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[Mission_bug]

I have a question, will the engine start?

Un saludo.

Sadly erafitti I lost the keys so I cannot see if it works or not. 

I think there is a quality mismatch between the engine and tyres. The tyre textures probably need to be sharper, of a higher resolution and the tyres may need to be more detailed to match the engine detail. In blender the tyres look fine, but they need more definition in the game engine.

Unfortunately I am not the best texture maker rogerroger the whole vehicle suffers from that lack of good artwork so other than using skins made by someone else I am screwed.  Not sure how to upgrade the tyres/wheels other than adding the nuts and bolts, I think adding a tread in some way is beyond me and how to do it, cutting a tread into the mesh I think would would be difficult for me at least and I am limited with what gmax can do, or more importantly my ability with it.

All I can really do is try and take that clunky look away that was a complaint and hope one of our artists might have a go with the paint.

Another issue is I have mapped everything to certain textures so improving the overall look would most likely involve mapping each mesh to its own texture, in this instance at least the tyres/wheels have their own texture but I lack the ability with photoshop to really enhance things overall.

Maybe you have some ideas of what exactly you might do and how best to go about it to improve things, any thoughts please?


Thank you very much for comments rogeroger, really appreciated.

Hello Pete,

That looks damn good! I want to see more of that please.

Thank you for all of your efforts to make our beloved IL-2 look better!

Best regards,

Gerhard                           

Glad you like it so far Gerhard, thank you very much for the kind words, really appreciated.

As for more, I am not sure where to go next, make the lods or leave this vehicle as is once the wheels are sorted and move on to building the other items in the set the Queen Mary and its tractor unit and there is also the Thorneycroft articulated that will also need a trailer I already made a start with, decisions, decisions.

Thoughts guys, does having no Lods and too high poly shadow bother you or are your games okay with the model as is?


In doing the tyres I have found a few instances of things not quite matching up so the morning was spent trying to sort out those issues, sadly a problem with projects built over a long period is many parts are hidden so if you tinker with some things you already made it is only later they are apparent, anyway I think I got the worst offenders out of the way mainly the front axle and those steering actuators.


This is turning into my life's work.


Take care and be safe.

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[rogeroger]

I found this site and put together this textue. I'ts difficult to tell what it would look like mapped and in the sim without the model. Brightness would probably have to be adjusted. Convert it to Tga. You may be able to use it ..or not.
Interesting site: https://www.o5m6.de/western/AircraftRecovery.php#thornycroft

I'm no expert at texturing but I am happy to assist where I can.

[Mission_bug]

Hello rogeroger, thank you very much for the image, really appreciated.

I have tried before to use other textures from the game, however, the Thorneycroft seems to have quite a unique pattern that I tried
to replicate and that is what is in use at the moment.

As for detailing, I am not really sure what can be done to the tyre except a good texture, however, your comments reminded me of
something I intended to do earlier but as usual it got lost in the wild spaces of my brain until jolted back today.

You will see in the folder there is a mesh 'DiscsAndHubs', the intention was to add the bolts and make the tyres separate so that
if necessary I could portray the chassis without wheels, anyway, it never got finished but it is back on the to do list:





I had painted the relative positions on the wheel textures but as alwys I had a brain fart and wandered off away with the fairies to take
on another part of the build and so here we are, if anything needs some improvement now I guess is the time to catch up and this does
add a little depth shall we say to that area.


Take care and be safe.

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[rogeroger]

Some images depicting a different tread. Desert conditions maybe required this change.

[Mission_bug]

Hello again rogerroger, I have seen the site you gave the link for, sorry I forgot to mention it last post, there
is some good stuff there, plenty of ideas for possible projects.

I made a few copies of your image and reduced it to fit the sizes on my template for the front:





This was a quick and dirty test as they say using my dirt layers over the top and it still needs the tread
down the middle aligning properly, to do that I need to jiggle the mapping and extract the wheels again
but it gives you some idea of whether or not you prefer it like this especially once I add the nuts and bolts.

It looks good, if I left it the actual size you posted and enlarged the mapping to fit that then maybe even
better, not sure, I will need to experiment.

To be honest I was trying to avoid using textures where there might be copyright issues or I do not know the author
but my artistic abilities are not quite up to scratch yet, probably never will be.

Take care and be safe.

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[rogeroger]

That is definitely an improvement.


I can rework the hub to make it look more like reply #315

A darker rework of the image that I did earlier:

[Mission_bug]

Thank you very much for the new image, really appreciated. 


I will need to colourise these somehow to match the desert and winter vehicles, there is a process in photoshop I used
to change the colour of the uniforms for the driver and his mate so hopefully all should come together.

Take care and be safe.

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[rogeroger]

These were the original rim desert colours. I recoloured the previous images to match your gmax images. You will probably have to adjust the brightness/contrast if you use them.



edit: I will remove the banding issues on the rim edges with airbrush and re-post this later.

[SAS~Ghost129er]

Hiya Pete,

Nice work! Just wondering, you could go full ham on Poly count and etc - so long as you add LOD's where applicable. I was planning on doing some HD mods/objects (still have the project files) where I have insane attention to detail that at about 70 LOD is no longer visible and a single triangle/poly to make sure FPS/etc doesn't get butchered and that only when close enough for things like screenshots or near enough to see from the cockpit, really does show up.

Just my input for things like the engine and etc, not sure if you've already implemented that in the .msh files.


 

[rogeroger]

I THINK THIS ONE IS BETTER.

[Mission_bug]

Thanks yet again for the desert texture rogerroger, really appreciated.

I might have a look at doing the mapping again later, the curvature of the tyres causes some issues and even though I divided the middle of the tyre into four segments aligning is difficult, I spent a hour last night trying to take out those curves manually straightening everything up and while getting close it is still not quite there because of the increased detail of the textures you can see where things do not quite match.

Hello SAS~Ghost129er, I managed to keep all the meshes for the engine just under the poly limit so the moving vehicle in the cars folder is good to go as is as far as I can tell but I would at some time like to add the Lods just for completeness.  Although the vehicle in the cars folder has so many meshes I have not yet had any mention that it was causing any issues without Lods.

The only issue so far with this build is the objects in the buildings folders require the class files from Andrew to enable them to work using a hier structure in a live file, that allowed me to put together some possible scenes for inclusion in missions which otherwise would have meant me making each complete vehicle as one mesh, that would have required some serious reduction as you can imagine.

Anyway, so far so good, it is coming together but slowly.

Take care and be safe.

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[Mission_bug]

Hello again guys, just a bit on the wheels.

I have managed to create some textures from what rogerroger posted, however, my photographs
show ten wheel nuts and that is what my stuff was built on so some tinkering to adjust those out
was necessary on the textures, but combined with my new bolts I hope this is more to everyone's
Liking:





The tread in the centre was a little difficult and I had to drag and push and generally fuck about with
the vertices to bring things close enough so any other texture will most likely need to be adjusted
accordingly and the colour is slightly out possibly from the dirt layers I added or maybe some blurring
of the previously sharp high resolution textures:





The front wheels are a set as are the nuts and bolts for them, due to the new wheels being higher polygon
it looks like I will need to make it three separate wheel sets, for the testing I just cut off the front wheels
from the mesh you already have so what you see is a bit of the new and the old for comparrison.

I hope I did not spoil the textures too much and the combination of texture and 3d parts now helps to bring
about a better looking wheel set, the rear wheel is already made and I can clone and adjust the nuts and bolts
so once I manage to texture that back wheel we should be about there. 


Take care and be safe.

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.