Lucky Strike's Mods: Hedgerow Hell

[Warts 'n' all]

5 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

That’s A Mod to Far.

You might want to get the spelling correct before you get too far along the road of applying for a trade mark, me old mate.

[Lucky_Strike]

9 hours ago, Warts 'n' all said:

You might want to get the spelling correct before you get too far along the road of applying for a trade mark, me old mate.

Damn it! That’s because the spelling autocorrect kicked in when I tried to put in the TM manually ... A Mod to FarTM became something about wind ... so I didn’t spot the real spelling mistake. Write it out 100 times I will not fart too

[Warts 'n' all]

2 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Damn it! That’s because the spelling autocorrect kicked in when I tried to put in the TM manually ... A Mod to FarTM became something about wind ... so I didn’t spot the real spelling mistake. Write it out 100 times I will not fart too

I always told Elizabeth that these mechanical quill type things would cause nothing but trouble. 

[Falaise]

21 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

That’s A Mod to Far.

I have absolutely no idea where to start with sound mods, nearest I ever got was adding my own theme music to the old CMBO and BB games. I think you’ll have to try to persuade one of the talented sound artists to make a mod for dickie birds , or get @Falaise to go out with his portable reel-to-reel to make some recordings in his back garden

we will have to wait until next summer
but for those who want, I have a well one with bird song, dog bark in the distance and even the sound of a rifle !!!

[Vacillator]

5 minutes ago, Falaise said:

we will have to wait until next summer
but for those who want, I have a well one with bird song, dog bark in the distance and even the sound of a rifle !!!

No farting I hope?

[Lucky_Strike]

6 hours ago, Warts 'n' all said:

I always told Elizabeth that these mechanical quill type things would cause nothing but trouble. 

... and wind

[Lucky_Strike]

2 hours ago, Falaise said:

we will have to wait until next summer
but for those who want, I have a well one with bird song, dog bark in the distance and even the sound of a rifle !!!

There you go @AlexUK, M. Falaise’s your man 

[Lucky_Strike]

2 hours ago, Vacilllator said:

No farting I hope?

Ahh, the wind blowing through the trees ... I always like a breeze in my scenarios just to watch the vegetation waving back and forth.

My wife says I always manage to bring the conversation down to a base level eventually ...

[Lucky_Strike]

In an effort to raise the level of conversation again - why camouflage is important plus some hazel bushes and trees ... there's hazel in the bocage as well, but this view caught my eye ...

With my ReShade sunny, dusty settings applied ...

Raw image for those who like it that way ... with a bit of @RockinHarry's movie shader tweaks applied

There's a hazelnut in every bite ... (okay, so they don't have a hazelnut emoji, it's close, and may well make its own appearance ...)

[sbobovyc]

@Lucky StrikeAmazing work. I hope to get to porting the Blender plugins to 2.80 around Christmas. The metadata is editable from Blender and I will rely on the community to figure it out and tell me.

[Aragorn2002]

2 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

In an effort to raise the level of conversation again - why camouflage is important plus some hazel bushes and trees ... there's hazel in the bocage as well, but this view caught my eye ...

With my ReShade sunny, dusty settings applied ...

Raw image for those who like it that way ... with a bit of @RockinHarry's movie shader tweaks applied

There's a hazelnut in every bite ... (okay, so they don't have a hazelnut emoji, it's close, and may well make its own appearance ...)

I think it both looks bloody brilliant.

[Lucky_Strike]

9 hours ago, sbobovyc said:

@Lucky StrikeAmazing work. I hope to get to porting the Blender plugins to 2.80 around Christmas. The metadata is editable from Blender and I will rely on the community to figure it out and tell me.

Thanks @sbobovyc. My efforts are mostly just cosmetic and are as nothing compared to what you gave us with your Blender import/export tools.

It took me a while to get something useable out of Blender. Getting models into it is easy, getting something that’ll work ingame is much harder. I did look at the metadata on a couple of the bocage and tree models, but have to confess it was pretty much meaningless to me. One thing that I did notice, which occurred when I was having export problems, was that the tool would spit out an error related to unknown metadata values, and on closer inspection I could see that there were indeed unknown values in the listed metadata fields. 

Once  I get a bit more confident that I can achieve repeatable results with the export of my mods and I understand a bit about what I’m actually doing in Blender then I’ll try a few tweaks of the metadata to see what it does. If I do discover anything I’ll make sure to report back on it.

In the meantime I look forward to getting a nice shiny new Blender tool for Christmas 

[Lucky_Strike]

8 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

I think it both looks bloody brilliant.

Thanks Aragorn, much appreciated. I’ve got some new stubble fields that should do nicely for early autumn in the Low Countries, which I’m going to include in the mod. 

[Erwin]

Yes, the Reshade image is amazing.  I keep thinking that one should be able to approximate it by playing around with nVidia controls on the 2nd "raw" image.  Or, is there some nVidia limitation that makes that not possible?

[Lucky_Strike]

56 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Yes, the Reshade image is amazing.  I keep thinking that one should be able to approximate it by playing around with nVidia controls on the 2nd "raw" image.  Or, is there some nVidia limitation that makes that not possible?

AKAIK the big things that ReShade does that the nVidia controls don't provide are to do with focus and bloom. I think it would be possible to tweak some things in the nVidia controls to change sharpening, colour and those AAA settings (which I frankly don't fully understand). That combined with maybe a custom movie mode might get some of it, BUT the movie mode doesn't play nice with anti aliasing. When I run movie mode with ReShade it somehow switches off depth effects. I don't think anyone has found a way of using the movie mode to alter things like focus and bloom, though it may be possible. The problem is, from my point of view, I don't fully understand what all the settings in the custom shader files and nVidia controls actually do, there's a lot of blind trial and error. With ReShade it's more like using image manipulation software, like PhotoShop, which  I have a better understanding of, and, importantly, provides instant visual feedback.

I do remember reading a while back that nVidia and AMD were both looking at (and have probably implemented by now) some sort of image post processing, akin to what ReShade does, to work with their graphics cards. This makes sense since cards are now so powerful, why not leverage some of that extra processing power to give gamers more customisation options. Heck, if I was them I'd be licensing ReShade to implement in my GPUs. Imagine the improvements in speed they could bring to the party if it was native to their cards.

I know that ReShade is a pig to set up and get right, God knows how many hours it's taken me to get used to its quirks, but once it's running, with just some of the simple filters, it's actual fairly easy. I use a couple of the more complex filters to achieve depth-of-field and light adaptation - these do take a toll on frame rates, but they aren't necessary for colouring and bloom, they're just nice for screen shots. Colouring can be achieved with the simple use of a LUT and one filter which have a near zero impact on frame rate, while bloom is down to just one or two filters with a quite low impact on frame rate. Those two combined are quite powerful and can make a significant difference to what the game looks like. Granted they are not fire and forget, one does need to invest a bit of time to get the software running and understanding how to operate it, but once it's set up it's a case of switching it on and off with one hotkey, or a couple of hotkeys and a menu to change the preset for say different weather conditions, something that movie mode doesn't allow for without a complete restart and swapping files.

Maybe when I finish with this mod I'll do a newer guide to ReShade, but to be honest there are a couple of CM related guides that provide plenty of good info, most of which is still pretty relevant. @Mord's guide:

 and @HerrTom's post and pdf guide here:

... have both provided excellent info to get started.

The good thing with ReShade, because it's a stand-alone image post processor, is that it can't do anything to damage your CM installs. Granted it installs some files into your CM game directories but they can simply be deleted if it's not for you.

[AlexUK]

On 10/15/2020 at 10:41 PM, Falaise said:

we will have to wait until next summer
but for those who want, I have a well one with bird song, dog bark in the distance and even the sound of a rifle !!!

Great, 

Comment pourrais-je dire non ? 

[Lucky_Strike]

Bocage textures are almost done, and we nearly have Sycamore trees ...

A pretty view ... sigh, remember the summer ...

... and without ReShade ...

... just RockinHarry's movie shader

 

[umlaut]

8 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Bocage textures are almost done, and we nearly have Sycamore trees ...

A pretty view ... sigh, remember the summer ...

... and without ReShade ...

... just RockinHarry's movie shader

 

Amazing and beautiful work, Lucky. Hope you´re releasing it soon?

[Lucky_Strike]

15 minutes ago, umlaut said:

Amazing and beautiful work, Lucky. Hope you´re releasing it soon?

Thanks umlaut, much appreciated. I was just testing a few things when I saw this bucolic view, feeling a bit like a tourist I couldn't resist taking snap of it.

I have almost finished with tweaking the bocage textures, then I have the only to finalise the Sycamore tree and make a few last tweaks to some of the other textures, so release is very soon. I know I've said it before, but there's really not a lot left to do this time!

[Lucky_Strike]

On 9/30/2020 at 11:25 PM, benpark said:

One terrain type that seems missing when I make forested areas is a "thicket"- the dense underbrush that exists at the edge of newer-growth forests. Tall enough to hinder movement and LoS, but unable to provide much cover. I've taken to using hedges (taller and shorter) to fill this in, but maybe there's a solution with this mix-'em-up method to get a more convincing look.

@benpark So, as I'm quite close now to finishing the bocage textures and finally  releasing the mod, assuming that no other significant discoveries come to light in the meantime, I checked out what we might do for the thickets texture idea. With the amount of textures I have created it looks like we can just use some of the low bocage textures as representative of thickets in woods and forests. The image below shows a wooded area, it features quite a lot of brush doodads, two to three trees per tile, and a single tile of low bocage. The bocage is best used individually, not joined to a neighbouring piece, with corner angles and gaps looking most natural. The bocage provides some cover and concealment whilst there is also a slight mound underneath it. Placed deep in woods on heavy or light forest ground texture, the bocage will be complemented with brush doodads. Placing the bocage nearer the edge of woods with slightly less tree coverage, long grass and weed ground textures and doodads can be used with occasional bushes instead of trees. I think it looks pretty convincing. Whilst the hedge may have worked well if it's remodelled and given a distinct, tagged texture, I think we can avoid this altogether just using a mix of bocage textures, a simpler and easier approach for players and map makers - makers will just need to suggest the player uses some of my mod for full effect.

The ReShaded version - single bocage tile and plenty of brush.

Same view with @RockinHarry's movie shader - the scene is quite dark as you'd expect in a wood.

Anyway, I'll leave it up to you folks to decide how this works. I can make a tagged, custom hedge texture, but for now I'll keep the mod focussed on the bocage as was my original intention. If there's enough of a clamour for a custom texture then I'll see what I can do when I make the customised 3D models addendum.

[benpark]

That is looking spot on- great blending of the terrain in the above screen, too. Did you adapt the 3D model at all? Those planar ones are both easy to do, but quite hard if they don't intersect in ways that benefit the texture. That example is convincing.

I'm of course in favor of releasing it, along with your other endeavors.

 

[AlexUK]

This would make such a different to stock CMBN. Do developers ever adopt a mod and incorporate into the base game? 

[Vacillator]

On 10/22/2020 at 3:10 PM, Lucky_Strike said:

I'll leave it up to you folks to decide how this works.

I can't pretend to fully follow your explanation and the mention of a 3D models addendum (I may not have read the full thread as closely as I should).

However, as I hope you already know, I am a huge fan of your work so I say 'release, release, release'. 

If you say 'bung it in your Z folder' I will make it so.

Thanks again and looking forward to the bigger, better version of what I'm already using plus anything else that I'm not.

Oh and as I just got my hands on Fortress Italy can you cast your magic over that as well?  And perhaps Red Thunder?  I don't mean bocage of course but the other flora if appropriate?  Probably a silly thought but what happens if I put Hedgerow Hell into my RT and FI Z folders?  Perhaps nothing, perhaps something which should not happen?

Edited October 23, 2020 by Vacilllator

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, benpark said:

That is looking spot on- great blending of the terrain in the above screen, too. Did you adapt the 3D model at all? Those planar ones are both easy to do, but quite hard if they don't intersect in ways that benefit the texture. That example is convincing.

I'm of course in favor of releasing it, along with your other endeavors.

 

Thanks @benpark

I haven't done anything to the low bocage 3D models yet. They are a bit more choppy than the tall bocage, which makes them ideal for thickets. They have quite a bit of random height variation, easily enough for a pixeltrüppen to kneel behind or lay down and hide. If I do make changes to any of the 3D models it's more likely to be remodelling the tall bocage as they are rather uniform in height. However the original 3D models are complex so it doesn't take much to foul them up. 

Here's a screen grab without any lighting changes, shadows/shaders are off, raw colour - you get a better idea of what the low bocage model is doing. This particular piece is a right angle corner, we are looking at the point of the corner from the outside, heavy forest floor ground texture, couple of trees at the same location and plenty of brush (automatically added by the choice of ground texture) ...

Here's a piece of bocage I made recently. I'm either doing single plant textures, like the Sycamore sapling which can be seen in the low bocage above (large leaves, middle, left), or complex mixes like this one ...

Scaled, stretched and displayed at all sorts of angles, it's often hard to distinguish the various different leaves, but the overall effect is hopefully one of natural chaos.

Of course, if I do make any working 3D mods then I'll definitely push those out. I won't include any just yet though as I need to do some more work in Blender to improve my results and repeatability. 

[Lucky_Strike]

45 minutes ago, AlexUK said:

This would make such a different to stock CMBN. Do developers ever adopt a mod and incorporate into the base game? 

I remember that there was a kind of CD compendium released for CMBO back in the day which did feature a whole shed-load of community-created mods. I guess with today's internet there's no real incentive to release them commercially.

Of course, if anyone is willing to bung me a wad of cash they can do what they want with them ...  say no more!