kohlenklau CMFI North Afrika QB map-mod project

[kohlenklau]

 

[kohlenklau]

 

Edited August 9, 2021 by kohlenklau

[Centurian52]

8 minutes ago, kohlenklau said:

 

Very nice! That sheet metal looks great!

[Erwin]

Hope the trench gives the appropriate level of protection.  Certainly, it looks good enough.  After one has played the game for some time, one tends to play more from level 2 and 3, so the close up looks become less important.

[kohlenklau]

Old mdr trick that is needed when doing Blender mdr shennaigans:

Open the final mdr in notepad++ and search/find the names of the child mdr's and you can slightly change their name.

For example, I am tweaking with the sandbag and sandbags on trench 1. I changed those names to sandbat and sandbats. Therefore, elsewhere in the game, anything that uses those 2 mdr's isn't affected by accident.

[kohlenklau]

5 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Hope the trench gives the appropriate level of protection

My pixel-lawyers have advised me to refrain from any such promises!

[Falaise]

1 hour ago, kohlenklau said:

I don't know what to tell you, there are animations for standing and shooting for LMG soldiers.

I will continue to enjoy tinkering to see what happens. Part of the fun, the game inside the game so to speak.

I haven't decided to go and do them all yet. I am still tinkering with trench1.   

 

 

yes the Americans shoot standing with the Bar and even on their knees they shoot
but Italians or Germans with LMGs do not shoot
they get down on their knees, aim then get up
it's frustrating

[kohlenklau]

here is a version with corrugated metal. I lowered it down a bit and alpha layered out the sandbags. They are still there but invisible. Streamlined look. We can still slap some flavor objects around the front. A dirt berm kind of flavor object maybe. Fill in that sloped area. This is in a ditch of 1 level lower than front and back.

[Lucky_Strike]

5 hours ago, Falaise said:

Before testing the graphic improvements of lucky and its superb very realistic trenches I continued to test that of kole when the behavior of the troops.
alas an insurmountable problem for me arose, the LMG shooters if they stand to watch only shooting lying down or kneeling
result they do not shoot in the trenches !!!
trechs thus lose all interest!

Yes, I haven't tried LMGs nor HMGs in either of the trenches I made, just some squaddies with Brens. They tend to fire either standing (good) or kneeling on the parapet (not so good).

Edited August 9, 2021 by Lucky_Strike

[Lucky_Strike]

4 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

I think all that is really needed for a minimum viable product is to get the other facings in

I applaud your enthusiasm, but it does require quite a big commitment to do the rest, and, whilst I would like to oblige, I just haven't got enough copies of me to pump these out at the moment. It's a maybe project once I've finished some other stuff.

Like Kohl, I may do some more fiddling around with trench 1. There might be someone else who has an inkling to learn a bit of Blender, enough to do the other shapes.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Lucky_Strike

[Lucky_Strike]

2 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

 

They look like they're having fun.

1 hour ago, Falaise said:

yes the Americans shoot standing with the Bar and even on their knees they shoot
but Italians or Germans with LMGs do not shoot
they get down on their knees, aim then get up
it's frustrating

I will have to have a look at this myself, as I said above, British squaddies with Brens are happy to shoot standing. There is probably something in the skeleton coding that is effecting the Axis troops behaviour, wonder what the Russians do ...? How do the Polish resistance deal with the trenches Kohl?

 

[Lucky_Strike]

2 hours ago, Erwin said:

Hope the trench gives the appropriate level of protection.  Certainly, it looks good enough.  After one has played the game for some time, one tends to play more from level 2 and 3, so the close up looks become less important.

I'm pretty certain it's not affected as the trenches and foxholes are very extrapolated, so their protection is factored in to calculations regardless of what they look like. I certainly didn't see any horrendous casualties nor lack of casualties in the few playthroughs I did. I think the way the engine handles stuff like this has been discussed many times with, so far as I can tell, no evidence that messing about with the 3D models actually affects where the bullets and shrapnel go. Looking at Kohl's recent videos actually illustrates this, the guy with the LMG would have a face full of his own lead if the wall of the trench were affecting the trajectory of his bullets.

This also suggest that the weird dances and behaviours one witnesses are actually going on all the time with trenches, and probably come down to things like LOS rather than what the 3D model looks like to us.

[Lucky_Strike]

2 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

Old mdr trick that is needed when doing Blender mdr shennaigans:

Open the final mdr in notepad++ and search/find the names of the child mdr's and you can slightly change their name.

For example, I am tweaking with the sandbag and sandbags on trench 1. I changed those names to sandbat and sandbats. Therefore, elsewhere in the game, anything that uses those 2 mdr's isn't affected by accident.

So do other mdrs reference the sandbag child models in the trench mdrs? I have wondered if there's something like this going on. When I first opened the trench 1.mdr It had no sandbag texture image linked to the sandbag child despite the bmp being in the same folder, yet when I exported the file it didn't complain that the texture was missing and the model was fine in game. Adding a reference to the texture bmp also seems to be fine.

1 hour ago, kohlenklau said:

here is a version with corrugated metal. I lowered it down a bit and alpha layered out the sandbags. They are still there but invisible. Streamlined look.

This looks good, much more appropriate to a desert scenario.

1 hour ago, kohlenklau said:

We can still slap some flavor objects around the front. A dirt berm kind of flavor object maybe. Fill in that sloped area. This is in a ditch of 1 level lower than front and back.

This is a great idea, you could also have some barbed wire there, they seemed to like that in the desert. I had thought of adding some foliage camouflage across the front area for Normandy.

[kohlenklau]

Maybe we have just 1 trench (parallel to map edges with the ditch system H/H-1/H) like this and leave the angles unmodded as the areas to put your HMG and LMG teams.

[kohlenklau]

3 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

So do other mdrs reference the sandbag child models in the trench mdrs?

The trench mdr's reference the already existing sandbag mdr. In Blender tree structure, these children are sometimes called odd things, like sphere or box. If you don't have the texture bmp in the folder as you import, then it doesn't grab it to show you the name sandbag.bmp - but it was there. The same with lots of vehicle mdr's.

 

[kohlenklau]

dropbox link to trench 1 with rusted corrugated metal, no sandbags visible, colored to match desert areas, modtagged as [birhakeim], extra pickles, no mayo.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ana78z4t1720kb7/AAA7gnW_y7P9EtwjAwXFigpsa?dl=0

[Lucky_Strike]

6 minutes ago, kohlenklau said:

The trench mdr's reference the already existing sandbag mdr. In Blender tree structure, these children are sometimes called odd things, like sphere or box. If you don't have the texture bmp in the folder as you import, then it doesn't grab it to show you the name sandbag.bmp - but it was there. The same with lots of vehicle mdr's.

 

Ah, so it's the other way around, I see. Would explain why the sandbag child is the way it is unless it's baked into the parent mdr by doing some editing on it.

Yes, I always open the mdrs with their texture bmps in the same folder, it's not the first time that I've seen a model NOT pickup the texture, but because of the way the game engine handles the mdrs and bmps the graphic is fine in game. Just the export that may fail sometimes, though easily fixable.

[kohlenklau]

MDR and MDS files:

If you import a vehicle mdr and probably plan for it to be the parent, you can import other mdr's as children and "paste" them on the vehicle. permgear is permanent, but sometimes there is optiona and optionb so that is why you see tanks have a bucket but sometimes not. spare roadwheels, gas cans, sections of track, etc.

For uniforms on soldiers, these are mds files and so far we cannot deeply examine them, can't import into Blender to alter the 3D model. But they can be opened in HxD and some stuff can be messed with. A certain uniform is taken by the game code and "cards are dealt" in accordance with the game code. Radioman gets a radio on his back. I have no idea if this is in the mds file, I think not. I think it is in the game code. LMG soldier gets LMG ammo pouch, etc. I am making changes to the mds file text to get my French Bir Hakeim guys kitted out. If I get an item of gear on them through tricks A and B, I then can do trick C which is to Blender edit the gear mdr to have more gear. canteen AND gas mask. This is required so the soldiers look properly equipped visually. The game code still allows reloading even if they have no ammo pouches. Radio still works even if there is no 3D radio with the company commander.

I am not trying to act like a professor, just leaving some breadcrumbs for others to follow. I am open ears to others lessons learned. Forward together!!!

 

[kohlenklau]

43 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Ah, so it's the other way around, I see. Would explain why the sandbag child is the way it is unless it's baked into the parent mdr by doing some editing on it.

Let me stop saying "references" in case that is an incorrect term.

Let me say that these mdr's can be like a big recipe for something that has a smaller subset of another complete recipe, already written, included in it. trench 1 contains a couple things, one is the sandbag 3D model which needs the bmp texture for sandbag/sandbags. 

When I imported the CMRT corrugated metal mdr it was one section. I rotated and moved it into place. Then I duplicated it 7 times to place corrugated metal as needed. I did not scale it. The uv map is already done for 1 individual corrugated metal piece. If you mess with it, you lose that uv work. uv work is hard for me. I love it when I can use something and it shows already textured and not stretched and skewed oddly!

@Frenchy56 helped me a few months back (several times actually) and what he did seemed magical. I am finally seeing what he probably did and how he probably did it using Blender. Thank you Frenchy!

 

[kohlenklau]

Not sure if anyone has already done this but...

I figured I would also try to make the foxholes look better in the desert...

Grab it if you want it...

foxhole [birhakeim]

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/f9b3ulo3n75fphd/AADBZD2xvLcz15lt7O3cU2WOa?dl=0

Edited August 10, 2021 by kohlenklau

[Centurian52]

14 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

Maybe we have just 1 trench (parallel to map edges with the ditch system H/H-1/H) like this and leave the angles unmodded as the areas to put your HMG and LMG teams.

That'll be fine for the current project you're making the mod for. But if you never mod the angles I won't be able to effectively use this in place of all of the current CM trenches. 

[kohlenklau]

25 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

But if you never mod the angles I won't be able to effectively use this in place of all of the current CM trenches.

I know. Right now I do not plan to take the time to do the angles. Once in a while I like to play the game too! :-)

[Erwin]

Thanks for the foxholes.  Maybe good for CMSF2 as well?

[Lucky_Strike]

18 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

MDR and MDS files:

If you import a vehicle mdr and probably plan for it to be the parent, you can import other mdr's as children and "paste" them on the vehicle. permgear is permanent, but sometimes there is optiona and optionb so that is why you see tanks have a bucket but sometimes not. spare roadwheels, gas cans, sections of track, etc.

For uniforms on soldiers, these are mds files and so far we cannot deeply examine them, can't import into Blender to alter the 3D model. But they can be opened in HxD and some stuff can be messed with. A certain uniform is taken by the game code and "cards are dealt" in accordance with the game code. Radioman gets a radio on his back. I have no idea if this is in the mds file, I think not. I think it is in the game code. LMG soldier gets LMG ammo pouch, etc. I am making changes to the mds file text to get my French Bir Hakeim guys kitted out. If I get an item of gear on them through tricks A and B, I then can do trick C which is to Blender edit the gear mdr to have more gear. canteen AND gas mask. This is required so the soldiers look properly equipped visually. The game code still allows reloading even if they have no ammo pouches. Radio still works even if there is no 3D radio with the company commander.

 

17 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

Let me stop saying "references" in case that is an incorrect term.

Let me say that these mdr's can be like a big recipe for something that has a smaller subset of another complete recipe, already written, included in it. trench 1 contains a couple things, one is the sandbag 3D model which needs the bmp texture for sandbag/sandbags. 

Yes, when I did my original edit of the trench I do now wonder if the reason my sandbags were not textured, despite the bmps being in the same folder as the mdr, was actually because the sandbag.mdr was NOT in that folder. The way these parts relate in like a library of materials and models. Of course what also seems possible is to bake the child parts into an mdr, which suggests the way they were originally set up was with some kind of library of parts with a view to efficiency and space saving, probably in relation to GPU ram. It's interesting that the same was not applied to the natural terrain, at least not in the earlier games. So far as I've seen all of the models are self contained though there are still several tree mdrs that I have yet to fully appraise. Though SF2 does have some very different trees that share textures/parts.

 

17 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

When I imported the CMRT corrugated metal mdr it was one section. I rotated and moved it into place. Then I duplicated it 7 times to place corrugated metal as needed. I did not scale it. The uv map is already done for 1 individual corrugated metal piece. If you mess with it, you lose that uv work. uv work is hard for me. I love it when I can use something and it shows already textured and not stretched and skewed oddly!

Yes, this can be a real life saver. I'm in the middle of trying to figure out the UV map for a new tree trunk, sadly no amount of reuse is going to help this one, boy is it frustrating. I'm going to have to do some serious study on this, all grist to the mill!

17 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

@Frenchy56 helped me a few months back (several times actually) and what he did seemed magical. I am finally seeing what he probably did and how he probably did it using Blender. Thank you Frenchy!

18 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

I am not trying to act like a professor, just leaving some breadcrumbs for others to follow. I am open ears to others lessons learned. Forward together!!!

Professors of Mod, Frenchy and Kohlenklau 

[kohlenklau]

38 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

I'm in the middle of trying to figure out the UV map for a new tree trunk,

It sounds like you already are doing this...always study the existing item X and reverse engineer what they did.