Lucky Strike's Mods: Hedgerow Hell

[Lucky_Strike]

6 hours ago, 37mm said:

Every experiment I've made to try & change a tree or bush/hedge/fence model (and there have been many over the past year) has been a dismal failure... so good job being the first!

Thanks. If I can get a repeatable result then I’ll try to do a write up of how I got there. At the moment I have one working section of bocage that I have managed to make some changes to, mostly getting rid of the bean-pole-like branches. Last night I tried a few other tweaks. One which I am particularly interested in was to make the main branches thicker which actually worked quite well.

I think the .mdr file metadata is quite significant to whether I can get an exported file working, or not. I wish I actually really understood what was happening through the process, but I am only just getting comfortable with the Blender interface. Early days! And most thanks have to go to you groundbreakers, and of course @sbobovyc for his amazing contribution.

[Lucky_Strike]

12 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

You lost me at .mdr TBH

Hah! The blind leading the blind, I really don’t know much more myself yet.

My first efforts, and eventual success, were more akin to Lord Percy inventing purest green ...

 

[Lucky_Strike]

2 hours ago, Ithikial_AU said:

Glad to be a bad influence.

All this rummaging in textures and .mdr files has got me wondering if we can have coexisting damaged and normal trees. Doesn’t the game already strip the leaves from trees when they are repeatedly hit by HE?

Off to blow up some woods ...

[Lucky_Strike]

Fat bocage trunks and branches anyone ...?

Fat-shaming the bocage ...

[Warts 'n' all]

Looking good.

[Ithikial_AU]

10 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Doesn’t the game already strip the leaves from trees when they are repeatedly hit by HE?

It does but you can't set up a map that is already been the site of a battle. Well you can with buildings/ruins and craters added manually but you can't tweak the trees to reflect the a battered state.

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, Ithikial_AU said:

It does but you can't set up a map that is already been the site of a battle. Well you can with buildings/ruins and craters added manually but you can't tweak the trees to reflect the a battered state.

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. 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Those trunks look pretty good, but some of the lower branches look too heavy IMHO.

10 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

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.

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).

 

Edited October 8, 2020 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Lucky_Strike]

50 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

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).

 

Thanks Sgt.

Yeah, the trees do need some work for sure. I’m not so familiar with the editing tools in Blender yet to be able to control stuff when trying to, for example, scale a branch. They ended up a bit big and angular. I need to experiment a bit more with the models to see what else I can do with them. Mostly I just wanted the trunks to look less regular for the three medium and large trees, make them look a little less like broccoli . The pine and tall tree are ok as they are, but a few angles makes a world of difference to the others.

I don’t know much about mod tags and map design so whatever advice 37mm, or anyone else, can give me which will enable folks to make their fantastic maps is very welcome.

I’ve checked out the H&E thread many time and am very inspired by the great work being done by everyone involved. I know how difficult and time consuming taking on such a project can be, so I take my hat off to you all  .

 

[Falaise]

12 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

 

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

[Erwin]

Forests with less underbrush are greatly appreciated.  Currently one cannot see anything in forests/dense woods so one has to turn off the trees in order to maneuver units and the graphics are wasted.  Will definitely be using this.

[37mm]

4 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

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.

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.

Edited October 8, 2020 by 37mm

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Hmmm.....I could have sworn I placed some (lots of) burned trees. 

I guess it might have been the flavour objects that I used when making 'The Hill'.

[37mm]

6 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Hmmm.....I could have sworn I placed some (lots of) burned trees. 

I guess it might have been the flavour objects that I used when making 'The Hill'.

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?

[Sgt.Squarehead]

That matches my recollecton, didn't you resize it too?

[37mm]

32 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

That matches my recollecton, didn't you resize it too?

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.

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, 37mm said:

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?

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.

[Lucky_Strike]

1 minute ago, 37mm said:

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.

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.

[Lucky_Strike]

4 hours ago, Falaise said:

as for the removal of chopsticks in the hedgerows I adhere to 100%

LOL very accurate description - bocage chop suey anyone!

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, 37mm said:

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.

[Lucky_Strike]

2 hours ago, Erwin said:

Forests with less underbrush are greatly appreciated.  Currently one cannot see anything in forests/dense woods so one has to turn off the trees in order to maneuver units and the graphics are wasted.  Will definitely be using this.

I think the underbrush is usually determined by the map maker in as much as the forest floor ground texture used will determine how much of the brush doodads will show up.

It’s easy to get carried away with woods and forests, but in reality long established ancient woods seem to have more space between the large trees and a good thickness of undergrowth. One problem with our trees in game is that they do not really represent the very large trees that might be found in older woods and forests but rather look more like trees in newer plantations. I guess for Normandy, which generally has a very managed landscape, smaller tees are okay, but for representing primeval forest we’d need something a bit bigger.

[Lucky_Strike]

On 10/7/2020 at 1:49 AM, 3j2m7 said:

I will i WILL 

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 ...

Edited October 12, 2020 by Lucky_Strike
'cos someone is bound to ask

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Very picturesque! 

Breaking up the linear shape of the hedges would seem to be the key to using them as 'thickets', some of the examples you've shown earlier look very promising.

[Bulletpoint]

8 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

 

This looks really good.

[Zveroboy1]

Yes great job, it looks almost photorealistic.