US Army HD mod

[Ryujin]

Looking good, note the alpha channel on the MOLLE was what was hiding that NBC bag on the leg. If you want the case on there with the proper texture, grab it off the stock army texture. You can draw on the alpha layer to set which parts are visible and which are transparent. I forget if it was black or white that is transparent, but if you select to have all layers visible (all the eyes "checked") the transparent bits will be red.

You may find the clone stamp tool useful for painting multicam on the helmet while going around the detail, or you can use some of the above mentioned methods to erase the ACU and make a camo layer under it.

That said, by far a good start.

[The Warrior]

Ok. I have found the alpha channels on other mods. What I can't figure out is how to add a alpha channel. I also notice when i do something that has an alpha channel, it disapears when i save my work. Also. If you want to just make a siple change to a uniform ie remove or replace a unit symbol from ACU, can u just cut and pass or is there more to it?

[Ryujin]

well for alpha channels you need to save as a 32bit .bmp for the alpha data to be included.

Here's a alpha channel tutorial

http://www.axialis.com/tutorials/tutorial-misc001.html

If you want to remove and replace a unit symbol from the uniform .PSDs I included, then yes, just turn off or delete the layer with the patch, then make a new layer with the patch you want and line it up/re-size it. Should be pretty easy.

[Ryujin]

Not quite US Army HD... had a little time to do some more work:

Work in progress, showing off new MTV vest and uniform textures. Final version will be goggle-free.

Oh and a sound mod update, made a number of changes, not sure all are for the best, feedback is appreciated.

http://www.filefront.com/17211926/HD Sound v0.59.rar

[ChrisND]

Those vests look fantastic, the higher resolution really does make the difference. What has been the hit to your fps/memory using the HD textures?

[Field Marshal Blücher]

Those vests look fantastic, the higher resolution really does make the difference. What has been the hit to your fps/memory using the HD textures?

I'd like to know this too. These look great, but I'm worried about the hit to my performance.

[Ryujin]

Same resolution as the US Army HD guys, just better texture work on my part. So you should get about the same performance with them.

Personally, I have a very high end system so I only get the occasional hicup when looking at big masses of troops (CMSF doesn't fully use my quad or dual GPUs). I haven't really got enough feedback to say what it does on lower systems, other than if you have trouble running CMSF as is, this certainly isn't going to help .

[Field Marshal Blücher]

I haven't really got enough feedback to say what it does on lower systems, other than if you have trouble running CMSF as is, this certainly isn't going to help .

Hmm. I wouldn't say I have trouble, but it is at the point where I'd really rather not do anything to decrease performance beyond what it is now. Thanks!

[Ryujin]

Well, you can always take the US army or USMC (when released) for a spin and see how they work out. Can't hurt, they are free after all.

Since I don't know exactly how performance is on slower systems, posting the results of any test would be appreciated.

[Field Marshal Blücher]

Well, you can always take the US army or USMC (when released) for a spin and see how they work out. Can't hurt, they are free after all.

Since I don't know exactly how performance is on slower systems, posting the results of any test would be appreciated.

Good point. May try them out tomorrow and see how they do!

Hard to argue with free . . .

[Ryujin]

Started a bit of work on new faces. Bit tricky without good face reference (side and front, etc). I opted to leave them a 512x512px for various reasons (namely I think people may want it not HD for use on lower end systems and etc.

So here's a sample at 512x512, I think it still looks pretty slick being photo based instead of hand drawn like the stock faces.

thoughts?

[Mord]

Very cool. And We've needed some new black faces in the game. Look forward to this.

How many faces you plan on doing?

The photo realism works well...M1's Syrian faces mod had that.

Mord.

[Ryujin]

I was thinking of a couple more than the stock game in terms of actual faces, probably adding a few more asian/latino faces in the mix. Then I'll probably make a few variations of some of the faces with glasses/gloves, etc. As you mentioned there's already that good syrian faces mod, so I'll probably leave those alone and refer people to that mod.

[Mord]

The more the merrier if you ever wanna do a Syrian faces mod...Just start numbering where M1's left off.

For my gaming I've renumbered all face mods so the stock graphics work along with them that way I get the most variety.

Not to be pushy but any plans for doing some Brit faces? We definitely need some extras.

Mord.

[Ryujin]

One thing at a time . At the moment I'm just going to focus on what effects my HD USMC/US Army. Need to get that done first.

[Ryujin]

Darn edit time limit!

One last round of WIP shots for today:

(farthest guy is stock for comparison, main difference is more natural skin tones and such)

[LongLeftFlank]

I've noted this before but when I look at photos and read histories it seems like African-Americans are roughly 1 in 7 in Army infantry units and about 1 in 10 for Marines (vs about 1 in 7 for the US population in general). Asian-Americans (especially Filipinos) seem to run about 1 in 6 and Latinos about 1 in 5. Just crude guesstimates, not based on actual research. This is not the Vietnam era force. Hope these observations do not offend anyone - not my intent on this anniversary of the great I Have a Dream Speech.

[Ryujin]

No offense taken personally, I'm just going for a "plausible" mix of faces. It's hard to control what mix the randomization gives you anyway, I just do a few more Caucasian faces than others and you get a decent mix. Shouldn't be notable unless you're counting or something.

At the moment I'm more worried about making decent glasses, it's not easy .

[MeatEtr]

This is long overdue since we all got M1s excellent Syrian HD faces awhile ago. I do recall sending him a bunch of pics in hopes to get him to make a US HD faces mod. I guess he never got around to it.

This is looking good Ryu, keep up the good work.

Is there a Latino face in the default game? There certainly should be as there's plenty serving.

[Ryujin]

Well......... it's 4am and I got a bit carried away.....

I got a plan for restructuring all this to make it more modular and user friendly, a bunch of .brz packs for each component that should be a bit easier to manage.

Anyway, my efforts are primarly on infantry a the moment, USMC infantry in the works, and I'm improving the US Army to v2, after reviewing and improving from v1, and of course the US faces pack.

Here's a peak at US army v2, (now with mags in the pouches, among other things ):

BREAKING NEWS! USMC CLEANS GOGGLES!

....I know I missed a bit, will be fixed later

[Ryujin]

Been playing around with ways to make better looking goggles, went with painting eyes on them with a slight tint (to cover up skin color, on light skinned guys they look tinted, on dark skinned guys it looks more untinted). Avoids some of the "terminator goggles" look of solid black, I'm still working on getting the eyes just the right size and placement.

Also working of the IOTV, a few accuracy changes and hand drawing bits to conform to the UV better. New gloves too.

[LongLeftFlank]

Looks terrific. I especially like the sunburned "two-toned face" look (aka the "raccoon") which is pretty typical of guys who wear helmets and goggles in the desert but, being guys, skip the sunscreen on their lower faces. A slight sheen of sweat mixed with dust would be cool too, but I have no idea how you'd pull that off.

[Erwin]

Looks really amazing work R. Thanks.

Any eta on the completed mod? (Not sure if if it's worth to d/l the beta.)

[Ryujin]

Looks terrific. I especially like the sunburned "two-toned face" look (aka the "raccoon") which is pretty typical of guys who wear helmets and goggles in the desert but, being guys, skip the sunscreen on their lower faces. A slight sheen of sweat mixed with dust would be cool too, but I have no idea how you'd pull that off.

I'm not sure it's high enough resolution (and CMSF doesn't have any complex lighting effects) for that kind of detail. I'll experiment a bit, but don't get your hopes up .

Looks really amazing work R. Thanks.

Any eta on the completed mod? (Not sure if if it's worth to d/l the beta.)

Yeah, there's a noticeable increase in detail between this and the beta, I was able to really do things better this time around. As far as eta I would tentatively say before October, but of course this is not set in stone due to various university related stuff.

[Erwin]

Awesome, mate!