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[stanislao]

   Yes, yes, very well! If you can improve those ridiculous, squat, horrible twisted date palms that Oleg had given us, he would be a crazy epochal ahead! Do you think that, in twenty and more years of Il2, I have always refused to use those date palms!

[Mick]

... Stan, you have no idea how much I agree with you ...! 

I was born in Morocco (Casabianca), so trust me, I have seen a few palm trees there, and what a pain in the ass those IL2 palm trees are ...! 

[WxTech]

Making a new model is more involved than just adding two (well, four, because they must be doubled) square textures. I make no promises on that front. If the minimum improvements were outlined I'll have a better idea of feasibility...

[WxTech]

I just looked over the pack o' palms Mick linked to. The Egypt palms hold much potential! I could use a couple of the better ones to replace the stock single date palms, and build replacements for the two stock date palm groups by putting 4 of the individual Egypt palms together.

These have pretty decent fronds as they are, I think. Adding extra textures would likely make for something do densely thick.

By the way. Looking over the Egypt palms in the Mesh Viewer utility, they were so incredibly shiny they looked like porcelain. The .mat files had Specular equal to 1, which one would use for glass! Moreover, for some inexplicable reason Shine was set to 0.5! This would make the tree partly glow. Shine is only for stuff that emits light, like fire and lamps. Otherwise it should usually be zero (or very small, in special circumstances.)

[Mick]

... the main improvements would be in the colour, lower branches/leaves should be yellow/brown, and upper ones not dark green, and the trunks are the result of previous branches that have been cut off ... 

Something like that would be great ... 



... yep, you are right, the Egypt ones are what we need, even the trunk is OK ... 



 

[WxTech]

After looking over the Egypt palm meshes and textures, I'm commencing to use some of them to replace the stock desert (date) palm trees. Same object names, new meshes and textures.

The Egypt palms have reasonably full fronds already modeled; I don't see a need to add the additional '2-D' textures that were necessary to fill out the coconut palms.

To start, it will suffice to choose one each of the similar-height single Egypt palms and merely rename their meshes to replace the stock single date palms. It's that simple!

For the groups of palms, I'll have to select 4 suitable singletons and combine their meshes into one, placing each tree in about the same arrangement. A bit more work, at least with a spreadsheet.

I'm leaning toward keeping the same number of trees and similar placement of the 4 palms in each group so as to retain the arrangement they would have as found on the stock maps.

[Mick]

... you made very good and fast progress here ...! 

[Mick]

By the way. Looking over the Egypt palms in the Mesh Viewer utility, they were so incredibly shiny they looked like porcelain. The .mat files had Specular equal to 1, which one would use for glass! Moreover, for some inexplicable reason Shine was set to 0.5! This would make the tree partly glow. Shine is only for stuff that emits light, like fire and lamps. Otherwise it should usually be zero (or very small, in special circumstances.)

[LightParams]
  Ambient 1.0
  Diffuse 1.0
  Specular 1  <== 
  SpecularPow 32  <== 
  shine 0.5  <== 

... you are right, I edited them all to 0 and the result is way better and more realistic ...! 

Same treatment applied to the Egypt bushes ... 

Now I really get dark nights in the desert ...! 

[WxTech]

I just finished the first of two replacement models for the stock desert palm groups. But I'm getting a pernicious error when trying to open a map containing the tree group I'm replacing. The mesh viewer utility displays it just fine, and careful looking over the mesh is not showing anything I can see as wrong. I've posted an inquiry in the Lounge, and hope someone more awake that me can guide me to the problem. For what it's worth, here's the error:

Code: [Select]

[8:18:29 AM] ERROR: SectFile: GetDataBlock float (#: 106!=107) '3do/flora/palms/LiveBg1.msh'
[8:18:29 AM] WARNING: object '3do/flora/palms/LiveBg1.msh' of class 'SkinTL' not loaded
[8:18:29 AM] INTERNAL ERROR: MeshObj: Can't load mesh 3do/flora/palms/LiveBg1.msh
[8:18:29 AM] WARNING: object '3do/flora/palms/LiveBg1.sim' of class 'SIM' not loaded
[8:18:29 AM] INTERNAL ERROR: MeshObj: Can't load SIM 3do/flora/palms/LiveBg1.sim
[8:18:29 AM] Mesh 3do/flora/palms/LiveBg1.sim not created
[8:18:29 AM] com.maddox.il2.engine.GObjException: Mesh 3do/flora/palms/LiveBg1.sim not created
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.engine.Mesh.<init>(Mesh.java:419)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.engine.MeshShared.<init>(MeshShared.java:37)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.engine.MeshShared.get(MeshShared.java:27)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.objects.buildings.House.activateMesh(House.java:472)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.objects.buildings.House.access$100(House.java:12)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.objects.buildings.House$SPAWN.actorSpawn(House.java:746)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.objects.Statics._msgDreamGlobal(Statics.java:1014)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.objects.Statics._msgDreamGlobalTick(Statics.java:949)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.objects.Statics.msgDreamGlobalTick(Statics.java:937)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.engine.MsgDreamGlobal.invokeListener(MsgDreamGlobal.java:43)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.rts.Message._send(Message.java:1217)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.rts.Message.sendToObject(Message.java:1158)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.rts.Message.sendTo(Message.java:1134)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.rts.Message.trySend(Message.java:1115)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.rts.Message.send(Message.java:1079)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.engine.MsgDreamGlobal.sendTick(MsgDreamGlobal.java:27)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.engine.DreamEnvXY.doChanges(DreamEnvXY.java:65)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.engine.InterpolateAdapter.updatePos(InterpolateAdapter.java:141)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.engine.InterpolateAdapter.msgTimeOut(InterpolateAdapter.java:164)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.rts.MsgTimeOut.invokeListener(MsgTimeOut.java:73)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.rts.Message._send(Message.java:1217)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.rts.Message.sendToObject(Message.java:1191)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.rts.Message.sendTo(Message.java:1134)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.rts.Message.trySend(Message.java:1115)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.rts.Time.loopMessages(Time.java:180)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.rts.RTSConf.loopMsgs(RTSConf.java:101)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.game.MainWin3D.loopApp(MainWin3D.java:131)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.game.Main.exec(Main.java:449)
[8:18:29 AM] at com.maddox.il2.game.GameWin3D.main(GameWin3D.java:235)


[WxTech]

I just added another link to a third set of textures in the top post, making these palms at least look a bit more like their desert relatives. Yellower hue for the fronds, and with the date palm trunk texture.

[Mick]

... way more suited for MTO date palm trees ...! 

A zillion THX to you, amigo ...! 

[WxTech]

Here's the first stab at a replacement for the stock desert palm type group (4 trees in one object). I used the texture from the Egypt_palms objects, and picked 4 of the 12 trees in that pack to make a group similar in size/placement for the stock model. It took several hours to do in a spreadsheet.

I have the two single trees done (that was uber fast to do), and this group #1. Group #2 is left to finish...