City Textures rework

[rince33]

I probably won't bother with damage modeling for current Cathedral models, but some in the future will require it. I will have to do some research on to how create damage modelling in this simulator.

The Cantebury cathedral main section is complete, though lots of work still to do. In gmax, creating sections and then then texture mapping them seems to be the best route rather than mapping a complete model.

I'm creating a village facility/mos model for placement near airfields so there will be neater building placements, and no stray buildings and bits of road texture.

I may create town sections as well. The process is quite slow at first but as you get used to working with spaces between buildings and the angles it proceeds quite quickly. I really enjoy placement work and have done it before in other sims.


I will either remove the grass base or create transparent edges so that it blends in better. trees will be added when building placement is complete. I will probably do some editing or replacement of the garden textures.

 

[rince33]

Background grass removed. Colours would have to be edited to match the terrain.

 

[MajorMagee]

Brilliant work that!

 

[Pat Pattle]

I'm creating a village facility/mos model for placement near airfields so there will be neater building placements, and no stray buildings and bits of road texture.

That's pretty much where I got to on this subject too.

Stock scenery - the .sm models can't be better placed or rotated unless you have the original .rgn file for the underlying city/town texture. That file is the one that goes on to create the .lso file which places the .sm models.There's only so much than can be done by re-painting the roads etc to suit the buildings.

If you look in the BoB install, there are a number of placeholder town faclities, "GB_Ashford_town.xml" etc. which are already in the global layer, they just need a corresponding texture, mos and building placements. I did Maidstone and then shelved the project. So I'm very glad that you're now doing it!

I probably won't bother with damage modelling for current Cathedral models, but some in the future will require it. I will have to do some research on to how create damage modelling in this simulator.

All that is required for buildings is 3 'states' of the model. Normal, damaged and rubble. They have to be named as below and usually have their own texture so that you can add smoke damage, bullet holes etc. The convention is to name the textures with a suffix _d, _r or _t (normal state). This is a new gas holder, a very common feature in this country until the '60's. You don't have to model the damage, it can just be represented with the texturing, depending on what the model is of.

 

[rince33]

Stock scenery - the .sm models can't be better placed or rotated unless you have the original .rgn file for the underlying city/town texture. That file is the one that goes on to create the .lso file which places the .sm models.There's only so much than can be done by re-painting the roads etc to suit the buildings.

The stray buildings and texture bits bug the hell out of me, and the only solution that I can see is to create a series of facility/mos models for cities and villages that can be pieced together to create a town or city. The smallest towns that can be created by the Lcfviewer are still too large by 1940 standards.
Very large cities will still have to the use autogen population system.


I used 1940 Googlearth images to populate an Il2 1946 channel map and I lost all of these in order to create space on my hdd. To make matters worse since last week Googlearth pro ctd's on startup and there seems to be no way to fix it. I can use the new Googlearth browser version, but that does not have the historical map image option, so I cant accurately resize some of the the towns and cities. I would have to use my Il2 channel map mod to check the city sizes.

If you look in the BoB install, there are a number of placeholder town faclities, "GB_Ashford_town.xml" etc. which are already in the global layer, they just need a corresponding texture, mos and building placements.

I did wonder about these when I saw them in the Global layer. This is great news.

All that is required for buildings is 3 'states' of the model. Normal, damaged and rubble. They have to be named as below and usually have their own texture so that you can add smoke damage, bullet holes etc. The convention is to name the textures with a suffix _d, _r or _t (normal state). This is a new gas holder, a very common feature in this country until the '60's. You don't have to model the damage, it can just be represented with the texturing, depending on what the model is of.

Thanks for the info Clive.
I'm assuming that the transparent box is a hit box. Is it textured to be transparent or is it procedural?




I did quite a few placements yesterday. The addition of trees will round things off nicely.

 

[sixstrings5859]

Looking great ! Thanks for all the work ! Regards,Scott

 

[Pat Pattle]

I'm assuming that the transparent box is a hit box. Is it textured to be transparent or is it procedural?

Yes that's correct. It must have the same name in the xdp to get any effects to work. Right-click on the object, select 'properties' and check this box.

I did quite a few placements yesterday. The addition of trees will round things off nicely.

Yes trees make all the difference. I do have some road vehicles to get finished which, being a facility, means that we could have them driving around too!

I've been slowly adding to this one for ages, the gasholder is now in place. I'm going to copy your lead and start adding gardens etc, as they really do make a difference.

The cricket pitch needs a good watering!

 

[Flamingskull5000]

Some amazing work you gents are doing! What I really find interesting is the pics posted of the programs you wizards use to create these objects. I can't imagine how many hours of experimentation it takes to become adept at such under takings.

 

[rince33]

Some amazing work you gents are doing! What I really find interesting is the pics posted of the programs you wizards use to create these objects. I can't imagine how many hours of experimentation it takes to become adept at such under takings.

I'm fairly knowledgeable at using gimp which is a freeware texture editor, been using it for years now, but I know just enough about 3d modeling to achieve some basic models. There are chaps here that are masters of Gmax and create some awesome aircraft and building models. Gmax is freeware and I think that a link is available on the site. It's not that difficult to get into. There are loads of tutorials on you tube and some on the site as well, and it's a lot of fun, though time consuming.

 

[rince33]

Completed the village model and I'm quite happy with the result.

The sim has quite a unique way of searching for textures, and if texture names are similar, not necessarily identical, you could find your model using these instead of the intended texture in the model folder. I found this to be the case with the Jbscenery_treeL.dds which I reworked, and the Jbscenery_tree.dds in another tree folder.

 

[rince33]

I'm assuming that the transparent box is a hit box. Is it textured to be transparent or is it procedural?

Yes that's correct. It must have the same name in the xdp to get any effects to work. Right-click on the object, select 'properties' and check this box.

Thank's again Clive. I like your enclosed church model with the graveyard, and thanks for making these buildings available for use in my mod.

I Re-downloaded the ETO package last week after I mistakenly deleted it from my hdd, must still re-install it to see what buildings can be used and check for P47 missions. That new aircraft looks good.

 

[rince33]

Nothing of any significance to report today, but I did find this gem of a Youtube site with amazing animated aviation and world war doccies.

 

[Shessi]

Beautiful village life recreated there R.

Love like the mix of mottled lichen covered roof tiles and the clean slate ones. Housing styles and colours are absolutely spot on, along with the local church and just enough trees, make me long for summer lol.

Are you sure you're not a local government planner or property developer?..

Cheers

Shessi

 

[rince33]

My city template mos file in place at Ramsgate. I removed city landclass autogen buildings and trees and it will take a while to populate the facility file. I will change the texture as I add buildings. There will have to be some customization when using the completed template in different areas. I think that the autogen cities do look a bit more natural, though stray buildings are a huge problem. This is a bit of an experiment for now.

The harbour model length should be half the size to represent Ramsgate harbour. I created a harbour model in Blender in the past. I could import, re texture it, and use it here.

 

[Pat Pattle]

It gets better and better Glen!
Did I send you the Ramsgate Harbour model?

 

[rince33]

Beautiful village life recreated there R.

Love like the mix of mottled lichen covered roof tiles and the clean slate ones. Housing styles and colours are absolutely spot on, along with the local church and just enough trees, make me long for summer lol.

Are you sure you're not a local government planner or property developer?..

Thank's Shessi.

The Church model is Clive's excellent work, adds a nice touch. I must include the pub model that he sent me.

A virtual property developer, will develop your Sim property for bit coin, or maybe just a sandwich and a bag of peanuts.

 

[rince33]

Hi Clive and a happy new year.

You did Pm me a pic of the work that you had done at that stage, though no model.

 

[mongoose]

Yes that's correct. It must have the same name in the xdp to get any effects to work. Right-click on the object, select 'properties' and check this box.

Yes trees make all the difference. I do have some road vehicles to get finished which, being a facility, means that we could have them driving around too!

I've been slowly adding to this one for ages, the gasholder is now in place. I'm going to copy your lead and start adding gardens etc, as they really do make a difference.

The cricket pitch needs a good watering!

Love the cricket field!

 

[gecko]

Looks impressive.

One concern I have with this approach for small towns is that it is a lot more expensive in terms of performance. With a lot of them added it might become prohibitive.

I do love the idea of these bespoke harbor models though. They are just so interesting and distinctive.

 

[rince33]

My plan is to have two versions of this mod, autogen cities and mos/facility cities. I like both for different reasons, besides I have already done a lot of texture work on the autogen cities and I would not like it to go to waste.

The autogen cities look more natural but a bit messy with stray buildings and textures as I have stated before, and the mos/ facility cities will be more ordered and visually appealing at low altitudes, and will use Clive's terraced building and church model for variety.

As far as fps goes, we will have to see. I am a curious person by nature and would like to see how the mos/facility city version works out, both visually and fps wise. If it seems impractical, I will discard the experiment .


I have created harbour models for Folkestone, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Portsmouth, Southampton and even Dover for another sim in the past and would like in the future to include some of these in the sim. I would have to liaise with Clive who may have a similar intention.