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Official opening of the BN thread. And something to go with it! http://cmmodsiii.greenasjade.net/ Mord.

Few things I have been working on for your gaming pleasure! Still have work to do for the full RT mod but this was a nice change of pace and theater. It's the early stages but I have been itching to get moving on all the other titles. Mord.

Ok, seeing that the main focus is RT at the moment, it's time to migrate this from the General Mods Forum. Anyone interested can catch up here: Refresher: Old vs new portraits. The new portraits together. Their context within (JuJu's awesome) game UI. @Badger73 "These are stunning, @Mord. I might quibble with your choices for Heer Panzer and Heer Panzergrenadieren. I thought German army tankers wore a black coverall of sorts and a tanker's beret. I think the German army armored infantry should have steel helmets. I look forward very much to your finished work. Good luck with this." Ok. Well, it didn't take long for one of them. I am fairly confident this one is a keeper. I am pretty happy with the way it looks and the way it fits into the rest of the design. This German panzer commander strikes a gallant pose, a fitting nemesis for the awesome Soviet tanker (which happens to be one favorite portraits). Mord.

Here is a screen ive made for Combat Mission Black sea as i couldnt find any i liked. https://www.mediafire.com/file/5ff2rchucq9hh9v/Miles-CMBS-Main_Menu.zip/file

For nigh on ten years now my biggest projects have always been my portrait mods. I have invested weeks and months on end, that have added up to hundreds and hundreds of hours of time and frustration creating them. I have made easily over ten thousand portraits, through trial and error, redesign, and updates. It's been a true struggle at times, and I am never happy with the outcome, though I'll say I am, once a project is complete. But I am always fighting the design decisions I started with way back in SF1 and it's hamstrung me artistically. After the FB portraits I decided I wanted to redo all the portraits for all the titles (the BN mod is long over do for an update) . So, after a long hiatus, I set about trying to get to someplace that would finally make me happy. I decided to start with RT to get ahead of the module release, and after a week or so of fiddling, resizing, making test bmps, and checking in game, this is what I came up with. For about two seconds I thought they looked good. But once again I was confronted by the poor design decisions I adopted all those years ago. You see, I have been in a constant fight with what I term the "bobble head effect", which causes the portrait heads to appear bulbous and fat-headed. It occurs because I opted to show each portrait with a split face on the bmp. It has been my bane since my BN mod and it frustrates me to no end. And considering how I built each face from screenshots, pieces of faces from all sorts of pictures, and the fact I only worked on the left side of the face, well it doesn't leave me room for presenting them in any other way. And On top of all that, I have always felt there was inconsistency in the quality of the faces, and that they appeared too cartoony. So with that said, I am putting these portrait mods to rest. I have taken them as far as they will go and they have reached a dead end. They had a good run but there really isn't anything more I can do to improve them. Now, check out what I have been doing for the last two weeks and tell me I didn't make the right decision... Now for some comparisons of the old style and the new. Now the portraits in the context of their own mod. It'll give you an idea of the overall design. And within the context of the game UI. Some of the portraits are tentative/place holders until I find something that really blows me away. Or will be replaced later. The Heer Armor and Armor Infantry come to mind as far as that goes. Luckily I haven't made anything yet with them, just tests. Now, unfortunately I will probably have to share a lot of the portraits (mostly Germans) across games, however backgrounds and the like will be changed for each setting. And I will of course do all the battalions and regiments etc. Whether or not I will be able to keep the quality across titles remains to be seen but I will do my best. It is going to be a colossal amount of work, already has been. For the Germans alone I have created and discarded over a thousand portraits. LOL. Every time I think I have one down and start producing keepers, I stumble across a better pic, or I adjust some color to better fit the portrait into the overall look and I have to redo a ton of work. I just replaced the Heer Infantry yesterday, now I have to redo 374 that I had already made, as well as the SS Arm Infantry. I have done this a couple times already. But getting it right is what's most important. Perfection is what I am aiming for. I don't know how long it will take. Getting the right pics is painstaking and laborious as hell. For every good one I make I throw out five. But this style will be the definitive version of my portrait mods from here on out. As I complete them I will remove the old versions from the planet. I'll start threads in the corresponding game forums as I progress. Welp, that's about it. I was gonna keep all this to myself and wait to surprise everyone, but I have been working in a vacuum for a month and it feels good to talk a little bit about it. Especially as I have been going full bore, night and day for two weeks straight. I Hope you guys like what you see. I think it's the best work I have ever done. Mord.

Hi all I just found this resource Live conflict maps https://liveuamap.com/ it covers three conflicts: Ukraine, Syria and Israel/Palestine with news and maps/satellites. You click on a news symbol and it takes you to where something happened. I zoomed in on Donetsk and it seemed to have a useful amount of detail. I couldn't find contours unfortunately but that might be me missing something.

Well, my trial version of Elements was running out so I pulled the trigger and got the full version on Amazon at 40% off last night. So, looks like I am back in the modding game. Here's what I need help with. I need a list of German Divisions that were in the Western European Theater from October 44 to May 45. Not having to reaserch this will cut at least a month off the time it'll take to get this mod made. So, if you guys want a portrait mod I could use the research help. (Following cut and pasted from my RT mod thread) If you choose to do it, this is how I'd like to see the divisions listed; For Heer: (number) Inf Div (number)Pz Div (number) Pz Gren Div For Luftwaffe: (number) Luft Div (number) Fals Div For Waffen SS: (number) SS Div (number) SS Pz Div (number) SS Pz Gren Div For Volksgrenadier (Number) Volks Gren Div Keep all the branches together and div types together like above (Heer Infantry first, Heer Panzers second etc. with the division in numerical order), and I can easily scan through them without jamming my brain up. Seeing that is how I name the bmps when I mod them it's like muscle memory and makes it easier on me. You guys could keep adding to the list, and when the next guy has new stuff just cut and paste the list into your post with the updated divisions. An example of what I am talking about would look like this; 85th Inf Div 89th Inf Div 148th Inf Div 2nd Pz Div 9th Pz Div 11th Pz Div Etc. When Fizou helped me (with the RT mod) he got a lot of his info from the Panzer Campaign series, if any of you own them they are a good place to start. Mord.

I am wondering if the following could not be done to enhance the usage of graphical mods within the game. Why not allow to select texture for units directly within the editor instead of doing multiple file manipulations? The way I see it when opening the editor: 1. You buy one unit You place it in the 3D view Then, still in the 3D view, you select the texture of this unit by Ctrl or Switch clicking on it like for the building (I do not remember the exact command) This way I hope that more unit textures will appear simplifying the work to enable them. Maybe Battlefront could use this as well to deliver what I would call a texture pack. These packs could be used for ww2 or for modern warfare. There are plenty of uncons that could be modeled like this (from Middle East or from east of Ukraine). Even few armies could be modeled, I am thinking of Irak at the time of Desert Storm. Their equipments were not far from what we have in CMSF and the incoming version 2. Thanks