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[Uzin]

Dunno if that's a compliment...   

Yes, of course, very appreciated !

Anyway, see it from the bright side if you got to go back to hospital in February. So you got to celebrate your birthday with all those young, attractive and caring young nurses.      

My spouse allows me to read the offered menu, but says too, that I must keep a diet at my age.

[badderger]

Thank you Uzin for your efforts in selflessly making this map.Best wishes with your health also. Looking forward to FMB with this map and I will be researching dates, places and equipment(planes flown) and making a mini campaign...p.s. I just joined SAS a few minutes ago and this is my first post. Have been building missions a couple years and am looking forward to this map for new material with the eastern front war. Best regards.

[Uzin]

What are opinions on the variant of Brest Fortress given below, please ?
This was made by hand, in contrary to former one which was a phototexture.
Somebody somewhere preferred the handwork to phototextures in Il2.

[Kopfdorfer]

Hey Uzin,

              Great map area , by the way.

              Personally I prefer option #1 .


              I must comment, however (and this may be problem without an easy solution)
              that the moats (small water bodies around the fortifications) do not look too plausible(believable) ,
              primarily because smaller  bodies of water tend to be less broken with waves and reflections than larger ones,
              not more.

Like this photo - obviously not Brest, but serves to give an example :

Note the difference in the water's surface between the large and small bodies of water, just metres apart.

              To me it looks strange to see a moat with large swell (like waves only
              bigger) next to a large river with next to none.  If there were a way
              to make/paint the moats with smaller and less waves , and smaller
              reflections, I believe it would go a long way to improving the
              immersion of this structure - and others like it on other maps too!

              I know this may not be possible given the limitatoins of representing minor waterways in the game/map code.

              Thanks for your work.

              Kopfdorfer

[Uufflakke]

Are you sure you show us screenshots with waters made by hand instead of a painted texture?
Probably you uploaded the wrong images.
Both thumbnails look shopped to me because colour of water around fortification is slightly different, waves are higher then in surrounding canals and reflection on waves look pixelated/blocky (probably because of using parts of a screenshot with a different scale).  By the way I also see some sharp edges of the copy-paste work in water around the Brest Fortress.

Appart from this I prefer handmade stuff in map_c, when you fly over Brest you'll have realistic reflections on water.
Something you can't achieve when shopped into textures.

[Uzin]

Thank you very much, you all mapmaker experts !
Water around the fortifications was made in GIMP by cutting away the proper selections in mount.tga (=essentially grass) file, having the layer with simulated water below it. Because I have *.xcf file saved,  it is easy to replace the water by another appearance, say, by the muddy one as made at Swedish Fort at Pillau, EastBalt map.
Thank especially to Kopfdorfer for another picture of Brest Fortress, too. Together with those I obtained from Aviaskins and Dispersalfield  guys,  I hope to build satisfactory picture of the Fortress even with limited Il2 means.

[Uzin]

Appart from this I prefer handmade stuff in map_c, when you fly over Brest you'll have realistic reflections on water.
Something you can't achieve when shopped into textures.

I have tried to modify map_c first, but it is almost impossible to make such narrow water areas there, so now I am trying to solve the problem with textures. The unnatural appearance I shall try to improve. Many thanks for your comments. As for pictures, see the way I made them manually- in another my reply. Water itself was not made by hand, of course.

[Uzin]

I hope now I approached more to the tint of rivers:

[Kopfdorfer]

Looks Great Uzin,

                         How did you handle making the moats?


Kopfdorfer

[Uzin]

How did you handle making the moats?

I am working in Gimp as it follows.

1. Open new file size 1024x1024 pixels, in RGB Regime. This is Layer 1. Fill it with colour or water of your choice.

2. Open As Layer the file mount.tga, which is essentially the grass . This is Layer 2.

3. Open as layer the photo of the region, with moats, resize it properly, make it semi-transparent.

4. Make Layer 2(mount.tga) active, using Lasso or better, Path tool, select the  moats. Change it to the Selection. Delete the Selection, and youi will see the moats water. Save these three layers as *.xcf file so that you may change the water colour, if needed.

5. Make only Layers 1 and 2 visible, join these layers and make them new file -e.g. BrestFort.tga.

6. In Unlocked FMB, use the file BrestFort.tga as a texture at proper place.

Btw, there is some trick in precisely placing the texture at the proper place, but it is common with the use of other textures.

The above procedure was used after the re-drawing of map_c did not give satisfactory results, because of moats being very narrow, the size of the whole island there is less than 800 meters.

[Kopfdorfer]

Thanks for concise response. I hope it will be useful to neophyte mapmakers!
I'm looking forward very much to your finished (advancement of???) project.

Here is the German attack - but they couldn't subdue it easily . As I understand, some Russian troops held out for many weeks.


Kopfdorfer

[Uzin]

Thank you very much for the map.
I have it also from Nachprod.