JM´s Corner

[benpark]

I'm attaching the Snow Roads (they have an associated Mod Tag attached, from FR). They might be useful as a guide. I'll get caught up on the last two pages of this thread when I get a free second to see if I have any other useful road experiments (aside from the many failures!).

Snow Roads.zip

[benpark]

13 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

To avoid this:

I do the same as your 'Passable Result':

But I also stick a few Dirt Red tiles around the junction.....It does a fairly decent job of blending things in. 

This is good!

It might be worth using that end of road "tab" with an Alpha Channel, to ad a little dirt spill from the Macadam-ized road onto the dirt.

[JM Stuff]

 

25 minutes ago, benpark said:

I'm attaching the Snow Roads (they have an associated Mod Tag attached, from FR). They might be useful as a guide. I'll get caught up on the last two pages of this thread when I get a free second to see if I have any other useful road experiments (aside from the many failures!).

Snow Roads.zip 5.25 MB · 2 downloads

thank you Ben appreciated, and in fact I was checking all folders CMRT yesterday, and dont find any, so, i want to send you a message today to know where you put your treasure, but you avoid me to send you it, thanks again to share it, it is very welcome !

 

22 minutes ago, benpark said:

This is good!

It might be worth using that end of road "tab" with an Alpha Channel, to ad a little dirt spill from the Macadam-ized road onto the dirt.

one is sometimes stopped to give an acceptable preview, to a file, only because its extension does not allow it, for example the bmp does not accept, or very badly the so-called transparent zones, or alpha channel, and more, they are very heavy.

I wonder why then still use this filesystem, even now with all these, CM series updates.
I hope CM3 could  counter this "problem" ? 

Edited September 29, 2021 by JM Stuff

[benpark]

BMPs will work with Alpha Channels - the heaviness of the effect can be alleviated by using greyscale (any value between black and white, with black blocking, and white showing the effect), rather than absolute black (0,0,0 RGB) or white (255,255,255 RGB).

There are some oddities to this. I attempted to create some broken glass shards remaining in the destroyed building for Berlin, but it wasn't "taking" - it's something Charles has had to do to get the model to work with the texture that has some limitation in game terms,  expect. Roads should work with the Alpha Channels i BMP format, however.

What they do for file formats and how they operate in-game in the future would be considered very carefully (I'd imagine, based upon experience).

Any choice of files for future game engines would depend upon what the file must do, and based upon parameters such as use of Alpha Channels (or other opacity systems), and how the textures interact with the models they need to wrap around. BMP format does that well, and retains quality when sized, so it is a good choice for games where the texture has to have those aforementioned qualities. The file sizes also need to be manageable over many different systems, so that would also be a concern. BMP's do fairly well there, as well.

[Erwin]

Hope you also do this mod for CMRT.  FWIW the roads there are more like single track paths and are earth or gravel - clouds of dust when traveled on.  Your track mod would look great on those, but would need to be for narrower dirt roads.  

[JM Stuff]

26 minutes ago, benpark said:

BMPs will work with Alpha Channels - the heaviness of the effect can be alleviated by using greyscale (any value between black and white, with black blocking, and white showing the effect), rather than absolute black (0,0,0 RGB) or white (255,255,255 RGB).

Thanks to all these detailled info,s I will make some tests myself, I remember vaguely that Kohlenklau, was telling me something similar about this, maske of layer, with black and white, pity that I didn t  keep these preciouse infos he is also a master in this branch.
I was only starting to working about Gimp and was making my stuffs exclusivly with paint net, untill that I starting to work with Gimp very very usefull and free but not so complete as a old good Photoshop of course.

26 minutes ago, benpark said:

There are some oddities to this. I attempted to create some broken glass shards remaining in the destroyed building for Berlin, but it wasn't "taking" - it's something Charles has had to do to get the model to work with the texture that has some limitation in game terms,  expect. Roads should work with the Alpha Channels i BMP format, however.

A propos broken glass I was trying to do something similar and integreated in the textures of Blender, for exemple the 3D models, the famous wrecks that I was started, appear correclty in Blender, but in the game any glass textures appea,r so my broken glass are all desappear and I don t know why... but Blender is another chapter !

26 minutes ago, benpark said:

What they do for file formats and how they operate in-game in the future would be considered very carefully (I'd imagine, based upon experience).

Any choice of files for future game engines would depend upon what the file must do, and based upon parameters such as use of Alpha Channels (or other opacity systems), and how the textures interact with the models they need to wrap around. BMP format does that well, and retains quality when sized, so it is a good choice for games where the texture has to have those aforementioned qualities. The file sizes also need to be manageable over many different systems, so that would also be a concern. BMP's do fairly well there, as well.

I hope the new generation of games of CM will be more I will say "flexible" ! 

PS I took a view of your link about Photopea online, "similar" as PS very usefull, thank you I am working sometimes to discover this new !

[Lucky_Strike]

4 hours ago, slippy said:

Brilliant work Lucky Strike! That is what I hoped for, but i must say you have implemented it better than I imagined.

Yes i think a lot of the larger paved roads could be reclaimed in this way. In towns and cities after all the aerial bombardment, artillery, and general fighting, a lot of the roads would have had the appearance of your pictures anyway i believe.

For me personally this would be the way to go, even better if they replace stock textures so that all the current maps are affected.

Thanks Slippy. This is going to take some thought to make sure we can get something that works on a couple of levels - supporting both old and future maps - it's probably going to involve tags and maybe some file swapping by the player per map. I personally would rather it was just the former. From a player point of view, and with a likely influx on new blood eventually thanks to Steam, it's much easier if we can just plonk a folder of mods in our z or mod folder and be done, letting the game engine and scenario designers take the strain.

I think we can easily have two or three representative road surfaces, there are enough types to produce most of what folks expect, at least for Normandy. It may prove different for MG, and I have no idea how these ideas may translate across the other titles, but we can still give it a shot.

4 hours ago, slippy said:

I know you mention its for a different thread but your last picture of the sunken lane does look very promising. Without knowing how you did it, could the same be done with walls/fences/buildings either side?

Yes, it should be possible, though how it would look is another question. What I've done is to use a parallel, adjacent, double ditch-locked row of tiles. That is producing a very wide ditch with steep banks on either side. The tall bocage runs along the length of each row of ditch (as would a wall) and, because of how it's implemented in game, has it's own built-in earth bank to sit on (a wall doesn't so I would only use tall wall as an experiment). This results in a very heavily deformed landscape kind of like the letters UMU in profile which works okay in a NSWE orientation, have yet to try it at other angles. The depth can be altered in the elevations to create some extreme sunken lanes. This all came about from messing with the trenches previously. What also happens is that the ditch extends on either side of the bocage so that the field next to it also has a deep ditch at the edge along the bocage. This is not strictly how the bocage appears but the ditch does then kinda function like a trench line along the bocage giving any troops using it a more dug in look. I'll do some more images and a sample map, so that folks can see what's happening for themselves, when I get to my desktop later.

Now I'm supposed to be chopping wood ...

[benpark]

Great! Yes - windows are oddities. They seem to knock out entirely, or not at all. Which makes little sense, so it must be a coded element.

Layers are where Photoshop is most interesting., particularly when used in conjunction with the Opacity slider and the Blending Modes. Using those two tools in Photoshop (or an imitator) can really start to mix the new user textures to the original CM template ones - often where the originals are a guide, and replaced entirely.

Opacity is the amount shown or not over the underlying layer (like tracing paper that gets progressively shown more closer to 100%, and not at all at 0% .

Blending Modes set a given method of blending(!) two Layers, based upon a given Mode that you have set. Something like "Hard Light" simulates an intense illumination effect in the blending of the Layers. There a few of them , and they each do something unique.

The on-line Photoshop knock-off (it seems to have most features):

https://www.photopea.com/

[JM Stuff]

Hey @slippy when I read yours comments, you don t seem to loose too much yours knowledges, about textures and more, I think you need only a little pat on the shoulder, and you createad us a total new CM environnement !

Just do it when you are in mood, listen your hands talking, and your brain imagine !

 

JM

[JM Stuff]

5 hours ago, Erwin said:

Hope you also do this mod for CMRT.  FWIW the roads there are more like single track paths and are earth or gravel - clouds of dust when traveled on.  Your track mod would look great on those, but would need to be for narrower dirt roads.  

As far as I'm concerned I will try with Lucky and maybe with some others, to doing something reasonable that can be applied in most of the CM series games, with a matrix that can be used on any surface of road and perhaps paths, and I think all the seasons and categories of weather, now, I move forward perhaps a little too quickly, but knowing Lucky and his temperament and resolution that we will give the maximum of ourselves to arrive at something pleasant and playable.

 

JM

[Lucky_Strike]

10 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Not directly.....The extras vanish.  However you can get them pretty close to each other, placing a ring of them around a wreck should still look quite effective.

Many moons ago I started laing out the groundwork for a 21Pz.Div. in Normandy campaign concept (loosely based on the Too Fat Lardies tabletop campaign).....Reckon I might give it another look, with a comprehensive mod set like these making the maps should be fun.

Thanks Sgt. I get your drift, I might have to give it a quick try out, I guess flavour objects are a bit more straightforward than vehicles so I'll see what I can rustle up at some point.

I like the idea of a campaign for the poor old 21st Panzer Div. I read some good accounts of their actions on day one and beyond that should make for some interesting scenarios. Just another little project! 

[Lucky_Strike]

8 hours ago, JM Stuff said:

and return to my previous project of the wrecks,

ooh yes, let's have some wrecks please ...

9 hours ago, JM Stuff said:

no not actually, it's just a little joke that gave the impression that, a German speaking with a French accent, was saying about you!
"Ah ah,  I knew you were a big trickster, a trickster like a fox"
 (regarding to all the knowledge that you put into practice and shown us on the forum, with some substilites to hide some parts of the tiles to give a better appearance and much more...)

so I wasn't far off then 

9 hours ago, JM Stuff said:

yes they would be welcome, and I could like quote do some new tests

9 hours ago, JM Stuff said:

that already brillant cher ami !

Alrighty, I'll bundle them up later on, in need of some supper now ...

 

[Lucky_Strike]

8 hours ago, benpark said:

This is good!

It might be worth using that end of road "tab" with an Alpha Channel, to ad a little dirt spill from the Macadam-ized road onto the dirt.

Hi Ben, 

I'm not sure that the t-junction has enough edge for this, I do see what you mean though. I'll have another look to see what's going on with the textures I have, theoretically it's the ideal. I guess another approach would be to paint the road a bit narrower and then use the alphas to achieve some of the effects we're after. Just not sure how much overlap exists where the tiles butt up ...

7 hours ago, benpark said:

BMPs will work with Alpha Channels - the heaviness of the effect can be alleviated by using greyscale (any value between black and white, with black blocking, and white showing the effect), rather than absolute black (0,0,0 RGB) or white (255,255,255 RGB).

There are some oddities to this. I attempted to create some broken glass shards remaining in the destroyed building for Berlin, but it wasn't "taking" - it's something Charles has had to do to get the model to work with the texture that has some limitation in game terms,  expect. Roads should work with the Alpha Channels i BMP format, however.

What they do for file formats and how they operate in-game in the future would be considered very carefully (I'd imagine, based upon experience).

Any choice of files for future game engines would depend upon what the file must do, and based upon parameters such as use of Alpha Channels (or other opacity systems), and how the textures interact with the models they need to wrap around. BMP format does that well, and retains quality when sized, so it is a good choice for games where the texture has to have those aforementioned qualities. The file sizes also need to be manageable over many different systems, so that would also be a concern. BMP's do fairly well there, as well.

I've seen some odd alpha channel behaviour with tree LOD files recently. I know that the main model and most of the LODs use greyscale alphas for the leaves, and these work as expected but what I discovered, and no doubt you already know this, the LOD 4 level trees, the smallest model which uses imposters, uses a black and white alpha channel, although it does accept a greyscale alpha. But using a greyscale alpha incites oddness, so I stick with black and white. 

6 hours ago, benpark said:

Layers are where Photoshop is most interesting., particularly when used in conjunction with the Opacity slider and the Blending Modes. Using those two tools in Photoshop (or an imitator) can really start to mix the new user textures to the original CM template ones - often where the originals are a guide, and replaced entirely.

Yes this is exactly how I use PhotoShop - I'm lucky enough to use it for my day job. I've seen a lot of reports about that online version, and questions about quite why Adobe haven't tried to shut it down. Perhaps they fear the adverse publicity. There are plenty of apps that do what PhotoShop does and if they go after one they might be forced to go after many more, which might be seen as anticompetitive. Also isn't the guy who made Photopea in Russia or somewhere like that, probably quite hard for Adobe to chase him down

[Lucky_Strike]

7 hours ago, Erwin said:

Hope you also do this mod for CMRT.  FWIW the roads there are more like single track paths and are earth or gravel - clouds of dust when traveled on.  Your track mod would look great on those, but would need to be for narrower dirt roads.  

1 hour ago, JM Stuff said:

As far as I'm concerned I will try with Lucky and maybe with some others, to doing something reasonable that can be applied in most of the CM series games, with a matrix that can be used on any surface of road and perhaps paths, and I think all the seasons and categories of weather, now, I move forward perhaps a little too quickly, but knowing Lucky and his temperament and resolution that we will give the maximum of ourselves to arrive at something pleasant and playable.

I'll have to take a look at RT again, but I'm pretty sure that the dirt road is about the same as for BN. That is, it's a single track with just one bmp to serve for all the shapes. Making anything like tyre tracks on it is not possible at the moment. For the dirt paved road texture, the one we've been looking at here, there is for sure a potential to make this work across titles since it's employed everywhere. Describing it as paved road in the editor is a bit of a misnomer, but I guess calling it macadamised or gritted is a bit of a mouthful. Maybe so we all know what we're referring to here we should distinguish the names - dirt road for the single track, single texture road; dirt path for the narrow footpath version of dirt road which uses the same texture; macadam road for the narrow two lane hard surface similar to dirt.

All of this is doable, it's just a lot of work and it's going to take time.

In the meantime keep playing!

[JM Stuff]

9 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

I'll have to take a look at RT again...

Mark check please your box I send you a pm !

[Warts 'n' all]

Sadly, to my old eyes it looks like none of the mods really fit properly. They seem to creep over into the surrounding terrain. One side of the road sloping up, and the other sloping down. In some battles I've tested it is more pronounced than in others, but it still looks off putting. It is something that doesn't occur with the vanilla roads, not with the paved road mod created by Aris. 

[JM Stuff]

12 minutes ago, Warts 'n' all said:

Sadly, to my old eyes it looks like none of the mods really fit properly. They seem to creep over into the surrounding terrain. One side of the road sloping up, and the other sloping down. In some battles I've tested it is more pronounced than in others, but it still looks off putting. It is something that doesn't occur with the vanilla roads, not with the paved road mod created by Aris. 

We take good notes of yours comments and working on !

[Lucky_Strike]

2 hours ago, Warts 'n' all said:

Sadly, to my old eyes it looks like none of the mods really fit properly. They seem to creep over into the surrounding terrain. One side of the road sloping up, and the other sloping down. In some battles I've tested it is more pronounced than in others, but it still looks off putting. It is something that doesn't occur with the vanilla roads, not with the paved road mod created by Aris. 

I will have to take another look at these and compare to Aris's, verge creep is a serious business. Aris's textures are great but strangely they are not all the same resolution. It doesn't really matter in game that much, it's just something that I personally find a little odd, but there may well be a good reason for it.

I also think before going any further with this mod we should probably try to figure the best most efficient way forward. I personally now have so many projects on the go I'm beginning to feel a little @kohlenklau'd . Need to take stock for a little bit.

Edited September 30, 2021 by Lucky_Strike

[Erwin]

13 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Need to take stock for a little bit.

Yes, plz don't get burned out by overcommitting.  We're lost many modders that way.  Take a break if you need to.

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, Erwin said:

Yes, plz don't get burned out by overcommitting.  We're lost many modders that way.  Take a break if you need to.

Thanks Erwin. It's only a game after all ...

This has been a very interesting exploration of some possibilities and we will definitely be making something from it, so keep an eye out for developments ...

Your support is always welcome (as of course are monetary and alcoholic donations )

[slippy]

15 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

I will have to take another look at these and compare to Aris's, verge creep is a serious business. Aris's textures are great but strangely they are not all the same resolution. It doesn't really matter in game that much, it's just something that I personally find a little odd, but there may well be a good reason for it.

I also think before going any further with this mod we should probably try to figure the best most efficient way forward. I personally now have so many projects on the go I'm beginning to feel a little @kohlenklau'd . Need to take stock for a little bit.

Yes, just to confirm what Erwin said really Lucky Strike, it's only a game after all mate .

Agree on finding the best way forward, I do definitely like the idea of one texture for all.

May load the free Photoshop alternative and have a look. If anyone knows any tutorials and/or can upload some samples of what they have done maybe.

[Lucky_Strike]

14 minutes ago, slippy said:

Yes, just to confirm what Erwin said really Lucky Strike, it's only a game after all mate .

Agree on finding the best way forward, I do definitely like the idea of one texture for all.

May load the free Photoshop alternative and have a look. If anyone knows any tutorials and/or can upload some samples of what they have done maybe.

Thanks Slippy.

Modders frazzle or some such ...

There are for sure tutorials, I just can't remember if they are for CMx1 or CMx2.

If you want some sample files I can send you a bunch of textures I've made so you can get an idea of how the are constructed, layered etc. Are you primarily thinking of ground textures? PM me and let me know if you like.

[Vacillator]

17 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

I personally now have so many projects on the go I'm beginning to feel a little @kohlenklau'd

You and Phil are both doing great work, but don't burn yourself out my friend . 

By the way I'm still loving your .  Okay maybe not the broccoli .

[Lucky_Strike]

31 minutes ago, Vacilllator said:

Okay maybe not the broccoli

Cheers fella. No danger of burn out, too much fun to be had. I know it's not everyone's idea of fun but then neither is broccoli - still doesn't do it for me neither!

[slippy]

3 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Cheers fella. No danger of burn out, too much fun to be had. I know it's not everyone's idea of fun but then neither is broccoli - still doesn't do it for me neither!

I know what you mean Lucky Strike. I did a bit of modding for IL-2 a few years back, taught myself a bit of Java and I was away.

The modding became more addictive than playing the game, and I found I was my own worst critic, plus the more I learned the more I wanted to do, to the extent my self imposed workload became massive. I still have a shed load of unfinished projects and ideas that I wanted to implement.

I'll drop you a pm mate. Like I mentioned though texture modding is something I have very little idea of, so my results will probably be quite basic. Can you use photos as the base for a .bmp?