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kohlenklau CMFI North Afrika QB map-mod project


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7 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

GE does not have full coverage of 1940s imagery

@Combatintman - well, my slider only went back to 1985 unless I zoomed out to 20 km in height, then it went to 1940, but it's too low a resolution to use for the scale I need. I've not been able to find other settings that suggest I can go back further with a lower altitude or greater resolution, thus my question here. Now, I am looking away from key places such as major towns and cities, so maybe that's the reason. Not sure. I'll play with it a bit and see what I can find/figure out. Yes, I do know about searching out imagery for some key places, but for the small towns and countryside, the pickings are pretty slim. Those are the areas I'm most interested in, but also, they are references but wouldn't be that useful for an actual overlay I wouldn't think (scale, angle, positioning of the photo, etc.). Anyway, I'll play around with things and see what I can find and sort out.

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1 hour ago, Combatintman said:

So where exactly are you interested in and I'll see what I can pull up.

There isn't one area at the moment that I'm looking at, although a couple of the small towns (which I'm not sure exist now as separate towns) north of Caen and just east of the Orne River are one place I'm considering. My main point though, is if others are using GE for this, and using the historical imagery, then I should be able to do so as well. There must be a setting that I don't have correct somewhere if that's the case.

34 minutes ago, kohlenklau said:

@Canuck21 There is a thread also about the trove of aerial recon photos from the RAF...a website. 

Old aerial recon photos PLUS Google Earth PLUS imagination</>inspiration PLUS some allowance for CM map limitations (roads) = AWESOME MAP 

Thanks, I'll have a look for that. Someone emailed me some links this morning that should help and I think that site is among those. Right now I'm using your equation except for the old aerial recon photos. I had been using Google Maps, but again, it only shows modern imagery. That's where the imagination part came in. That part I have plenty of and what I was going on ;) .

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For the El Mechili map for the "Gardner's Horse" scenario, this is my "special editor overlay.bmp"

I can make paths in Google Earth and know the slope along the paths. I drew many not shown here. I ran one across the wadi. I ran one downstream along the wadi's path. Taking notes or making screenshots of Google Earth info.

I slap the thumb tacks in spots and drag a path out to my desired width and depth of the map. Change preferences to meters in Google Earth!

You can rotate the view as needed first to get the high priority roads in the proper CM map editor desired angles.

The final 4 thumbtacks are my corners.

O5XPz8j.png

 

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9 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

For the El Mechili map for the "Gardner's Horse" scenario, this is my "special editor overlay.bmp"

I can make paths in Google Earth and know the slope along the paths. I drew many not shown here. I ran one across the wadi. I ran one downstream along the wadi's path. Taking notes or making screenshots of Google Earth info.

I slap the thumb tacks in spots and drag a path out to my desired width and depth of the map. Change preferences to meters in Google Earth!

You can rotate the view as needed first to get the high priority roads in the proper CM map editor desired angles.

The final 4 thumbtacks are my corners.

O5XPz8j.png

 

Now, is that using historical imagery from Google Earth? 

I have a friend, who is a long time user of GE Pro, look at the same areas I was looking at for my GE maps (NW Europe and W Russia) and check out the historical imagery there. He got the same results I did. For 1985 imagery, it was a blurry mess and unreadable at 20 km altitude and below. For 1940 data he had to zoom well out, as did I. He found this as an explanation of what is happening, which for me anyway, is very disappointing. Perhaps there is a way around this, or others are not seeing this issue, but until I can figure ways around this, I'll stick with my "eyeballing" method, with using modern map overlays from which I'll cherry-pick elements that I think may have been there in the 1940's. Those will be based on historical photos, links for which were sent to me by a good friend recently. Anyway, it's not my intention to hijack this thread for yet another training session for me, but I just wanted to mention this in the context of this discussion. Good luck with the project @kohlenklau. Looks like a very worthwhile one!

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Glenn - just to point out what you are discovering but creating editor map overlays can be a major task in itself. I find a blend of period maps (1:25k ideally) period photos if they can be found and GE provide the most help. The period map will give an indication of the built up areas at time, road nets etc and contours, while GE allows a level of detail re individual houses etc if the location has not change too much since WW2 or what ever period. A great many places, particularly rural areas in Europe have not changed a great deal since the war, but other areas are almost unrecognisable. 

Just for fun, but below are the overlays I used when I created the Arnhem Road Bridge map. It's worth noting that the bridge is not even showing on the period maps having only just been completed at that time, and so 1st AB were working with maps that did not include the bridge !!

1.thumb.jpg.929c6b104bc2b8fc35a4504708ca7d6d.jpg

2.thumb.jpg.f2998bb5ffb3837e0022f23540835eb9.jpg

3.thumb.jpg.05f632a3f183df218242d520eab7fe0d.jpg

4.thumb.jpg.b9cdb72762aa3823695584234601bcf7.jpg

 

P

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3 minutes ago, Pete Wenman said:

I find a blend of period maps (1:25k ideally) period photos if they can be found and GE provide the most help. The period map will give an indication of the built up areas at time, road nets etc and contours, while GE allows a level of detail re individual houses etc if the location has not change too much since WW2 or what ever period. A great many places, particularly rural areas in Europe have not changed a great deal since the war, but other areas are almost unrecognisable.

Not that I am or think I am a "Pete Wenman" but I also use a mix of all these resources to make the CM map.

Old photos, old maps, aerial recon stuff, AAR's, GE and finally some tweaking to make it all click in CM.

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2 hours ago, Canuck21 said:

Now, is that using historical imagery from Google Earth? 

No...but versus western Europe I have it lucky in the North Africa battlefields for map making, not so much major development since the war for Ikea stores, schools, subdivisions, or new highways!

I am beating the brush for aerial recon imagery. Have a few emails out to researchers...

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@Pete Wenman - I see what you're saying, and it's probably reiterating most others' thoughts as well. You're absolutely right - the map making part is becoming a fair challenge for me. Certainly for historical areas (such as the Arnhem bridge, town centres where major battles were fought, etc.) yeah, I'll be looking long and hard for reasonably accurate data for those. Interestingly, I'm researching (very lightly at this point - this is **maybe** a scenario for later) the area around Buchholz and I used historical imagery from GE Pro. It was unreadable as I suspected, however I noticed that their was a separate image for Hamburg at the same time, for the same period. It was extremely clear for 1943 and totally useable. So it seems that some areas are fine (and that article I quoted did point out that some places in North Africa are also not affected by this, as @kohlenklau noted above). The focus of a lot of my scenarios is more in outlying countryside and small villages due to the fact I prefer tiny to small battles and interesting terrain to go with it. I've always found city/large town fighting more of a slog-fest (at least I did in ASL - probably the same here), especially when you get into using a larger force. That's where the coverage starts to fall apart, but your suggestion that things haven't changed a lot since WWII in outlying regions is encouraging. I went back and zoomed well out again after reading that and compared the 1943 data with the current data around Buchholz again and it sure looks similar to me. That's interesting. I come from a location where nothing is the same even from 20 years ago. Anyway, that helps a lot and encourages me that maybe I can still use overlays from GE Pro, with some referencing to historical imagery where appropriate. I'm maybe a bit fortunate in that with my work, it's primarily just the terrain I need be concerned about and that makes it a lot easier. It's a big difference between a tree dying and being replaced by another tree, and half the city of Caen being replaced and doubling in size with an expanding population :)

Thanks for this. I feel a lot more positive about this today than I did yesterday, I must admit.

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And these ... @Canuck21

https://ncap.org.uk/frame/6-1-1-18-59?pos=5

https://ncap.org.uk/frame/6-1-1-18-60?pos=6

https://ncap.org.uk/frame/6-1-1-18-61?pos=7

https://ncap.org.uk/frame/6-1-1-18-62?pos=8

https://ncap.org.uk/frame/6-1-1-18-63?pos=9

https://ncap.org.uk/frame/6-1-1-18-64?pos=10

https://ncap.org.uk/frame/6-1-1-18-65?pos=11

Note you don't have to buy these - the downloadable images are good enough for you to be able to make image grids in Google Earth to be able to see what used to be there and what isn't there now.  Clearly if there are fields in your 1940s image and buildings in the current one woohoo no faffing around placing buildings etc.  The map @Pete Wenman posted up which is post war but based on a 1940s survey seems to be pretty on the mark for what the place looked like during the war based on one of the images I gridded - image below.

1437923356_GriddedBuchholz.thumb.jpg.4065ba6f0adb8f1af0ef37a2701ca20b.jpg

Kml file - not sure whether you'll get the image but we'll see

Buchholz.kml

Anyway major thread derailment again - apologies @kohlenklau

Edited by Combatintman
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Very interresting job soon we can added some Valentines and others I m sure..., Phill I was not follow your mod for the time but on the clip the vehicle dont have wheels perhaps they were hidden if you were used blender ?

Looking more for this !

 

JM

 

Edited by JM Stuff
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30 minutes ago, kohlenklau said:

It might be a Blender glitch. I will try to do it ALL again and see if the wheels stay on the bus.

Yes I remember to see this on a video like I told you, home I will check it also for myself in case this happens but I am  sure we can fix it !

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@Aquila-SmartWargames

I think Aquila left good notes in his big thread. I will study the below and see if it solves my missing wheels for the PzIVD.

Quote

 

CUSTOM VEHICLES FOR WW2 AND MODERN AQUILA METHOD (just different step):

16) Turn "EXPORT METADATA ON", do not forget otherwise all tire and track wheels will look like you´re watching a Transformers movie. This on the other hand means there are difficulties replacing vehicles or vehicle parts with custom models as custom models require "EXPORT METADATA OFF" so if you want a custom ride with wheels or track wheels with current CM2 tools this seems not possible AFAIK but you can do surely do boats as these naturally don´t require wheels.

HOWEVER: You can mix/match several CM2 vehicles by importing them all and switching their parts. Its a bit like playing Car Mechanic simulator, no joke 😂. NEVER FORGET when importing set "IMPORT METADATA" and "TRANSFORM" and always "EXPORT METADATA" when working with vehicles, do alot of backups, if you once miss this and save info is lost, I lost an hour work because I forgot as you don´t notice that you forgot to import/export metadata. Since this I always stop breathing for a moment when I give my custom CM rides the first move command. 

You can also sculpt and cut parts by moving the vertices or selecting specific model parts in EDIT MODE (Tab) with Wireframe Model (Z) and deselecting (A) (pixels that connect everything) in edit mode. I always USE DELETE FACES not delete vertices as otherwise I got export errors afterwards. Check my Humvee V2 creation video, no commentary for doing this live. But sculpting completely new vehicles out of existing ones requires 3D Artist maestros and is alot of work. 

I had 5-10 lines of text in mind before writing this, very naive. Honestly now after writing this I see that a written tutorial wasn´t the best idea and I don´t know if this will make any sense but perhaps it helps one and somebody can come up with a decent video tutorial. Don´t get scared by Blender´s interface, for Combat Mission stuff you do not need 99,9% of it.

 

 

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