Lucky_Strike

JM that's not got anything to do with how your file is constructed, nor how the game handles your textures. Those settings are for how Blender displays and renders stuff (use tooltips to help understand what stuff i, I know they're not great and often obscure, but those items are clearly labelled rendering - we don't need to render anything). I have even less than you in that palette, definitely no textured solid. I think you need to focus on getting your textures right before you import them into Blender. If you're using external models then convert all textures to bmp and use those to replace the existing dds (what are these files!!!) or whatever. Practice on something simple first to understand the process. You need to look at these palettes as I've said before: And only watch training videos that are pertinent to 2.79 or earlier, the method is completely different in later Blender versions and will just confuse (tick as appropriate) annoy and confuse again. BABY STEPS!!!!!

Hah, when it's ready, chimney first, then this ... oh and you're painting it by the way!

Thanks Rob your support is greatly appreciated. This is one of the wonderful features of these games, how they appeal to all sorts for all different kinds of reasons. I totally empathise with your desire to take great photos in game - I've spent many hours just wondering maps do just that. I do understand that our mods may not appeal to everyone but nobody is forced to use them. If we can get this beauty into the game we are not only improving some folks' days but also learning in the process, which is no bad think.

This is the free model I've found: It's quite well done, has good use of flat textures, nothing odd or procedural to convert. It opens in our version of Blender. The wireframe is nice and clean: At the moment it's a bit too complex nearly 400,000 faces/ 200,000 triangles. However over 100K of those are just for the bronze statue on top. Applying a quick and dirty decimator modifier to the mesh gave me about 30,000 triangles - which is I think quite good - I've had trees with more! You can see the model is starting to break down - some of the textures are stretching badly (notice on the columns) but not the worst I've seen, even compared to some BF stock models! If I can break it down into component parts then the decimate process will give a better result. I doubt I can do much about stuff like pixeltruppen walking through walls or pillars but perhaps the side temples will operate if they are barns. Use ground textures to make a lot of it off limits and it might just work. It's gonna have to be a compromise at the end of the day, but as a backdrop it should work. And if folks don't like that fact that it's not useable well they are welcome to replace it with something else or talk to the

I feel your pain but you need to find something other than GiMP to convert these files - ask kohlenklau or search his recent posts, he mentioned something else that should work.

Hah, it might be, I am looking at a model that might work. It would probably need to be split into a minimum of three parts - which is why I need to know about what models can butt up to. It's so iconic and really missed, especially as backdrop for the fighting in the Tiergarten area involving Panzer-Division Müncheberg. Two big barns and something in between might work. Obviously the barns would only offer their normal cover, but nethertheless it might work.

Okay that's useful. Do you want the chimney to be something that is useable as a OP for an FO? Personally I think you might want the church tower to be used for something else (or part of something cough Brandenburg Gate wing?) I really don't know much about building so I need your guidance - can the church towers be butted up to any other types of buildings? Or must it always be used with a church. Similarly with the factory - can it be positioned so that it's right next to another large industrial type building? Can you cut out some tiny sections of maps to send me an example of where I could use the chimney etc?

Are you linking the textures correctly in Blender as I explained. You MUST link them else you'll always get black holes ...

JM mate - you gotta find something else other than GiMP for your final bmps output, did you have a go at what @kohlenklau suggested? Blender doesn't care too much about image file types, it's not where you need to look to solve this, GiMP is the issue.

Yes definitely a good addition to BN - goddamnit I wish we had proper slit trenches and foxholes, a few of these over a slit trench would really work a treat.

Great - it's amazing what the 75mm PaK could do. Really looking forward to your new mod set.

You might want to rethink that title, the last user of it didn't have a good outcome ...

Hehe, and it's getting better all the time. Thanks for your support Aragorn! Yes, couldn't agree more.

Yeah, excitement at making it work got the better of me! I think the church towers are probably in use, @NPye could confirm what's already in the maps. But am very interested in the toy town factory. Not thinking the chimney needs to be anything more than a chimney ie doesn't need to be something that an FO can sit on top of, so the model I have would work quite well, scaled down a little. The main body of the factory looks a little small but I suppose it could be bolted to other industrial buildings to create a complex. Will need to go have a look at them on a map. Windmill's footprint is a bit too large for a chimney, though could integrate another structure (engine house) to fill out the footprint. Again if you, Nigel, can let me know what building are NOT is use then I can work with that. Once done you (Nigel) can sprinkle some magic textures on them. Yeah, as I said I'm not worried about it being multi-level. In RL one would have to scale it from the outside to get to the top as these things don't really have floors. It would be good if it could be occupied, though again it's not essential, rather if attached to a building then that building should work as normal. More important is to overcome the FOW issue. I recall seeing this. I wonder now with the ability to easily copy metadata if a house to be given the donated metadata of a bunker ...? It should be fairly trivial to remodel the bunkers to look better, retaining their volume and other characteristics whilst giving them a new skin. I've been pondering making them into more embedded emplacements, so that they blend better with the landscape. Adding some external earthwork and covering their roofs with soil and vegetation. With ethe way they already work with a ditch it would certainly improve how they look. If you can resolve the wormhole effect with your metadata tweak they would look great.

Cool finds!

Okay without further ado, first the winner of the name that host object competition - after much deliberation and an overwhelming response ... Harry was nearest by a fairly large margin (in as much as he at least managed to respond) so I guess he's the winner. I'll drink a glass to your health. Now onto the actual nitty gritty. Not sure if you're all aware but over on the custom 3D models thread Harry found an addon for Blender which I had completely forgotten about and not tried, despite installing it some time last year. Anyway, simply put it allows the wholesale copying of the metadata from original objects in the host mdr to any new objects, imported or appended or newly created. This then seems to allow for proper export of the modded mdr with metadata intact. So far it seems to work successfully, with more testing we hope it will enable models that function correctly within the game. As my first test I ran the process on the big ol' chimney since this had failed to export with full metadata. Although it looked fine in game I was cautious that it might not work properly. I have now exported it with full metadata and play tested it. The good news is that it worked flawlessly, the not so good is that I inadvertently forgot one problem with the host object that probably means a plan B is needed. The host object is a ... concrete shelter/bunker So, the good it can be occupied and provides the same cover as a concrete bunker, reasonably appropriate for something the size of the chimney; it only has the one level, which I think is appropriate for a large hollow structure (yes I understand it might be possible, in reality, to have an FO scale a structure like this and use it as an OP); it is not destructible, that is it won't suddenly disappear like a flavor object; it can be assaulted, defended, knocked out, provides cover and must be driven around. Now the not so good - as it's a bunker it has to be selected by one side, or the other, during force selection and placed by the selecting side; it is only seen by the side selecting it and remains unknown by the opposition until it's spotted, in the same way as any bunker would normally be spotted, despite its rather huge presence; you can't blow it to bits. I chose the concrete bunker originally as I knew there were none in Nigel's maps for his Berlin mod. I liked the idea that it might actually have some combat purpose and was not just eye-candy, however the fact that it only appears when spotted is a bit annoying. I may actually go with a windmill after all, that was originally my thought on making this or some other large building (Brandenburg Gate). However I think if a windmill is used then I need to find a model that justifies the extra floors - a large chimney like this just doesn't have floors. A large chimney attached to another building with floors may be the solution though ...

I thank you,

Yep, model plays without issue, behaved exactly as expected. Now to try it with a few other things that error'd when exporting, if I can remember what they were that is! just some other stuff Harry dug up ...

I won't even pretend to understand most of what you're doing, it's a whole other kind of magic that I'm not very familiar with at all. However it does look great and sounds like you're making good progress, and that'll be appreciated by everyone I'll sure. I have been looking at my earlier tree work again as I intend to get back to making my long promised mods for various theatres, all good as I can apply what I'm learning to creating some trees for the Pacific theatre.

Okay, discovered I had already installed that - losing it!! So, the big chimney of course refused to export with metadata. No changes to the underlying model but I got the usual unknown errors, no real surprise. So I just copied the metadata from the host object (top level) to both objects of the chimney. Now here's a very interesting thing; in my rush to test this I forgot to select the object hierarchy, normally absolutely essential otherwise script throws error warning that it's not selected. Exported without error! But cos nothing was selected the model was somewhat empty, mdr file size went from 107KB to 8KB ... Second go with full hierarchy selected, no more unknown error HUZZA! No obvious issues with the model in game at initial glance. Now need to test the model and see how it plays ...

Cool, this might help with some of the unknown meta errors which prevent mdr export with meta. I shall definitely be installing this. Thanks Harry. Now is there a way to extrapolate the meta? Haven't looked, but it would be useful just to see it in a spreadsheet for example, much easier to look at and compare across models.

Yep, I like to see on screen what I think would happen in reality. Especially like the replacement cower and buddy aid. Absolute must for me, can't tolerate seeing the curled up cower animations anymore.

Hargh, that's a coincidence that it looks quite similar. It's quite close to the centre as well, wonder if it's on the map I have will need to take a look. Hard to be sure with foreshortening but that bridge should help locate it.

Well as it happens a bottle arrived today, so I accept your gift

This sounds a bit like a video driver glitch. I sometimes experience flickers and have no progress bar on loading screen as well as occasional black screen. I haven't lost my icons but then again I haven't really been playing that much lately as I've been a bit engrossed with modding. What MacOS are you using? I'm on Big Sur, tending to stay a few iterations behind as I need stability for certain apps. As you're on M1 silicon you don't have a discreet graphics card but rather your graphics are integrated with the M1 chip so I guess a lot of what the game uses is emulated with more scope for glitches and the like especially on the video card side since. Have you raised a support ticket or had a conversation with @Schrullenhaft?