Transparent Trees?

[Dawg Bonz]

Is there a method or ‘trick’ to obtain transparent trees in the CM trilogy of games?

Can you make the tree .bmps transparent like you can with buildings?

I realize you can change the visual density of tress from none to extreme with the shift –T command.

I fancy the way some wooded maps look with the extreme setting. Great feeling to the game as a squad moves through at grunt level one. The quandary is as the units move through the woods, the tree bmps (even on "sparse") can fill the entire screen, overly obscuring the FOV. If you could toggle the close range tree bmps (the trees the squad is passing by) to transparent, trees would look superior without overly obscuring the FOV.

Do not know if this is possible but wondering. :confused:

Thanks in advance.

[SFJaykey]

That might be a neat mod: a tree mod that had tree canopies with foliage thin enough to see thorugh. Maybe with thin tree trunks, or maybe just the canopy "floating in air." You could leave tree effects set to full or extreme all the time, for visual appeal, but still be able to see the action whether viewing from high angles or ground level.

[Dawg Bonz]

SFJaykey thanks for your reply.

Yep, extreme tree effects have much greater 3D visual appeal but they do block the FOV when following a squad. I do not know how the transparent buildings feature is implemented but that was the idea but for trees.

I most noticed this when following units level one / two in the movie phase. Cool watching units move through the foliage as long as you can see through the trees.

If you had an option for transparent trees from the higher viewing angles you could have options; normal or transparent with an area the size of the unit base transparent when moving through the woods.

Do not know if this is possible with a tree .bmp mod?

[eichenbaum]

All other textures in CM can only have an opacity of 100% or 0%. The 50% for buildings has been hardcoded (build in). So trees can not have the same opacity effect as buildings.

You could mod the bitmaps in a way that they have a grain of pixels that are transparent (magenta). Only this would look a bit too unrealistic at close range.

Nils

[ January 11, 2004, 07:07 AM: Message edited by: eichenbaum ]

[eichenbaum]

(oops... wrong button)

[Dawg Bonz]

Thanks eichenbaum. Sounds like transparent trees is not an option in the current CM trilogy. Maybe transparent trees (or better) will be available in CMX2. Appreciate your explanation.