Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mick]

Ok.... so next question ...

how exactly do 'we' find out for sure what they do ?

G;

... yep, that's the tricky part ... 

Either someone in the know luckily reads this thread and replies ... 

... or we're going to have to enter a time consuming trial and error process ... 

... in that case why not start with Jero's wheels mod ...? 

[max_thehitman]

Thanks fr the music video Malone    AAAAHAHAHAHA

OK, I am finished with the large wooden boxes, they do look nice in a factory area and fill up large open spaces.
There is also a nice destroyed+burned dead-model version.

Since this is actually a 4-floor building model, the boxes may be set up to be 4-stories staked up high.
By adjusting the height of this model, you can create the boxes staked up high to 2 boxes, or 3 boxes high, or 4.
I left them at 2 boxes height.

Next come the metal containers for a more modern map scene.
What do you think?


-

-

-

[Epervier]

Miam !
The color seems too bright... !
In the army we do not like the colors too loud!

[WxTech]

tfShouldSort 1

Seems to be required sometimes in instances where textures having transparent parts lie at different distance along the line of sight, superimposed against one another. Such objects as the Henderson control tower and LargeCrane1, with their truss bases made from a number of flat texture elements having the space between supports made transparent, can require this in order that the correct arrangement in depth be preserved. Otherwise parts which should be behind can be superimposed in the front.

[WxTech]

 I prefer objects to have less garish colors, not too strong contrast, and of course correct surface normal assignments. For the latter aspect, I see in the big boxes screenies that a shadowed side is as bright as a sunlit side, or the sunlit top; this is jarring, and makes the object look like a badly done Photoshop fake, where lighting angles were naively overlooked.

But the notion of more real life kinds of scenery stuff is excellent!

[max_thehitman]

THANK YOU so much WxTech for your great explanation of that  tfShouldSort 1
I have taken notes for myself of what you said and will be checking all my models and airplanes in the future.

Many things in these files still need an explanation as to what exactly do they do.
There was never a IL2-1946 "Manual" of how to correct these model files and its
many parameters and values from the beggining when we started modding the game.
So in  way, we all have been making little errors in the files all along these years.

WxTech
« on: Today at 12:44:36 PM » Insert Quote
 I prefer objects to have less garish colors, not too strong contrast, and of course correct surface normal assignments. For the latter aspect, I see in the big boxes screenies that a shadowed side is as bright as a sunlit side, or the sunlit top; this is jarring, and makes the object look like a badly done Photoshop fake, where lighting angles were naively overlooked.

But the notion of more real life kinds of scenery stuff is excellent!

Thank you. I tried my best but its still not good enough.
But until I find a proper model, this will have to do and I will use it in my maps.

This model is actually a building with the height of about 4 floors high, The 3d model has been used in
other things such as bunkers, a V-2 missile command post, a few city buildings and now it is
being used as Factory boxes or storage containers. 
It is just a large rectangular shaped model. Very useful for many other things.
It has a shadow, but the shadow looks best when the whole building is in view. If you cut it short in height,
as I have done with these boxes, the shadow will be a little strange looking.

[Epervier]

ok, ok, I remove some color and made it darker.

Test this for your game to see if you like . I have included the new mine mountains.

Thanks Max... but... 
Too bright !
The small boxes to have better color ... 

[Plowshare]

Hi all:

One small, nitpicky thing I see: How did all those crates get that close together and how will they be able to be removed from one another? I don't see any room for forks from a forklift truck or for sling straps from a crane.

Just for a yuck I'd paint one of those arrows on the bottom centre crate upside down and have a bunch of guys around scratching their heads trying to figure out how to get at it to turn it over.

I like that the pattern on the top is large enough that, at first glance, there is no pattern. The subtle differences in wood colours is pretty damn good.

Looking forward to this stuff.

Bob

[WxTech]

An example of where

tfShouldSort 1

saved the day.

I just finished giving the stock P-38 gauges a bit of extra lightness across their faces, to suggest the presence of glass bezels. For most I simply added this in the .tga files. But for two gauges, the compass and artificial horizon, this is impossible because these textures have transparent 'cutouts' for the compass tape and horizon disk to show through. This obviously cuts out the 'glass' part too, which looks odd when these 'windows' are noticeably darker than the rest of these gauges' face, and all the other gauges having this 'glass.'

So for the gauges4.tga, which contains the compass and artificial horizon gauges, I made a new graphic called, gauges4_glass.tga. This has just the circular glass bezels for our two gauges, with the rest of the graghic cut out with an alpha layer.

In the .msh I added the new objects and material, and made sure to place them about a millimeter above the underlying gauges so as to ensure no Z-plane 'fighting' which would cause flicker. In my first attempt, upon restarting the game and hopping in the Lightning, the texture was OK *exceptfor* for the underlying cut-out windows in the two gauges. Just like what happened in my very first go at it. The partially transparent glass texture superimposed upon the underlying transparent cut-out was not showing, it being cut out as well.

The solution? In my new .mat file for the glass I set

tfShouldSort 1

That did it! The underlying 'window' in those two gauges have the proper glass reflection, at last. Now all my gauges have a consistent appearance as intended.


Incidentally, the stock P-38 had no night texture for the artificial horizon's horizon bar and local vertical tick mark. And so I also just now rectified the horizon bar issue by adding in the .msh a new object/material from the misc2_night.tga. Quick and easy! The vertical tick may be more problematic, as its 'daytime' graphic lies on the edge of a circular disk of some size. I'll have to look at finding suitable space on an existing _night.tga, where the rest of the disk will have no other visible elements inadvertently included. Or so could get creative with the dimensions bounding this object, making it non circular and/or smaller. Anyway, the main and important part is fixed, that being the horizon line/bar. I can live without the vertical tick...

[Mick]

... so as to ensure no Z-plane 'fighting' which would cause flicker.

 ... extremely interesting find, WxTech ...! 

 That could at last explain why the Bf109E-3 cockpit from Freddy, flickers like there was no tomorrow (Me209II too because it uses one of Freddy's new G series cockpit ...) ... 

Then the next tricky step would be how do you have confirmation, and how can you fix that ...? 

[max_thehitman]

Thanks Max... but... 
Too bright !
The small boxes to have better color ... 

My explanation would be,
The little boxes have already been moved around and so they look dirty.
Those are from the "Egypt" folder pack already in the game.
These new boxes are new wood containers and just came off the factory, so they have no dirt.

You can always add more dirt effects to them for a used look.
As for the brightness, there can be 2 ways to fix this.
One would be to write the light-shine parameters in the model file to a lower number for less shine,
and the other method would be to go into photo shop and reduce the white and the yellow coloring, then
make the overall skin a little darker even.
But this would make the wood look used and old, not factory new.
I will make another model folder and test with another skin and place them side by side in
the map landscape for comparison.

As for the model used, I really want to use a smaller model, but I don't have that available at the moment,
and the way the boxes are stacked in place without a space between them, it would
not look too good with a black line separating each box painted on the skin.
This skin is only 512x512 in size (very tiny pixels) so by having a black colored line painted on it would make
the boxes look even smaller.
The only way would be to make the skin 1024x1024 to show more details and wood grain.
I will give it another try.

Here are some other ideas from old photos












-

[max_thehitman]

Alright, here is a second version with less color and a little darker skin for the new factory boxes and
a very used and dirty version.

----------- DOWNLOAD of Version 2 is in the first post ----------


-

-

-