Lucky_Strike

Great shots again Falaise.
Reckon the Kubel driver got out to “refresh” himself in the bushes, or he’s found a nice quiet spot for a picnic😉

some german vehicles
The panzer IV Nathalie

luck, on the slope, the shell hits the top of the armor !!!

the panther smashes the wall

lost in the tall grass

salut Albert 
for now it's a mix with mine
look at it it's not over yet but it will change the face of the game
 
 

that panther has the embarrassing "just been sherman-ed look".  a dozen+ frontal hits, some probably damaging main gun. 

Apart from the eastern front i'm actually longing back to Normadie...
Hopefully we will see some new scenarios and campaigns depicting the Normandy fighting that take advantage of all the modules and the vehichlepack...as well as all the improvements that has been made to the editor and gameplay...
It is currently quite a different game compared to when the original Normandy stuff was made...
Could be intresting 😁

Well, I was actually hopeful of releasing the finished mod, but as it the way of these things I got a bit sidetracked (again) and in the process I discovered a few things that I hope will improve the mod some more. Mainly it's a quick fix here and there which I don't expect most of you will probably notice that much, but it really does help. In the meantime some bones and progress ...

The variety of bocage is now legion - I'm creating about ten varieties though one will intentionally be made for hedge use - hedges are the smallest and lowest of the hedgerow / bocage textures. They can be traversed by pretty much everything I believe but do provide a bit of concealment. I'm working on a particular hedge mod which I think will make a good substitute for the lack of thickets in wooded areas.
I've been looking at my trees again, and again, and again ... I'm a fan of trees in the game, I know they aggravate some people but I like them, so I've been working up a set of trees that I hope will give everyone enough variety to suite their own particular tree fetish. So ...

... we now have the venerable Ash tree in two sizes, one medium, younger tree, one larger, older tree.

Some fine tuning to do, but they provide cool shade on a hot day. (Ash will also make an appearance in the bocage ...)
Not to be left out, I also revisited the generic pines. I was never happy having one of my previous efforts, a Red Cedar, as a choice so that's out and we now have a proper (as proper as the game allows) Scot's Pine ...

And a revised, very nice Spruce:

If you have the Red Cedar and want to stage an invasion of North America scenario then it's ideal. Think of it as a limited collectors edition.
One of the things that really slowed me down was the crop doodads. Boy were they a lot of work, but I wanted to make them as good as I could. Reference was good, but I needed some very specific images to work with. In particular the flax was a real challenge, short of me actually getting on a ferry to Normandy and photographing them, it took a long time before I was happy with my base images. I hope that the result - Le Lin - is acceptable ...

... in flower. A very dense crop trying hard to not look like a hairbrush ...

... nearly ready for harvest (the with added poppies version). Provides superb concealment!
So that's where it's at, should be here in time for Christmas! Oh, that leads me to one last thing ...
 
 

I liked the Spruce so much I just had to decorate them ... and yes this is a mod that I'll release ... can't make them light up yet though ...

Well, I was actually hopeful of releasing the finished mod, but as it the way of these things I got a bit sidetracked (again) and in the process I discovered a few things that I hope will improve the mod some more. Mainly it's a quick fix here and there which I don't expect most of you will probably notice that much, but it really does help. In the meantime some bones and progress ...

The variety of bocage is now legion - I'm creating about ten varieties though one will intentionally be made for hedge use - hedges are the smallest and lowest of the hedgerow / bocage textures. They can be traversed by pretty much everything I believe but do provide a bit of concealment. I'm working on a particular hedge mod which I think will make a good substitute for the lack of thickets in wooded areas.
I've been looking at my trees again, and again, and again ... I'm a fan of trees in the game, I know they aggravate some people but I like them, so I've been working up a set of trees that I hope will give everyone enough variety to suite their own particular tree fetish. So ...

... we now have the venerable Ash tree in two sizes, one medium, younger tree, one larger, older tree.

Some fine tuning to do, but they provide cool shade on a hot day. (Ash will also make an appearance in the bocage ...)
Not to be left out, I also revisited the generic pines. I was never happy having one of my previous efforts, a Red Cedar, as a choice so that's out and we now have a proper (as proper as the game allows) Scot's Pine ...

And a revised, very nice Spruce:

If you have the Red Cedar and want to stage an invasion of North America scenario then it's ideal. Think of it as a limited collectors edition.
One of the things that really slowed me down was the crop doodads. Boy were they a lot of work, but I wanted to make them as good as I could. Reference was good, but I needed some very specific images to work with. In particular the flax was a real challenge, short of me actually getting on a ferry to Normandy and photographing them, it took a long time before I was happy with my base images. I hope that the result - Le Lin - is acceptable ...

... in flower. A very dense crop trying hard to not look like a hairbrush ...

... nearly ready for harvest (the with added poppies version). Provides superb concealment!
So that's where it's at, should be here in time for Christmas! Oh, that leads me to one last thing ...
 
 

I liked the Spruce so much I just had to decorate them ... and yes this is a mod that I'll release ... can't make them light up yet though ...

Well, I was actually hopeful of releasing the finished mod, but as it the way of these things I got a bit sidetracked (again) and in the process I discovered a few things that I hope will improve the mod some more. Mainly it's a quick fix here and there which I don't expect most of you will probably notice that much, but it really does help. In the meantime some bones and progress ...

The variety of bocage is now legion - I'm creating about ten varieties though one will intentionally be made for hedge use - hedges are the smallest and lowest of the hedgerow / bocage textures. They can be traversed by pretty much everything I believe but do provide a bit of concealment. I'm working on a particular hedge mod which I think will make a good substitute for the lack of thickets in wooded areas.
I've been looking at my trees again, and again, and again ... I'm a fan of trees in the game, I know they aggravate some people but I like them, so I've been working up a set of trees that I hope will give everyone enough variety to suite their own particular tree fetish. So ...

... we now have the venerable Ash tree in two sizes, one medium, younger tree, one larger, older tree.

Some fine tuning to do, but they provide cool shade on a hot day. (Ash will also make an appearance in the bocage ...)
Not to be left out, I also revisited the generic pines. I was never happy having one of my previous efforts, a Red Cedar, as a choice so that's out and we now have a proper (as proper as the game allows) Scot's Pine ...

And a revised, very nice Spruce:

If you have the Red Cedar and want to stage an invasion of North America scenario then it's ideal. Think of it as a limited collectors edition.
One of the things that really slowed me down was the crop doodads. Boy were they a lot of work, but I wanted to make them as good as I could. Reference was good, but I needed some very specific images to work with. In particular the flax was a real challenge, short of me actually getting on a ferry to Normandy and photographing them, it took a long time before I was happy with my base images. I hope that the result - Le Lin - is acceptable ...

... in flower. A very dense crop trying hard to not look like a hairbrush ...

... nearly ready for harvest (the with added poppies version). Provides superb concealment!
So that's where it's at, should be here in time for Christmas! Oh, that leads me to one last thing ...
 
 

I liked the Spruce so much I just had to decorate them ... and yes this is a mod that I'll release ... can't make them light up yet though ...

Well, another quickish experiment later, and I don't think we can have actual coexisting 3D models for the same numbered tree only MAYBE different textures, though even with this there are likely to be redraw issues which I think are associated with those pesky lod files. I think it would be best to either use scenario specific mod tags for one or two damaged tree types, or just temporarily add the damaged trees to the z folder when playing a scenario that has damaged trees. I personally think mod tags would be neater and avoid any confusion, but would need careful map design.
On a lighter note, I decided to fat-shame a bit more of the Norman countryside - fat trees anyone?

A rough idea, textures would need work, but as proof of concept ... perhaps a bit more natural looking. 🌳

Fat bocage trunks and branches anyone ...?

Fat-shaming the bocage ...

Those trunks look pretty good, but some of the lower branches look too heavy IMHO.
This is what we did in 'Heaven & Earth'.....Scenario designers can use the [burnt] tag (IIRC) to summon up several damaged trees, scorched and damaged building textures etc.  Then it's just a matter of placing them carefully.
PS - I'll ping @37mm, because I know he loves your work and he might be able to better advise how to conveniently implement tags for your mods (we have sooooooooo many options in H&E, it's staggering).
 

Partially correct... the burnt trees themselves are not tagged & are just default H&E flavour objects (stumps IIRC). The original mod was made for CMRT, I merely grabbed it.
The [burnt] tag does add some new (burnt) building textures, burnt building roofs & some burnt looking terrain... much of that stuff was, again, borrowed from a CMRT mod (by @umlautIIRC).
I used the [burnt] tag in a few of the urban campaign scenarios but other than that, & a few experiments, it remains fairly underutilized.
 
I did experiment with using the [burnt] tag to replace a tree/bush model with burnt stumps (so they can be easily added en masse to a map) but it was, as previously described, another dismal failure.

Nope... ALL my experiments with changing a tree/bush or fence .mdr have been failures (I recall one experiment only resulted in floating palm tree's).
For H&E I've only used basic model swaps (even then I've been unable to get a WW2 tree into CMSF2) & retextures.
@Lucky_Strike is the first.

Oh yeah, you remind me... I did a model swap also, borrowing tree 6 from CMA.
Its technically a winter tree but I used it as a stand in for a tree that had its leaves burnt/blown off.
If @Lucky_Strike struggles with burnt tree models... reworking such winter tree models/textures may be easier?

Winter trees seem to be summer trees with slightly different texture applied and no leaves. I hadn’t thought to use them for the burnt trees base, but they might well work more easily. The burnt texture is pretty straight forward but less leaves to mask out is a real bonus! I’ll have a look at those in CMFI as I know that has a larger range of trees in all seasonal states, bushes as well.

Winter trees seem to be summer trees with slightly different texture applied and no leaves. I hadn’t thought to use them for the burnt trees base, but they might well work more easily. The burnt texture is pretty straight forward but less leaves to mask out is a real bonus! I’ll have a look at those in CMFI as I know that has a larger range of trees in all seasonal states, bushes as well.

Well, another quickish experiment later, and I don't think we can have actual coexisting 3D models for the same numbered tree only MAYBE different textures, though even with this there are likely to be redraw issues which I think are associated with those pesky lod files. I think it would be best to either use scenario specific mod tags for one or two damaged tree types, or just temporarily add the damaged trees to the z folder when playing a scenario that has damaged trees. I personally think mod tags would be neater and avoid any confusion, but would need careful map design.
On a lighter note, I decided to fat-shame a bit more of the Norman countryside - fat trees anyone?

A rough idea, textures would need work, but as proof of concept ... perhaps a bit more natural looking. 🌳

Fat bocage trunks and branches anyone ...?

Fat-shaming the bocage ...

Thanks Sgt.
I'm hopeful that I may have an even better solution to the use of normal hedges as forest thickets. Looking at the 3D .mdr files for the bocage I suspect that I may be able to wrangle stuff so that the texture currently used by both bocage and normal hedge - boccage2.bmp I believe - is ONLY used by hedges and not by bocage. That is to say it's perhaps possible to make both low and tall bocage .mdr mods that use boccage.bmp and the other new numbered boccage bmps that I'm making, so that just normal hedges are using the boccage2.bmp. This would then allow for a unique texture to be created for boccage2.bmp / hedges. They could then, with careful management, or perhaps mod tags, be used as the thickets that @benpark, yourself and no doubt others would like to see in game. I don't know how much LOS, cover or concealment hedges provide when used in this way but I would warrant that it's better in some respects than brush and long grass ...

So ... I got a bit distracted after @Ithikial_AU suggested some burnt trees might be nice, started to think about modding the actual 3D models - the .mdr files that we've seen @Aquila-SmartWargames and @37mm amongst others change so radically and effectively. This was mooted some time back by a few of you and I said I would have a go at it once I got done with the textures. As my better half will testify I'm always a good one for moving on to the next project before finishing the current one, so I dove into Blender (more of a belly-flop than a pike 💦) at the end of last week. To cut a long story short, I started with the bocage (of course), I was on the cusp of giving up because I just couldn't get the files to export correctly with all my edits intact - think branches only, floating bushes, displaced bushes lah lah lah 😭🤪 Had one more go today and ... lo and behold - I present some subtly changed bocage:

Can't spot what's different? In the middle, fewer bean poles - will please some of you - I certainly won't miss them, and some more, same again ...

Here's a pic the actual Blender file ...

You can just about make out the remaining bean pole branches outlined in orange, there are normally a dozen or so on a larger section of bocage, here we have about half that amount. I also removed a couple of leafy branches, just to see if it would work, they are gone in-game! 
So what does all this mean - I don't know. It took me days to get this far. I can use Blender to make the edits I want, I don't really understand the whole process, why things happen or don't when I export files, but if I can make some edits that make even just the bocage look more natural then I will be one happy lapin.
My plan is to make a fully edited section of bocage - more ragged, less or no bean poles, maybe some better branches and roots - then see how it looks in game. I have a few bocage textures to finish first though, so I can release the Hedgerow Hell mod - otherwise @3j2m7 will be knocking at my door demanding I release them 🥺.
 

LOL - I’ve had plenty of weird outcomes - floating trees separated from their trunks; flashing trees that I couldn’t approach in the game, they just kept jumping away from me; branches way off in the distance outside the map, to name but a few.
I feel very flattered but I honestly still haven’t fully figured out why one thing works and another doesn’t. I know metadata is very important for some items, but others seem to be less reliant on it. There’s a lot of stuff going on that is way above my pay grade. Yesterday I made a completely new tree model and managed to get it into the game but the trunk and branches appeared without texture whilst the leaves were on another part of the map, at ground level, looking like giant broccoli! I guess on @sbobovyc could probably figure out a lot of these issues, sadly he seems busy elsewhere with RL I think.

Thanks for the info 37mm.
flavour objects aren’t something I’ve looked at yet, but I’ve seen what you and@Aquila-SmartWargames have achieved utilising them, so understand how they can easily be put to use for such things as burnt trees. I know that they can be a bit of a pig to place, but at least for something like trees I guess orientation doesn’t matter so much.
When I’m finished with my Hedgerow Hell texture mod I’ll be taking a closer look at the .mdr mods for trees, bocage and bushes. I’ll see if I can do a burnt bush that should easily be transferable to all the games. If it’s got no leaves it won’t look like anything identifiable as being European, Middle Eastern or Asian.

it’s great already like that it becomes natural
as for the removal of chopsticks in the hedgerows I adhere to 100% 👍

Well, another quickish experiment later, and I don't think we can have actual coexisting 3D models for the same numbered tree only MAYBE different textures, though even with this there are likely to be redraw issues which I think are associated with those pesky lod files. I think it would be best to either use scenario specific mod tags for one or two damaged tree types, or just temporarily add the damaged trees to the z folder when playing a scenario that has damaged trees. I personally think mod tags would be neater and avoid any confusion, but would need careful map design.
On a lighter note, I decided to fat-shame a bit more of the Norman countryside - fat trees anyone?

A rough idea, textures would need work, but as proof of concept ... perhaps a bit more natural looking. 🌳

Well, another quickish experiment later, and I don't think we can have actual coexisting 3D models for the same numbered tree only MAYBE different textures, though even with this there are likely to be redraw issues which I think are associated with those pesky lod files. I think it would be best to either use scenario specific mod tags for one or two damaged tree types, or just temporarily add the damaged trees to the z folder when playing a scenario that has damaged trees. I personally think mod tags would be neater and avoid any confusion, but would need careful map design.
On a lighter note, I decided to fat-shame a bit more of the Norman countryside - fat trees anyone?

A rough idea, textures would need work, but as proof of concept ... perhaps a bit more natural looking. 🌳