Berlin CMRT Map

[Lucky_Strike]

5 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

lool I´m getting highly distracted from all the latest developments as well.

There's so much good stuff that needs to be absorbed.

5 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

Yup, worth testing for sure. For building type combos (CM building + flavor) I think the flavor facades will remain standing til the very last second since it´s origin will be inside the building. Maybe it remains even entirely uneffected. Got to check Aquila´s ruin object again for this. Things could be different when combined with other non building type objects (like the rubble mound + brick wall example). Then the flavors placement point (origin) will be exposed to HE right from the start and can get removed early.

Yes if my test on the Opel Blitz Barn are anything to go by I suspect the ruin object will disappear with the building and leave us with just the collapsed rubble and ruin. Which would be okay for game play.

 

5 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

If one knows where placement point IS exactly one can avoid the hassles and make sure at least this one is level ground. For most the small 1 - 2m size flavors it´s quite obvious, but for objects as large as the 16x16m ruins it´s more of a guesswork.

Your grid would no doubt be useful in this.

[NPye]

20 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

I don't fully understand what is happening here as I'm so unfamiliar with the way of the buildings Jedi. Whenever I mess with buildings to check out how something works it's invariably an independent building. However, I do appreciate your continued efforts to make your vision work and have a way for even the most inexperienced of us to partake in the goodness. When I finally have time I will have to study the bricks and mortar more carefully. Thanks Nigel.  Now I go fix tram carriages ...

Ya it's very clever what he done here, I remember we tried everything when I made the Stalingrad Mod...we failed and that's how I got into the bad habit of placing buildings without windows or doors.. not all but enough to be a problem.. all solved now of course but a nightmare at the time... Cheers for the carriages work bud.

[RockinHarry]

5 hours ago, NPye said:

Ok a while ago I made a set of Modular builds, my brief to myself was I wanted them hollowed out but needs auto window placement on any width building, so the user (and me) do not have to piss about clicking the windows to fit. I remembered seeing Mod 7 in the vanila Modular buildings files folder. This was so different to the rest, what it does is basically have apertures in the walls for windows, as normal, but the window does not show, there is just the square hole were the windows usually are, you can still put the window frames on the regular windows it also has some depth in the window apertures where when i cut them out they are paper thin. So I had an idea what if I used Mod 7 as a template and built 1-9 Modular builds, as this fitted the brief perfectly... this would allow the user to play the vanilla maps or any RT game without messing the windows format up, and in my style of damaged texture look that I like, rather than the defaults (so clean they look like they had just been built...lol). I don't know why but it worked the whole 1-9 buildings were ok after I changed the graphics and added my own textures. So now if the player likes he can just use these... Not as immersive as using my full set of mod builds but a great solution to what used to be a big problem for me. See below...

I think this concept was by Benpark if I remember correctly, i have just utilized it further than BF dare to go... Cheers

I like it when you can see the troops in the buildings...

You can clearly see that firing and observation is not obstructed at all...

On the ground floor notice no windows or doors,.

 

 

I like what I see and your describing this mod´s effects. As well had to think what you mean with Mod 7 as I couldn´t find any modular 7 building geometry or type in the folders. But then it dawned to me you mean texture set 7 which I found then. ATM I´m too much focused on Blender and geometry I guess.

...\red thunder v100b\buildings\modular\textures\7

So I reread your text and now fully understand. Yeah I like this ruined no windows and doors style as well. Way better in towns and cities that saw some combat (or bombing) previously. And yep, the all too clean looking stock game files I don´t like as well. But why should BFC do something better if we´ve so many modders around. lol If I´d the time I´d do my own building texture mods as well. Just bits of weathering, adding certain details and color changes would suffice already. At least for my own purposes. ATM I mix and match from available mod sets and add bits of my own. Though limited to replacing the timber frame roofs where they look entirely out of place on my maps.

If possible I´d even get rid of the transparent effect for when there´s an infantry unit in a building. It takes much away from my immersion. At least having it switchable with key combo like many the other stuff would suffice already.

[NPye]

25 minutes ago, RockinHarry said:

So I reread your text and now fully understand. Yeah I like this ruined no windows and doors style as well. Way better in towns and cities that saw some combat (or bombing) previously. And yep, the all too clean looking stock game files I don´t like as well. But why should BFC do something better if we´ve so many modders around. lol If I´d the time I´d do my own building texture mods as well. Just bits of weathering, adding certain details and color changes would suffice already. At least for my own purposes. ATM I mix and match from available mod sets and add bits of my own. Though limited to replacing the timber frame roofs where they look entirely out of place on my maps.

Yes bud here's a better view:

 

 

25 minutes ago, RockinHarry said:

If possible I´d even get rid of the transparent effect for when there´s an infantry unit in a building. It takes much away from my immersion. At least having it switchable with key combo like many the other stuff would suffice already.

Totally agree, never been a fav of mine. Cheers

Edited November 4, 2022 by NPye

[NPye]

Here's the full set...

[RockinHarry]

39 minutes ago, NPye said:

Yes bud here's a better view:

 

 

Totally agree, never been a fav of mine. Cheers

Thanks! Looking great. So it´s 7 story mod build to which this texture 7 set belongs. Yeah, it´s beeing very rarely used and thus a good modding candidate for purposes like this. Drop it down with 1 or 2x SHIFT-ALT Click and you get this unique roofless looks. Cool solution. The more if you add multiple alternative texture sets for it.

Looking great!

 

Edited November 4, 2022 by RockinHarry

[RockinHarry]

Lol... just had to remind myself of the old modding tools thread here:

There´s still whole lot of great user info sharings in there and some important ones from sbobovic himself. Before reinventing the wheels and try on stuff that either failed or worked already.

Edit: Umlaut´s flavor adding thread is still of great use as well. Here´s where he shared his guide as PDF file.

 

Edited November 4, 2022 by RockinHarry

[NPye]

This will make ya laugh or cry like me...lol Firstly Blender is a Fookin nightmare so I tried a couple of work arounds, I made a gate up in illustrator then exported as a svg file, loaded into blender then exported to .MDR file... guess what it worked but was huge and in the sky... Ok I know I can scale it, but the point is easy things like Gates Railings etc, Tall Chimneys, can easily be made and saved as a flavour, its ok as well because no need to enter etc. 

Result below.

Next I thought of another workaround, I imported the SVG file and extruded it in PS 3D, this would even save all the hassle of doing it in Blender PS 2 mins Blender???????????? Then I exported the PS 3d file as An .OBJ file which I knw blender can read. Imported to Blender. I scaled the object down and placed in the centre etc then exported to .MDR and this time it exported ok but appears below the bloody map surface... Can this be sorted and can the ability to move rotate as other flav objects do???? If it cant then I will forget it but it is a very quick way to get very basic things into game. Thinking Used Shells, bullets, gates, railings, Chimneys, fences, the lists is endless?????? My blender skills are zero so I cant help myself very much. It is the most unfriendly user experience i've ever had...lol They change the UI interface so much that newer videos of just the basics are useless because everything changes... just basic things like scale and rotation (now thats a laugh) are made so badly for a 1st time user it makes me so frustrated, nearly smashed my beloved Mac up lol   I know its because I dont know what im doing.. and an old pro would show me in seconds stuff that takes hours to figure out...

As you can see good ideas but I cant implement them properly....HELP PLEASE.

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, NPye said:

It is the most unfriendly user experience i've ever had...lol

 Nigel, it only gets worse when you start looking at stuff like UV maps which just frazzle the brain sometimes. BUT I'm so glad to see another willing to have a go at this stuff, when you get it right, and you will, the delight of seeing something new in game is worth the struggle.

As you're finding things like rotation and scaling can play havoc with what looks like a perfectly good model. One thing that really helps in this respect: Once you are happy with the model and its placement relative to its origin then you select the whole model in object mode and go to the object menu > apply > scale and rotation; also apply location; you may see a little pop up palette appear in the tools pane which allows you to do all three at once. Doesn't do any harm to use the apply thing several times just to be certain. What this is doing roughly is applying all the transformations (rotation scale etc) to the object relative to its original size, location etc AND transforming that to the new origin X, Y, Z = 0, 0, 0. It's kinda nailing down all the stuff you've done. I always do these steps when ready to export though on occasion the scale one can cause other problems.

Baby steps ... we are all toddlers when it comes to Blender!

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, NPye said:

They change the UI interface so much that newer videos of just the basics are useless because everything changes... just basic things like scale and rotation (now thats a laugh) are made so badly for a 1st time user it makes me so frustrated, nearly smashed my beloved Mac up lol

Oh yes, the best thing is to specifically search for Blender and 2.79 videos in YouTube. If the video is more recent than about 2019/2020 it's probably going to be no good to you. If I can find him there's a guy who has done masses of stuff with a channel going back quite a few years, his stuff is usually easy to follow and useful.

What's frustrating is that our leading light @sbobovyc was working on an addon version for Blender 2.8x which he didn't have time to finish. Also you can bet the guys at BF don't have to jump through these hoops just to export a model ... hohum

[RockinHarry]

1 hour ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Oh yes, the best thing is to specifically search for Blender and 2.79 videos in YouTube. If the video is more recent than about 2019/2020 it's probably going to be no good to you. If I can find him there's a guy who has done masses of stuff with a channel going back quite a few years, his stuff is usually easy to follow and useful.

What's frustrating is that our leading light @sbobovyc was working on an addon version for Blender 2.8x which he didn't have time to finish. Also you can bet the guys at BF don't have to jump through these hoops just to export a model ... hohum

Yes it was roughly same time when I lost contact to him before he could answer some my latest questions. Pity. Hope he´s doing well.

I also find Blenders support page containing lots of useful info, particularly if just searching for a detail reference. https://www.blender.org/support/

And just found there´s a new Blender Version 3.3.1 which I downloaded. Will be interesting when I´ll find time for dealing with it. lol So...just having a look and stay with 2.79 for anything Blender ATM.

[RockinHarry]

1 hour ago, Lucky_Strike said:

As you're finding things like rotation and scaling can play havoc with what looks like a perfectly good model. One thing that really helps in this respect: Once you are happy with the model and its placement relative to its origin then you select the whole model in object mode and go to the object menu > apply > scale and rotation; also apply location; you may see a little pop up palette appear in the tools pane which allows you to do all three at once. Doesn't do any harm to use the apply thing several times just to be certain. What this is doing roughly is applying all the transformations (rotation scale etc) to the object relative to its original size, location etc AND transforming that to the new origin X, Y, Z = 0, 0, 0. It's kinda nailing down all the stuff you've done. I always do these steps when ready to export though on occasion the scale one can cause other problems.

 

1 hour ago, Lucky_Strike said:

  2 hours ago, NPye said:

It is the most unfriendly user experience i've ever had...lol

Yep, quite important stuff. Short cut is "CNTRL A" after selecting the single (sub) objects hierarchy. (right mouse click on it in object tree).

I also found selecting a nice Blender UI "theme" helps a bit for navigations and making the whole expierence more user friendly. It´s File - User Preferences - Themes - User Interface, then browsing through Presets to select one of your taste. Also "Interface" Tab allows scaling of it if things look too small. Set mine to 1.30 to fit my 24" screen on 1980x1020 res better. The default UI parms are an eye sore otherwise.

[Lucky_Strike]

6 minutes ago, RockinHarry said:

I also found selecting a nice Blender UI "theme" helps a bit for navigations and making the whole expierence more user friendly. It´s File - User Preferences - Themes - User Interface, then browsing through Presets to select one of your taste. Also "Interface" Tab allows scaling of it if things look too small. Set mine to 1.30 to fit my 24" screen on 1980x1020 res better. The default UI parms are an eye sore otherwise.

Absolutely. Though one big gotcha with Blender seems to be that if one opens a file made by someone else it also opens into their choice of GUI layout. I really don't get this, seems like the GUI preferences are embedded in the file, which might be alright when opening one's own files say between different work stations, but I really hate having to reconfigure my viewport just so that I can mess about with a model. This makes for very annoying user experience. I guess there may be a way around this with preferences or setting up a default user interface but boy do they make this stuff so confoundedly difficult 

[Lucky_Strike]

30 minutes ago, RockinHarry said:

Yes it was roughly same time when I lost contact to him before he could answer some my latest questions. Pity. Hope he´s doing well.

I also find Blenders support page containing lots of useful info, particularly if just searching for a detail reference. https://www.blender.org/support/

And just found there´s a new Blender Version 3.3.1 which I downloaded. Will be interesting when I´ll find time for dealing with it. lol So...just having a look and stay with 2.79 for anything Blender ATM.

I see updates on his YouTube channel occasionally so I think he's just moved on to other projects.

Yes the manual is actually okay once one gets to grips with the language.

I did notice in rereading sbobovyc's original thread that he said it's perfectly possible to work in a different 3D app then export the model back to Blender as an obj file to then export back to mdr. This might actually help with stuff like UV mapping when it gets too complex to understand in Blender. There are some bespoke UV mapping apps that look like they offer better interfaces, but most are pay-for often by subscriptions, so not likely to be worth it for most of us amateurs. I did find another app, FreeCAD, or something like that, which was quite useful for cracking certain 3D files that Blender doesn't open.

Now when I open newer Blenders I get spooked by their modern looking GUI and have no idea where to start, it's like learning another app all over again!

[RockinHarry]

9 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Absolutely. Though one big gotcha with Blender seems to be that if one opens a file made by someone else it also opens into their choice of GUI layout. I really don't get this, seems like the GUI preferences are embedded in the file, which might be alright when opening one's own files say between different work stations, but I really hate having to reconfigure my viewport just so that I can mess about with a model. This makes for very annoying user experience. I guess there may be a way around this with preferences or setting up a default user interface but boy do they make this stuff so confoundedly difficult 

Hm... haven´t experienced that yet, but I (try) open a *.blend file directly in my active 2.79. If I click-open a Blend file directly (in Win Explorer) it opens in newest my version Blender 3.2 automatically. But I just´ve grabbed few Blend files from the net 2 years ago, so it might be cause of this maybe. Blender UI can be saved as preset and reloaded if things get messed up. That in my 2.79. I´ve no experience with 3.2+ yet.

[RockinHarry]

3 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

I see updates on his YouTube channel occasionally so I think he's just moved on to other projects.

Yes the manual is actually okay once one gets to grips with the language.

I did notice in rereading sbobovyc's original thread that he said it's perfectly possible to work in a different 3D app then export the model back to Blender as an obj file to then export back to mdr. This might actually help with stuff like UV mapping when it gets too complex to understand in Blender. There are some bespoke UV mapping apps that look like they offer better interfaces, but most are pay-for often by subscriptions, so not likely to be worth it for most of us amateurs. I did find another app, FreeCAD, or something like that, which was quite useful for cracking certain 3D files that Blender doesn't open.

Now when I open newer Blenders I get spooked by their modern looking GUI and have no idea where to start, it's like learning another app all over again!

Uh... that´s pro stuff way beyond my current abilities. IIRC those conversions (obj) requires a Python installed, which I haven´t yet. Will do for Butschi´s terrain to CM translator somewhat later though. Think if I ever get that far dealing with UV map stuff, I´ll likely try learning in Blender instead. That´s the plan.... lol

[RockinHarry]

That´s how my 2.79 Blender looks like btw.

and that mysterious bench that got us a CTD

Edited November 4, 2022 by RockinHarry

[NPye]

5 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

This makes for very annoying user experience. I guess there may be a way around this with preferences or setting up a default user interface but boy do they make this stuff so confoundedly difficult 

I have used 100s of App since 1991 on a professional level and this App, like you say, over complicates everything, i'm sure there are reasons for it but dam it FFS. I gotta a feeling that the .MDR is one of the reasons BF never updates animations or stupid bugs like stuf driving through flavour objects etc... also I bet it's impossible to move to a modern 3d platform... they made their bed in the first CMx2 and now they have to stick with it???? Hopefully i'm wrong, very possible...lol Also like many things in the digital world 3D seems to have it's own terminology... and confuses the user until it all fits in, I had the same thing when learning Wordpress from scratch... Cheers guys. Is the MDR format designed purely for Combat Mission? and is that why we can only use blender, because that clever dude wrote the add on script for it? I have found loads of free models but they don't import as it says the textures are missing... I will persevere...

[Artkin]

Lol.. sounds like GIMP

[Lucky_Strike]

8 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

Hm... haven´t experienced that yet, but I (try) open a *.blend file directly in my active 2.79. If I click-open a Blend file directly (in Win Explorer) it opens in newest my version Blender 3.2 automatically. But I just´ve grabbed few Blend files from the net 2 years ago, so it might be cause of this maybe. Blender UI can be saved as preset and reloaded if things get messed up. That in my 2.79. I´ve no experience with 3.2+ yet.

Mostly we're importing stuff or appending so hopefully you won't see it too often, it's just downright confusing the first few times it happens, then just annoying. Presets are the way to go for sure.

8 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

Uh... that´s pro stuff way beyond my current abilities. IIRC those conversions (obj) requires a Python installed, which I haven´t yet. Will do for Butschi´s terrain to CM translator somewhat later though. Think if I ever get that far dealing with UV map stuff, I´ll likely try learning in Blender instead. That´s the plan.... lol

But, but ... you must have a Python installed already to run Blender, or am I thinking of something else altogether unconnected? Good thing with Python is you can have different versions live happily together so long as they're installed correctly. I think Butschi uses Anaconda, not that I know much at all about this stuff.

5 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

That´s how my 2.79 Blender looks like btw.

This is the one aspect of the Blender GUI I do appreciate, it's very flexible for customising the colours and all that stuff.

5 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

and that mysterious bench that got us a CTD

Frightened the life out of me first time. It was on my Mac as well which just never does that, well ... hardly ever. No crash dialogue or nothing, who'd have thought a bench could do that.
 

[Lucky_Strike]

3 hours ago, NPye said:

over complicates everything, i'm sure there are reasons for it but dam it FFS.

Open source ...

3 hours ago, NPye said:

I gotta a feeling that the .MDR is one of the reasons BF never updates animations or stupid bugs like stuf driving through flavour objects etc...

God, I hope they have a better system that what we have. I think they use Max or something pro level, could be talking out my proverbial though ... I think the reason for slow updates is bottlenecks in their organisation and ...

3 hours ago, NPye said:

... also I bet it's impossible to move to a modern 3d platform... they made their bed in the first CMx2 and now they have to stick with it????

There is that. OpenGL is pretty ancient in game terms and having to constantly futz with stuff to just try and keep it all running must be an utter pig. There'll come a time when new OS's, GPU drivers and the like just stop supporting this stuff THEN they'll hear a lot more moaning. As it is I think it's teetering on the edge so let's hope they have a new engine ready to fill the void when it happens.

3 hours ago, NPye said:

Also like many things in the digital world 3D seems to have it's own terminology... and confuses the user until it all fits in, I had the same thing when learning Wordpress from scratch...

Yep, it's a mighty steep learning curve for sure.

3 hours ago, NPye said:

Is the MDR format designed purely for Combat Mission? and is that why we can only use blender, because that clever dude wrote the add on script for it?

Well we don't know for sure, but there are some very similar file types mentioned which were used in Castle Wolfenstein (I think that's what it's called). I was looking at something to do with the MDS files (the pixeltruppen skeletons) recently. It does seem that it's some sort of proprietary container system, but the stuff inside is basically obj files I believe (another 3D file format which is easier to open in lots of apps). Quite why they still use it for the models is anybodies guess, but they were/are not alone in using strange file formats for game graphics and models.

3 hours ago, NPye said:

I have found loads of free models but they don't import as it says the textures are missing... I will persevere...

Yeah, this is often the case. Sometimes the textures and materials are wrapped up in the file and need to be extracted. Other times they are just not there as the maker was only interested in distributing a blank canvas model. You can occasionally guess and try your own texture depending on the subject, but then UV unwrapping rears it's very ugly head. 

[Lucky_Strike]

39 minutes ago, Artkin said:

Lol.. sounds like GIMP

LOL Yep, that's the one, GiMP on steroids.

[RockinHarry]

5 hours ago, Artkin said:

Lol.. sounds like GIMP

GIMP ain´t that bad. And it´s free, just like Blender. Doubt one could "master" PS or 3D Studio Max in few days as well. Really depends on what you want achieving and in my case things are rather limited and focused on certain stuff only. Don´t need ~70-80% of all the apps capabilities anyway.

[RockinHarry]

5 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

But, but ... you must have a Python installed already to run Blender, or am I thinking of something else altogether unconnected? Good thing with Python is you can have different versions live happily together so long as they're installed correctly. I think Butschi uses Anaconda, not that I know much at all about this stuff.

Blender runs straight out of the box. And you can have installed and run different versions concurrently without the Win10 hassles. Python is needed for some of Sbobovyc´s external tools and IIRC Blender im-/exporter uses Blender´s internal one sort of. Yet have to install this Anaconda thing on my puter, likely this weekend. We´ll see.

5 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

This is the one aspect of the Blender GUI I do appreciate, it's very flexible for customising the colours and all that stuff.

To be honest I feel I´d just scratched all its capabilities at the surface. But when I get things to work, it all makes sense thus far. Don´t even take reference to guides and help files while learning. Maybe my long past apprenticeship as technical drawer and bits of experience with (old) 3DS Max helps here as well. But I intend learning Blender in more organised ways and getting a broader base. Ya know it kills inspirations and ideas if you can´t put them to practice quickly.

6 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Frightened the life out of me first time. It was on my Mac as well which just never does that, well ... hardly ever. No crash dialogue or nothing, who'd have thought a bench could do that.

Me too. Have rarely any CTD during long times, but messing with MDR makes them popping more frequently again. Sure sign I f****d up a file heavily. But think I know where it came from in this case. I assigned the dummy texture where it was unneeded entirely. But Blender also reassigns stuff silently at times. So always double check for this stuff before exporting to MDR. Another lesson learned....

[NPye]

I retexturized the Tram... big improvement and now looks smashed up which suits the Berlin Mod perfectly...