Detailed instructions for creating shadows (BIG PICS)

[George-III]

I am using Corel Photopaint 7.0 for this. I am sure you can do this in Photoshop but I dont have that program so all I can do is show you on Photopaint.

I will use the Stug as an example. Its fairly boxy so Its not too tough to mod.

The first thing you need to do is figure out what bmp's are verticle and what bmp's are horizontal. The easiest way to this is to use the Voidhawk version of CM:

After opening the Voidhawk I write down the numbers of the bmp's that are verticle:

3270 - vehicle side

4020 - tracks

3275 - front

3279 - MG shield

3276 - back

These are the only bmp's that we need. The horizontal bmp's we can leave alone because they are in sunlight.

Ok next you open the side bmp (3270) from your CM CD. When you open it up you will notice that there are sections of pink around the road wheels. These appear transparent in the CM engine. Its very important that these pink sections dont change color or they will stop being transparent. To prevent this I apply a color mask.

Click on 'Mask' then click 'Color Mask' which will bring up the following screen:

Use the eye-dropper tool in the bottom left to click on a pink part of the bmp - then click ok.

Now you will see dotted-lines surrounding the pink parts so we cant change them. Now click 'Effects' - 'Render' - 'Lighting Effects..' (see below):

That will bring up the folling menu:

Under the light source select 'Ambient' under strengh (upper right) type in 50%. Now click 'OK'. Now save the bmp to the C:/Program Files/CM/bmp folder on your hard-drive.

Next open the bmp for the front (3275). Ok this is going to be a little compicated. Half of this bmp is shaded, the other half is in partial sunlight (slope). So we need part at 50% and part at 75%.

Draw a square mask around the fenders and the front slope:

Now render the part inside the mask at 75%. Next click on 'Mask' - then 'Invert' and render the remaining part at 50%. It should look like this:

Ok now click 'Mask' - then click 'Remove'. Then save the image to the bmp file on your hard-disk.

Ok Ive hit the maximum number of photos so I will continue below.

[ June 18, 2002, 05:38 AM: Message edited by: George-III ]

[George-III]

Ok part 2 .....

You only need to creat masks on bmps that have the pink sections or on bmp's that need different shades on them. For bmp's like 3279 (the gun shield) all you need to do is open it - render ambient light at 50% - and save it to your hard-disk.

Now all you need to do is repeat the above process for gun shield and back bmp's and you are done.

Obviously these instructions are very specific to Photopaint, however I have found that most photo editing sofware works pretty much the same. If you are using Photoshop the commands should be very similar to the ones I am using.

Ok lets look at the finished product:

And as just a reminder heres what it used to look like:

Note: I discovered some problems when I was putting this together. It seems I was rendering the horizontal surfaces at slightly higher than 100% as part of an experiment. Unfortunatly those bmps are the ones you have been looking at in my previous thread (oops). I think I used 110% or so. No wonder it looked like there was too much contrast and the shadows looked too dark. I will bring the horizontals back down to 100 and it should look a little better. I also discovered that I had not fixed the fenders and slope on the stugs in my previous thread. If you look close you can see that they are too dark.

If you have any questions post here and I will try to answer.

[ June 18, 2002, 05:58 AM: Message edited by: George-III ]

[lcm1947]

I created the same picture in the game that you show of the one where the Sherman is in the bottom part of your picture and I think the appearance of vehicles from a distance are much improved and even more so of the hi- res mods. Now you state that the low-res looks more detailed then the hi-res but I think the hi-res looks more detailed. Anybody else see that? Anyway, like I said from a distance they do look much better but the close up ones in my opinion don't look better when comparing hi-res mods. So I guess it's a trade off. Close up don't look better, further away one's look much better. Boy, what a decision. But overall I am very impressed with your findings. What would people mods look like with your modification I wonder? Would you care to show us?

[sebastian]

cool. if you have much time and want it to look even better you could adjust the shading even more on the basis of the slope. for example: in 3275.bmp the bottom-part(facing down a bit) schould be even darker than the top-part(vertical). here it doesn't make much sense, but in other cases it could.

[Marlow]

Very nice. If you want to get even fancier, try creating a shadow for the main gun and machine gun on the deck and roof.

[Guest Panzer Boxb]

Originally posted by Marlow:

Very nice. If you want to get even fancier, try creating a shadow for the main gun and machine gun on the deck and roof.

What happens when the turret rotates though?

[Marlow]

Opps. Hadn't thought of that. BTS, fix or do somefink!

[Thomm]

Originally posted by lcm1947:

So I guess it's a trade off. Close up don't look better, further away one's look much better. Boy, what a decision.

*Sigh* If George-III applies his methods to hi-res mods, you would have the best of `both worlds'. It's as simple as that!

Regards,

Thomm

[Runyan99]

A bump of support.

[ianc]

Hats off to a very fine idea!

ianc