Earl Grey

Apparently it's time to finally finish my Flecktarn mod. Wanted to do that anyway, but this TC is even more reason to do it 'cause I've been playing in Syrope right from the beginning... Oh, and you may include it in your TC when it's done. Alos planning on refurbishing at least some of the German vehicles when I find the time.

Good news - I found BOTH the brushes file AND your Marder wheels template again! kept them in such a safe location even I couldn't find them anymore. Anyway, here you go, just download them: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?2l4a2jom2kkg5jo That should work already. If not, I have another idea before we fiddle around with FTP access and whatnot.

I still got the brushes - I just need to find out how to extract them from my PS directory again. ^^

There is a way to recover data even if the MBR is corrupted, but those programs usually only recognize standard formats and it takes a lot of time, so you might not recover anything of worth if you're unlucky. Happened to me a couple times but most of my data survived. Now I got TWO external HDDs I can save my important stuff to. Anyway, I still have your old completed Panthers (before you started reworking them - essentially those you showed in the pictures thread), but no templates. Would they be of any use to you? I'll save those to my machine immediately - if something happens, they'll still be safe with me with a VERY slim chance of becoming lost.

Absolutely stunning - they should make you the Official Building Artist for all future CM games! But what if the 2.0 patch is still some time off? It's torment looking at these and knowing we might have to wait until Santa drops down the chimney before we can play around with 'em...

Well, maybe we should put in a request to include you in the official texturing process so everyone gets properly weathered vehicles in the first place! We'd love to do more weathering but simply don't have the time because a single vehicle would take ages that way. Maybe we can expedite matters in the future, but that remains to be seen. In the meantime I suggest you teach the guys how to do it so it can be done faster.

Hit the nail on the head with that one. Although apart from MikeyD and Kwazydog we don't even GET paid in the first place. But that's another matter entirely. I'd LOVE to do the same amount of weathering Aris applies to the stock textures and at one poitn even considered asking him if he'd do the weatheruing for me if it wouldn't have breached the NDA. The other thing to remember is that we already got a bunch of different artists working on the vehicles and if one does weathering all the others need to do the same so it doesn't look odd in the finsiehd product. Which brought us the the poitn that we decided to do rather minimal weathering because a) it'd save time and we were pretty sure there be some modders a round to to it. And regarding aris' 'disappearance': Contrary to popular belief even modders do have a real life and don't sit in front of their PC 24/7 365 days a year and churn out mods. It's summer and holiday season so he might just have taken a couple weeks off and taken care of some real life stuff, as odd as that may sound.

Well... if you want to use the original normal maps you can't fiddle with the texture itself too much. Every nook, dent or bolt etc. needs to stay where it is unless you want the normal map to show a detail the texture hasn't anymore which would require a rework of the normal map. Generating new normal maps when you know what you're doing is comparatively easy and funny enough most other games (and mods) have been using these for years now so there are people knowledgeable about them. Best way is to try and see what happens.

It entirely depends on what you're trying to do - vehicle maps can mostly be done with the stock textures if one keeps a few things in mind. I did mine that way, but had to redo a couple details afterwards so they'd show with the correct 'intensity' ingame. All in all I generated three different normal maps for each vehicle and put them together into one single map for best effect.

I know, I know... I'll see what I can do, but most of the german stuff was done by MikeyD and he lost a lot of his templates during an HD crash and only parts have been recovered. Working on it, but may take some time. StuGs have all been done by me, so those will show up in a while.

Yes, very awesome. Would I had time for such things.

As a matter of fact, I do have what you call an 'inside contact'. I'll talk to him and see what can be done, but no promises. Would you need the Zimmerit versions as well?

I can provide all the StuGs and StuHs if youw ant, but have already done so in a basecoated yellow version. And I'd need to include the skirts in this one.

What exactly are you thinking of? I'm in the process of doing a standard Flecktarn mod for the Germans which hopefully gets finished one day... Vehicles could do with a makeover, but again. What do you have in mind?

The mod hasn't died but I got a new job since last month which leaves me awfully little time to mod since I'm practically having two day and one evening job right now. Everything's finished safe the vest but that one proves much harder to do properly than I anticipated. I hope I can give you another update before the week is over, but I can't promise anything. I CAN promise you that it will be finshed.

Yes, these are very good, already using them. Nicely done, keep up the good work!

Getting to see "non-PR" pictures will be a problem in itself - how mayn WW2 correspondents and photographers do you know of that were right in the thick of a battle getting shot and leisurely taking pictures while doing it?? Apart from that someone obviously thought unit patches were useful even at the front... and the US used colored patches until and into the Vietnam war, so it couldn#t have been that bad after all.

Seems the insignia of 5.FJD I posted earlier is correct after all. Need to get my hands on the other volumes...

Yup - panzer brigades, StuG brigades, irregular formations... everything there. No idea what you want to do with hundreds of insignia, though...

Well... They not only list every known (or at least attributed) insignia of more or less EVERY unit there was in the Wehrmacht including staffs, schools , administrations and what not, they also give you a quick unit history. Only drop of bitterness: black&white only, so you'll have to figure out how exactly the insignia looked by yourself although there's a kind of color guide at the end of vol.1. They're not too hard to find either and around $80 per volume, so it won't be impossible to get them. And there are people around speaking both your language and German (like me) which can help yout ranslate should the need arise.

The swastika is inf act much older and has been in use for a couple thousand years before the nazis decided to use it as their identification mark, forever tainting it. Still, the plates problem can only be solved by a workaround which won't exactly improve the current state.

And the link doesn't work either? That's odd... Maybe it's blocked on your side for some reason? Will see if I can find another one just in case. by the way: I've managed to find vol.1 of said book, but guess what: all those divisions aren't in there. So we might indeed need vol.4 after all...

That is another good point, Pete - the game wouldn't be allowed to be sold in Germany if any illegal symbols were contained within. Although that technically counts for the SS death's head as well...

Odd that these insignia would be in a book but not on the net, no matter where you looked... Anyway, here's the direct link to the flag I meant since the pic isn't showing: http://wdienstgrade.tripod.com/luwa-general.htm

What I meant was "would have told you hd I found something else" - sorry for the confusion. But how about something like the following for 18. LWD (I'm referring to the flag in the lower right): Not perfect, but better than nothing.