New DAK SPW 251-9 'Stummel" by Cabe

[Cabe Booth]

Here is my first ever mod. A German DAK SPW 251-9 "Stummel". It is all from scratch. I did borrow some interiors from pat and Gurtek, but the rest is all painted on the BFC basic mod.

Uploading to CMMODS right now.

Thanks to everyone for the tips and advice.

Enjoy the DAK Stummel!

[Cabe Booth]

FIXED

3.18.07

Text on gun manlet (face plate) was reversed.

New file included with mod.

New fixed mod with corrected BMP uploaded at 2:38am 3-18-07.

So if you DLed this before (it was only up for an hour) get the corrected version if you want the small chalk writing to read left to right.

[Aragorn2002]

Interesting mod, Cabe. Looks like it has just won the Paris-Dakar rally. But I like it.

[Cabe Booth]

yeah, I wanted it to be pretty battle worn as if it was a veteran unit of Afrika Korps..

But I did beat the crap out of it.

Looks like he has had some scraps and scrapes and parked too close to a brush fire. Not to mention engine troubles and salt water damage.

Thank you.

I am probably going to do the treatment to a tiger next... or the stug IIIF late.

As soon as I get my RL work caught up that I put on back burner to get this one done.

[patboy]

Cabe, I like your battle worn 251/9, nice site too!

I removed pink (transparent) parts of your mod, see the result:

Welcome to modding

Pat

ps : I email you some bmp to upload!

[Cabe Booth]

Yes, Please send those over to me.

I will use to update with credits.

Thanks much, I didn't have time to fix it. I had to much RL art to work on. They have a me a a painting a day. So I am just now setting down to work. A long night of doubleshots and oil paints.

[Cabe Booth]

I am leaning to the fact that thi s one looks better without the AR flag. The flat flag just seems to suck some of the life out of it. What do you think?

I will keep it as an option, but I think I will either take mine off or make a patch to drape it somewhere else.

And if anyone speaks German, plz tell me if what I wrote on the HT makes any sense, or if it needs to be altered. So small anyway.

[patboy]

Email sent, you don't need to give me credit, it's only a hobby and I don't mod it for pay.

About the AR flag (White pannel or Nazi flag),

it all depends if you have air superiority ?

Pat

[Cabe Booth]

Thank you, the mod has been updated at cmmods.

True on the air superiority, 43 wasn't a good year for the Germans to be looking up.

Or at least to be advertising to the skies

[_UXcva]

Nice one Cabe! I like the Paris-Dakar rally look too.

--Pat, how exactly did you go about removing the unwanted pinkie parts in the earlier version? I had the images in Photoshop and couldn't quite remove all the unwanted bits.

[patboy]

Answer has already been done by Gautrek with this link :

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=30;t=005230

Pat

[Cabe Booth]

Well,

In the future I will definitely use that strategy when modding. For this mod I just opened up photoshop and started painting, basically just using any tool or brush I could figure out to make this thing work. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Just started painting over the BFC mod. So for the next mod I will have to pour over all the mod tutorials that were sent to me an try to get a better approach going.

Just too much RL work and made this during breaks. Ok some break were 8 hours long but it was considered a "break"

.As for the look of the vehicle,

I considered the fact that this thing had a cannon that set about 3 feet or less over a hot hood that had a hot engine cooking underneath it, that would probably leave some soot on the front of the HT. And the blast would shock some of the paint off. Sand storms, breakdowns, multiple engagements, having small arms fire or close hit cause smoking engine failure, bad driving, scraping against brush, rock and other vehicles, brush fires and good old wear and tear. Add that to the fact that I don't think Rommel's forces had much time to repaint and worry about detailing when you are running back and forth across Africa and the RAF bombs your supplies out of the Mediterranean....... I figures towards the end they wouldn't have looked too clean.

I am not to educated on the game mechanics/engine. I have seen mods of soldiers faces. Do these randomize when a game is loaded? If so, what's to say that there couldn't be a way to make it to where we have 5 different mods of the same unit. When we load the game in it randomizes the mods we have and makes a variety of looks for the same unit? Meaning 5 stummels that have different looks to them? I am sure the problem with that idea is that the game would need 5 sets of BMP numbers to hold each version? Dumb question, which I probably just answered myself.

[_UXcva]

Originally posted by patboy:

Answer has already been done by Gautrek with this link :

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=30;t=005230

Pat

Pat, I am familiar with Gautrek’s mod tutorial; I’ve used it to add dirt, grime etc. to other modders mods. Also familiar with layers and so forth. My question then is how you fixed specially the bad pink areas in 3900.bmp. You’ll notice in the Cabe version the magenta is a different shade(s) towards the edges in spots; how did you offset that and make your edges so crisp/uniform? Did you use any painting as part of the process? When I tried the layer/similar/invert technique I still had to go in and paint to make the pink area uniform. Maybe my magic wand settings are off, though I’ve tried different combinations. -- and If anyone else has any advice I’d be glad to hear it

Thanks

(ps, I use Photoshop 6 or CS2 if that matters)

[Wicky]

The easiest way I found in Photoshop was to use the eye dropper tool on the pink of the bmp pink to make it the forground colour - then Select / colour range, once you've selected all the pink areas copy and paste it all in a new layer which you keep top most when flattening, before exporting.

[gautrek]

Originally posted by _UXcva:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by patboy:

Answer has already been done by Gautrek with this link :

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=30;t=005230

Pat

Pat, I am familiar with Gautrek’s mod tutorial; I’ve used it to add dirt, grime etc. to other modders mods. Also familiar with layers and so forth. My question then is how you fixed specially the bad pink areas in 3900.bmp. You’ll notice in the Cabe version the magenta is a different shade(s) towards the edges in spots; how did you offset that and make your edges so crisp/uniform? Did you use any painting as part of the process? When I tried the layer/similar/invert technique I still had to go in and paint to make the pink area uniform. Maybe my magic wand settings are off, though I’ve tried different combinations. -- and If anyone else has any advice I’d be glad to hear it

Thanks

(ps, I use Photoshop 6 or CS2 if that matters)

</font>

[Cabe Booth]

I was sent the Guartek mod tutorial and it is a zip file with some wierd file extension. anyone have a copy that I can open?

This one I have is a .txt.rtf

Yes 2 extentions all in one, no idea WTF that is.

[Cabe Booth]

Well I got corel paint shop pro,

and I followed the instrucions here to make a mask of the pink.

It won't

It doesn't select the other pink areas. No idea why. Seem like I just don't know what I am doing .

I am have never used PSP and I am only moderately familiar with photoshop beyond the tool bar.

I followed the steps above to the letter. It won't select anything but the pink area I have highlighted. I messed with it and since the setting in that area are completely alien to me all I could do was screw it up.

I have a mod I am working on that is a mess of pink.

I want to make a pink mask and lay it over the the BMP i was already working on to get rid of the mess. But I can not for the life of me figure out and easy way to do it.

Magic wand just color outside the lines even further. No idea why it does this. Seems really stupid to go outside the lines like that.

Attempting to color it by hand would take hours, and I would rather spend those hours learning how to do it right, or easier.

All I have manged to do is tick myself off.

SO I figured I would just start over and extract my marking to lace on a new clean BMP. Well Befor I did that I wanted to do what was explained above in this thread. Nope. Setting are wrong on my version or something. Seems easy but it isn't as usual. as well I am just getting angrier. Too tired. Would read the tutorial, but it in some corel format I guess that my corel won't open as well.

Hope someone has an answer, this will be the death of my modding if I can't get around the pink.

Oh well, I will go in the other room and get away from it. My Monitor is too expensive for me to punch.

ARGH!

[Cabe Booth]

ah,

I had to unclick "contiguous" I guess?

There was a tip that said to uncheck that box to make the wand select similar when clicking...

then it worked. odd.

[_UXcva]

Wicky & Gautrek - Thanks for the replies. I wasn’t aware of either of those techniques. I’ll experiment a bit when I get some time in the near future.

[Cabe Booth]

Is there a way in photoshop to select the pink areas and cut or clear the rest of the image, then same the pink areas as a PSD to be place later over the bmp i am working on?

I figured out how to select all the pink and cut it away, but moving it around and saving it as it's own file I have not.

Thanks for all the advice guys. It is helping quite a bit.

Last night was frustrating and I am sorry if I was ranting a bit. I ahd been wrestling with a bmp to save it from the pink for about 4 hours and was pretty tired. I just started over and used extract to get my favorite areas placed on the new BMP.

[Wicky]

That's what I explained earlier - how to select all the pink - copying it from the original bmp into a new layer. No need to make another file or anything

(Give it a while to load) Here's a top layer I've drawn in by hand over my IS-2 mod, showing how it overlays all the layers below. When saving is a bmb it'll automatically flatten.

Remember if you need to touch up pink use pencil tool and avoid anti-aliasing (soft brush).

I am a recovering modslut....

[The Schwabian]

i really like the worn look. i actually have tried looking for a good well weathered set of vehicles, but the closest i could find was aristoteles, and those look more depressed than worn

i really like that way this one looks though.

good job!

~Schwabian

[Cabe Booth]

Thanks!

I am working on some Italian theater UK shermans now

going to be a long project but I will upload them as each is done.

They will be a tad banged up,but not like the STummel. More of a slight rust with scratches and scuffing look on a new camo scheme, over a mikeyD blank..... of course

[gautrek]

how did you offset that and make your edges so crisp/uniform? Did you use any painting as part of the process? When I tried the layer/similar/invert technique I still had to go in and paint to make the pink area uniform. Maybe my magic wand settings are off, though I’ve tried different combinations. -- and If anyone else has any advice I’d be glad to hear it

Once you have got a selection which covers all the pink areas just flood fill the selection with the pink colour.That should make a uniform pink colour for you.

[Cabe Booth]

Well I found out how I got those nasty pink spots. You know the darker ones that are so hard to get rid of once they show up as in the pic in this thread called pinkcabe (I don't know if I like "Pink Cabe") but anyhoo,

I go those because I will take a bmp and set it to 400-700 pixels an inch in photoshop "image size". This allows me to put small scratches and rust ect with fine detail. Then when done I set it back to 72 (or whatever the default was) on the bmp. When it reverts back to 72 ppi the pink areas get these little edges that we are seeing there.

I guess because it redraws itself when you set it to higher resolution.

I have got around this problem, by creating a only pink layer and saving it separately in a folder labeled as such for access while working on the mod. never changing its resolution or anything. Just keeping it safe away from my work until I need it. That way I can just place the pink layer file over the bmp I was working on. Of course, bmps with no pink areas I can just go nuts with without worry. But he pink ones..... they are little batsages.