HerrTom Posted May 14, 2020 Share Posted May 14, 2020 1 hour ago, Erwin said: All those screenshots look very real HerrTom. Did you work on them, or plain screenshots?? I think it's partly cos the BG buildings look "faded" via atmospherics and it gives them distance. Thanks! It's not exactly how it looks in-game for me right now... but it could be. I use reshade for the depth stuff and film grain - the real kicker I think is a colour lookup table I applied in Photoshop that transforms the colours to approximate Kodachrome film (my inspiration: I bought an old Praktica a few months ago and have been shooting a lot with that film). It would be pretty straightforward for me to take that LUT and apply it back into the game, though. ...And I got distracted while typing this and just did it. Here's a split-screen including all of the effects. Ambient occlusion is still the toughest to get right... I'm not happy with it yet. Here is the lookup table if anyone wants it: 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted May 15, 2020 Share Posted May 15, 2020 it's hard to believe that the altered image on the RHS is from the same pic. It looks much closer to RL. What always looks fake in computer game images is that everything stays in crisp focus and also the color saturation never changes (as in the LHS image) no matter the distance. In your pic, the increased blurriness and "fade-out/color dissipation" as one looks at the more distant items is what makes it look so real. From my vague memories of experimental psych, the eye processes/perceives visual info in that way. You think that is an effect one can get by messing with the nVidia controls, or is it more complex, or only only achievable in a still pic? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HerrTom Posted May 16, 2020 Share Posted May 16, 2020 I'm not sure what the capabilities of the Nvidia controls are, but I was able to achieve it all via Reshade, you can see in the linked video. It's a number of effects like (off the top of my head) ambient light, depth haze, a levels adjustment, a colour lookup table to get the film look, film grain, and SSAO, plus (depending on the screenshot) a depth of field shader to blur out things out of the focus plane. https://i.imgur.com/XTow0Iq.gifv If there's a stubborn enemy position, but you're the reconnaissance company of the main effort, you can just blow it to smithereens. Also a sneak peak at some new explosions I'm working on. Looks like I can't embed gifv links. I could use a gif but it'd be gigantic. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Howler Posted May 16, 2020 Share Posted May 16, 2020 @HerrTom could you pm the preset ini file used for that? Quite stunning. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted May 16, 2020 Share Posted May 16, 2020 I think I have reshade someplace on my system, but never figured out how to use it/set it. It's probably an old version by now. What's the latest version for d/l? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HerrTom Posted May 18, 2020 Share Posted May 18, 2020 My last bit of spamming this thread... I'm planning on doing an AAR in the near future instead. Russian Razvedka approach a compound sitting on the commanding heights of the town. The heights were remarkably poorly defended. A brief firefight saw the Ukrainian defenders handily defeated by withering cannon fire. (Anyone else notice that Razvedka are reluctant to use weapons other than the SVD? It seems to make them particularly vulnerable in firefights). Strong points identified by the BRDM assault company are blasted by supporting artillery coordinated from the heights. The BRDM company dismounts advance through the village. Even though my Reconnaissance Battalion is facing an entire Infantry Battalion, heavy supporting fires have been instrumental in dislodging stubborn defenders. Unfortunately, every single casualty hurts when all of my squads are 4-man teams, while the Ukrainians outnumber me two-to-one. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted May 18, 2020 Share Posted May 18, 2020 If it were standard to have CM2 to look like the above, it would give it a few more years life re graphics quality. Looks real... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Howler Posted May 18, 2020 Share Posted May 18, 2020 1 hour ago, Erwin said: If it were standard to have CM2 to look like the above, it would give it a few more years life re graphics quality. Looks real... That's why some use ReShade. It greatly improves the decade old OpenGL based visual effects. @HerrTom is a master at it. I limit myself to bare bones to enhance my old eyes. I'm using his LUT and Wow - what a difference that alone is making. You can quickly lose time playing around with the 100s of available shaders. You've been warned! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted May 18, 2020 Share Posted May 18, 2020 Well... what/which do you recommend? I did try reshade a couple years ago, but the effect was "strange" when I attempted to use it. So, I gave up... Am assuming we're talking about a visual effect that works in-game... not just for a still pic... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HerrTom Posted May 18, 2020 Share Posted May 18, 2020 (edited) I mostly use my settings for screenshots and videos in-game. It's playable, if you turn off the depth of field, but some of the icons can get hard to read sometimes. Properly implemented, it would of course not apply to UI elements and would properly handle transparent objects. The Menu does odd stuff to it too, so I disable it until I'm actually in a game. @Howler I find it helpful to target a look, and then add effects to bring it closer to your goal. For example, I took this picture a few months ago. I need to keep in mind that the light is yellower in the photo than it should be at noon, so I can tone down that effect. Ukraine is obviously a lot greener than chaparral, another thing to keep in mind. ' My two big things still are that the blacks are too dark (Kodak 800 washes out dark colours to a very dark brown typically) and the film noise in my screenshot is not right yet. Edited May 18, 2020 by HerrTom 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
37mm Posted May 19, 2020 Share Posted May 19, 2020 9 hours ago, HerrTom said: I'm planning on doing an AAR in the near future instead. Make it a video AAR... your reshade profiles are simply stunning! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt.Squarehead Posted May 19, 2020 Share Posted May 19, 2020 Yeah.....I'd second that! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HerrTom Posted May 23, 2020 Share Posted May 23, 2020 Okay, I lied. One more picture. While trying to decide what scenario to do an AAR on, I found I needed to really tweak stuff around to get nighttime looking good. Video here: https://i.imgur.com/BggbJjX.mp4 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George MC Posted May 23, 2020 Share Posted May 23, 2020 That's brilliant! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerKommissar Posted May 29, 2020 Share Posted May 29, 2020 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rinaldi Posted May 31, 2020 Share Posted May 31, 2020 It's been a while since I've played such a large PBEM or even one with so many vehicles, here's a little vignette AAR from my recently concluded match with @gardar15. Read it here: https://rinaldiaars.blogspot.com/2020/05/equilibrium-black-sea-vignette-aar.html 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanSA Posted June 1, 2020 Share Posted June 1, 2020 On 5/31/2020 at 5:10 PM, Rinaldi said: It's been a while since I've played such a large PBEM or even one with so many vehicles, here's a little vignette AAR from my recently concluded match with @gardar15. Read it here: https://rinaldiaars.blogspot.com/2020/05/equilibrium-black-sea-vignette-aar.html That was a great AAR. Very informative. Looking forward to your next effort 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chibot Mk IX Posted July 6, 2020 Share Posted July 6, 2020 Yes, it is a great AAR, Detailed analysis of terrain, a sounding battle plan, brilliant chosen battle position, decisively commit force into the battle, keeping a cool head and calling a timely withdraw, plus some unexpected drama, all makes this a great read Also, the changing of ATGM team's fire position is brilliant. That is a very useful tips in CMBS, don't give your opponent a static target, do your best to mess up his fire solution. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kinophile Posted August 1, 2020 Share Posted August 1, 2020 (edited) Those nighttime shots are great. But I've always found the CMBS tank/afv flashes to be a few frames too long. I investigated shortening them, by taking the pngs and literally replacing some frames at the end with empty files, but didn't work. Should be the correct approach, though... Edited August 2, 2020 by kinophile 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roter Stern Posted September 30, 2020 Share Posted September 30, 2020 A T-90 and a BMP-3 kept hitting this immobilized Abrams for about 3 minutes at a range of 600m - the T-90 ran out of APFSDS ammo and the BMP ran out of ATGM rounds. The crew eventually bailed out. Notice the penetration hits inside the commanders cupola and all over the RWS. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
37mm Posted January 20, 2021 Share Posted January 20, 2021 With the Steam release due tomorrow, I scratched together a quick little CMBS vid... 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George MC Posted January 20, 2021 Share Posted January 20, 2021 46 minutes ago, 37mm said: With the Steam release due tomorrow, I scratched together a quick little CMBS vid... Class mate - I really enjoyed that. Thanks for making it. I've given it a wee toot on twitter 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt.Squarehead Posted January 20, 2021 Share Posted January 20, 2021 Was that one of yours, @George MC? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George MC Posted January 20, 2021 Share Posted January 20, 2021 Just now, Sgt.Squarehead said: Was that one of yours, @George MC? Aye it is. Started life out in the early beta days of CMBS as a wee map to play about with stuff, then morphed into a mission. It had a lot of in-put which helped sand off the initial rough edges. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt.Squarehead Posted January 20, 2021 Share Posted January 20, 2021 I should have spotted your hand in the map sooner.....This scenario gave the hump to begin with (kept messing it up), but I was still in a CM:SF head-state, and as we already know (or have come to learn the hard way), CM:BS is a whole other game. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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