said in my post above, there are caveats which I am well aware of - the noticeable angularity for instance - but I feel this is something that I may be able to ameliorate to some extent. Also there are other implications and benefits from what I am doing which might also possibly help other modders. If you look carefully at the games we have you will notice that most of the shapes used are very simple or combinations of simple shapes, what I hope to show is that we can have more complex shapes, and given today's much more powerful GPUs and CPUs some of this extra horsepower could perhaps be leveraged to improving how the game environment looks. With the up coming release of CMBN on Steam BF will attract a lot of potential new customers and many of them will have an expectation of how graphics can look today, so, IMHO anything that can make for a more immersive experience, whilst still maintaining the fantastic underlying mechanics of the CM games, is all good.

Well, what's the old saying, where there's a will ... no more nasty texture distortion (caveat: with some compromise) ... There's no manual for how to mod CM, especially how to mod the 3D models, so this is all made up after much trial and even more error, but some careful thinking with prompts from our amazing mod powerhouse that is @kohlenklau and a drop of the special sauce (donations very welcome ) ... I spent one more (very long) night bashing my head against a very tough tree trunk, trying to get rid of aforesaid texture distortions, and just as Mr Blackbird was greeting the dawn I decided to call it quits. Off to bed for you my lad and dream of mods. Then, just as I was cleaning me gnashers I had a thought about my last attempts, which had seemed better but still not much; I had separated all the main components into their own meshes (sorry if this sounds like nonsense to the uninitiated, it might help some other poor soul), but most of the distortions remained except at some edges, what if, as with the game's originals, the models all need to be tubes? So, today, I cut the trunk into a series of tubular sections, deleted most so that I was only concentrating on the large bottom section, and tried again, better! What about slicing the trunk lengthways - imagine a paper tube cut along it's length then opened out flat; better again the texture distortion along the cut edges gone! You see where this is headed? Finally, cutting the whole tube into manageable sections gets rid of the distortion at ALL the edges of ALL the sections, each sub-mesh effectively has it's own texture map that stops at it's edges and doesn't affect it's immediate neighbours - hey-presto no distorted textures (excepting if I actually make them distorted). Why this way? Don't know, maybe the game cannot handle curves beyond a certain angle, there are for sure other curved facets in the game, but most are made from tubular shapes constructed with triangular cross-sections or square, pentagonal, hexagonal, octagonal, etc (essentially triangles, look down the muzzle end of a large calibre gun barrel when next in game to see what I mean, they're not round, you get the picture), nothing wonky ... so all tubular shapes need to be constructed in this way OR from flattish individual panels, more like building for instance. So here boys and girls is a more naturalistic tree trunk without nasty weird distorted textures that will work in game ... ... it's only the bottom section, the branches need a whole load of work to do the same and so on ... ... the caveat (at the moment) there are more angular interfaces, much less curviness and more sharp edges, compare it to the very first images of the tree in game at the start of this thread ... ... in-game, in the corner of a field, Fritz hiding in the shadows ... ... whilst his comrades sun themselves in the long grass at the woods' edge, waiting for Tommy ... The sharper angles might be something I can work around by adding more faces to the 3D mesh, which don't impact massively on the 'drawing' cost of a tree in-game compared to all those leaves ... my tree already has a smaller triangle (face) count than the official version. Happy days!

Several levels above me then! I got a silver star on my Blender grade school homework. Thanks for taking the time with all your thoughts and suggestions Kohl, very much appreciated ... Thanks, this is why I wonder if it's just a stretch to hope it will work. I can't see anything that technically would prevent something this wonky from working, BUT I do notice that all the UV maps for BF originals are very, I mean ultra, neat and packed like how my wife packs to go on holiday. I tried repacking the UV maps but still to no avail. I have been a bit reticent about doing the whole of the UV unwrapping more manually as it's a ton of work that may not pay any dividends. But I will see if a horizontal seam works on the bottom part of the trunk. The auto unwrapping should work according to all that I've read, it just won't make for pleasing results. Yes, other than messed up UVs that export is flawless. No dice, the weirdness remains. The brown is coming from the UV map as opposed to the texture. I have no idea where that is though when I look at my Blender file, it's just not there. It only appears on export and in the reimported mdr. There's something I'm missing in the Blender file. It may of course be associated with the mysterious metadata .... Do you mean just for the very bottom edges of the model? Or every single vertex? I just notice you've sent me message so I'll go and read that ...

I don't think the word just could ever apply to the work you've done Mikey! I did wonder about approaching this from a different direction, maybe a very large texture, but I just couldn't wrap my poor noodle around how to proceed.

Yes, it's now out of stock on Panzerwrecks, don't know if it's available elsewhere. Panzerwrecks stock some very serious books and it's nice to see a small publisher/distributor thriving in these tough times.

Yes I get what you were saying Aragorn . I do think the Kindle is a very well implemented device, but having spent the best part of the last huhhum years designing books to look as good as possible, even the humble paperback, I can't abide how the text can be so mushed. But each to their own and far be it for me to criticise another's choice.

Some of you fine fellows will know that I've been playing around (read: tearing my remaining hair out!) with mdr files whilst preparing some new flora for BN and RT. One of my side projects to this has been trying to develop new, naturalistic tree modes - a large, leaning oak tree to begin with. Anyway long story short, I got as far as doing the basic modelling, importing it into the games, all seemingly hunky dory except that I needed to work on the UV map for the bark texture. After plenty of study and looking at the various online guides, I thought I had a fairly good grasp of the basic principle of UV mapping and proceeded with unwrapping my model and making various attempts at manipulating the UV map to produce a nicely textured tree, this is where it all went t*ts up ... So from my understanding of models for CM the model has to be made of triangular texel faces, I guess they need to be flat/planar as well. The unwrapped UV map will consist of islands (I'm in Blender doing this BTW) with as little texture distortion as possible, though some texture stretching is inevitable and allowed? So far I have tried multiple times to achieve a good outcome by hand manipulating the UV map; using the various UV map unwrap projection methods; using smart UV unwrap; using project from view in an orthogonal viewport ... and goodness knows what else. All to no avail, the result is always more or less malformed. It doesn't break the mdr, the basic model is fine, I can still export and use the model in game without any other issue. Here are images of what I'm getting from the export: The areas highlighted show severe distortion of the texture at what I think is the edges of islands on the UV map, though it's hard to say ... (just realised these look somewhat phallic, sorry, completely unintentional) ... same tree rotated view, more of the same though the area highlighted blue is distorted in the original UV map since I haven't altered it from what was auto unwrapped ... ... the model in Blender, no particular unexpected distortions, some wholly expected joins ... ... rotated, again no unexpected distortions, the highlighted area is the distortion seen previously where I haven't adjusted the UV unwrapping ... ... the model unclothed, I tried with more or less triangle faces, made no noticeable difference ... ... the UV map as it stands; the top few islands are a side branch unwrapped by using seams and selecting a section at a time, then using a bit of manual manipulation to realign some faces; the middle five islands are done using project from view unwrapping, no extra manipulation except to move them into a row; the bottom mess is from the smart unwrap - as you can see it lives up to it's name! All that was done to this was to relax the angles to reduce stretching ... ... what I have discovered is that if I then reimport my exported tree.mdr this is it's UV map, obviously something is going wrong possibly at the export stage; possibly a limitation of the export module? The brown colours on the left are inherited from the original game tree mdr file and don't appear in the file until after it's exported, at least I've never seen them and I've reset the UV map on multiple occasions. My questions are: • Am I flogging a dead horse here, is what I want to make impossible in the current game with the current tools we have? • If it is possible, where might I be going wrong? • What tools do BF use for 3D modelling? • Can we please, please, please at least have an official tool from BF to open and resave the mdrs? @sbobovyc did an amazing job creating the tools we have now for import and export, @Aquila-SmartWargames @Frenchy56 @kohlenklau @JM Stuff @benpark amongst others have pursued and encouraged the modding of 3D elements in the games, and what would really help this to flourish is for something to make the process a little easier. I know this isn't a priority for @Battlefront.com but boy would it help us poor modders ... did I say please ... • If not then I'll shut up and go away ... I would really appreciate any and all input, suggestions, offers of an empathetic beer, a kitten ... If you want to look at the files they are here, the blender file does have the models for the tree crown as well, they are just hidden. The tree mod can be opened in most CM games just drop the mdrs and bmps in your z folder as usual. Ta

Me, I like big pictures well organised on nice paper! I always try to get in at the off on these big production numbers. They are always going to be limited run as with any niche luxury item. Preordering on Amazon is a good way to track the progress, they will always give one a heads-up if the pub date slips, and it's easy to keep a track of once pub dates are confirmed. Otherwise folks like Panzerwrecks have very effective emailing lists and early adopters notifications.

I did have CMBN running in Wine on MacOS a while back, isn't that also on Linux? I have also had it running under VMWare, again on MacOS. The biggest issue with emulation in the past has been the graphics drivers, but these have definitely improved over that last few years. Advantage of emulation is one can create a static, safe environment just to run a very specific programme.

Thanks for the heads up Probus. MS have been pushing some pretty flakey updates lately, so much so that I have disabled auto updates entirely as I have the luxury of being able to isolate my gaming rig since it's only ever used for CM, kinda freeze-dried in time now. Might try Windows 11 when it's out of beta, otherwise no more updates for me for now.

Definitely a sound investment, superbly researched and IMHO, probably definitive. I actually got this when originally released, I believe it's in a second or third reprint run now. Worth scouting around for it as it might pop up at a discount somewhere, or possibly secondhand. Panzerwrecks do also have discounts and sales every now and then, though postage is always going to be on the high side cos of the bulk of the thing.

Yes, when I did my original edit of the trench I do now wonder if the reason my sandbags were not textured, despite the bmps being in the same folder as the mdr, was actually because the sandbag.mdr was NOT in that folder. The way these parts relate in like a library of materials and models. Of course what also seems possible is to bake the child parts into an mdr, which suggests the way they were originally set up was with some kind of library of parts with a view to efficiency and space saving, probably in relation to GPU ram. It's interesting that the same was not applied to the natural terrain, at least not in the earlier games. So far as I've seen all of the models are self contained though there are still several tree mdrs that I have yet to fully appraise. Though SF2 does have some very different trees that share textures/parts. Yes, this can be a real life saver. I'm in the middle of trying to figure out the UV map for a new tree trunk, sadly no amount of reuse is going to help this one, boy is it frustrating. I'm going to have to do some serious study on this, all grist to the mill! Professors of Mod, Frenchy and Kohlenklau

Of course ...?

Ah, so it's the other way around, I see. Would explain why the sandbag child is the way it is unless it's baked into the parent mdr by doing some editing on it. Yes, I always open the mdrs with their texture bmps in the same folder, it's not the first time that I've seen a model NOT pickup the texture, but because of the way the game engine handles the mdrs and bmps the graphic is fine in game. Just the export that may fail sometimes, though easily fixable.

So do other mdrs reference the sandbag child models in the trench mdrs? I have wondered if there's something like this going on. When I first opened the trench 1.mdr It had no sandbag texture image linked to the sandbag child despite the bmp being in the same folder, yet when I exported the file it didn't complain that the texture was missing and the model was fine in game. Adding a reference to the texture bmp also seems to be fine. This looks good, much more appropriate to a desert scenario. This is a great idea, you could also have some barbed wire there, they seemed to like that in the desert. I had thought of adding some foliage camouflage across the front area for Normandy.

I'm pretty certain it's not affected as the trenches and foxholes are very extrapolated, so their protection is factored in to calculations regardless of what they look like. I certainly didn't see any horrendous casualties nor lack of casualties in the few playthroughs I did. I think the way the engine handles stuff like this has been discussed many times with, so far as I can tell, no evidence that messing about with the 3D models actually affects where the bullets and shrapnel go. Looking at Kohl's recent videos actually illustrates this, the guy with the LMG would have a face full of his own lead if the wall of the trench were affecting the trajectory of his bullets. This also suggest that the weird dances and behaviours one witnesses are actually going on all the time with trenches, and probably come down to things like LOS rather than what the 3D model looks like to us.

They look like they're having fun. I will have to have a look at this myself, as I said above, British squaddies with Brens are happy to shoot standing. There is probably something in the skeleton coding that is effecting the Axis troops behaviour, wonder what the Russians do ...? How do the Polish resistance deal with the trenches Kohl?

I applaud your enthusiasm, but it does require quite a big commitment to do the rest, and, whilst I would like to oblige, I just haven't got enough copies of me to pump these out at the moment. It's a maybe project once I've finished some other stuff. Like Kohl, I may do some more fiddling around with trench 1. There might be someone else who has an inkling to learn a bit of Blender, enough to do the other shapes.

Yes, I haven't tried LMGs nor HMGs in either of the trenches I made, just some squaddies with Brens. They tend to fire either standing (good) or kneeling on the parapet (not so good).

You need to get the mower out ...

I refer the gentleman to this, please repeat: This, you can already thanks to Kohl: And this, particularly my last sentence:

Fewer squaddies per trench section certainly makes it easier to persuade them to stay in the trench, but as soon as the fun starts they are still in and out of the trench. I didn't try it in a flat open area, so they may stay down if their LOS is better, but I think because the trench is a visual gimmick to make us feel better, in what ever shape it comes, the pixeltruppen are always going to behave oddly around it, and it's always going to look more or less odd; that is to say it's a compromise at best and it just depends what compromise one prefer - a nice graphic with exaggerated weird behaviour or slightly less weird behaviour with a, how did Kohl put it? Ah yes, little kids wading pool. I may try tweaking the width to see if it improves their behaviour, but to be honest I think Kohl's original solution is pretty much our best outcome.

Did a quick hotseat playthrough using the incomplete map above with a few opposing squads. As soon as the game started the British troops were popping in and out of their trench, like some fairground shooting game. It may have been a LOS issue, but some stayed down and seemed happy taking potshots. The cover the trench provided seemed good, though when the squaddies took cover they did tend to do so floating in space or burying various parts of themselves in the rear wall of the trench. Overall, however, it's no stranger than the behaviour seen with normal trenches and as a visual device it is certainly more pleasing. For now, until I maybe have more time, I think I'll tidy up this one and the wider version then upload them for folks to do what they will with them.

Well, a quick Blend later - it's possible to make a slit trench sort of thing, a quick, rough (though somewhat neat, who hired the mini-digger?) effort; sandbags front only with no wooden supports for the revetments (what would health and safety say) ... ... but as always with CM there are caveats. The pixeltroops need a lot more sideways space (this is one squad less PIAT team plus HQ) otherwise they just cluster up onto the parapets; some still clamber out if they are front facing, you'll notice that they are all at a slight angle facing forward, this way they all stay in the trench, though what happens when they're attached is anyones guess; some will bury themselves in the rear wall, this may be because the floor of the trench is partly under that wall so a tweak might stop that behaviour. Generally though it looks OK.

Now there's an idea for a mod, can we have bouncy castles as well ... I did take a bash at the foxholes, ditchlocking a single action square 1 or 2m below ground level with invisible foxhole textures. Some work some just look like, urm, ditches. They work quite nicely right up against bocage, look a bit like the sort of dugouts that were cut out of the earth banks seen in period photos. Can work quite well as a ditch across roads, though the road texture has to be removed. Sadly because of the way foxholes are deployed, four per square, the pixeltruppen tend to gravitate to the corners of the ditch so they look like they are all trying to clamber out. What would be ideal would be a narrower ditch that could be angled across an action square, sort of like a sunken footpath-sized model. I wonder if trenches can be shrunken, though probably matters nought since the ditch is what we really need to be shrunk (man, shrunk and shrunken are mighty odd words when said enough times repetitively ...) This will be very exciting stuff when you get it released! Thanks for all your efforts Kohl & JM!