lovely shots GOZR.

when was the BOB, july 20th or 22nd ?

i suggest we all get airborne on that day this year and get our pictures. of england & france.

Oleg´s and Luthier´s inspiration for CloD map & textures.


http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/5206/coreslq.jpg

not like we've not seen that before. Do us all a favour MadG and piss off somewhere else thanks.

What do you think about this one :

http://img10.hostingpics.net/pics/958125WF44s01R.jpg

i like that overall style. yes. but remove the repetition. the devs created 4 tiles for that purpose. if you dont remove that its pointless imo. but nice all the same. i bet it doesnt look so good down low. inspiring !!! give us a low down 500 meter view please dont worry about the detail maps. id like to see how the colour from the tiled pictures looks down low.

I haven´t. Sorry for the piss, but I was under severe bladder pressure. It won´t happen here again.

lol

The shot came from IL2-1946.... (mod)
The purpose was just to know what do you think about the color range, mainly.
I would be happy to have those colors in CoD :-)

I can show a low alt. shot if you want, but I'm afraid it may be pointless, as you said ;)

yeh i initially thought someone put the real photograph tile images ingame. later i spotted the planes and presumed it was 46, i think the colour range is excellent. and its given me a few ideas tbh. XXXX loads of work though.

The colour range is excellent. For summer, there'd need to be more brown/burnished fields, but then again, the sky looks overcast so my point here may be irrelevent.
I loved your work for 1946 Gilb ;)

Wow! The colouring looks perfect in my opinion!!

Because we cant change building or trees placement etc yet ive gone the long route and made a master map of the original ingame map. this includes absolutely everything seperated, every asset, ive also taken the normal maps and used them over a base colour as a test for my own pseudo bumpmap effect on the diffuse.. after this is complete it should be a case of simple artisticly colouring everything. the detail is present obviously and works alongside the normal maps. its 4096 at present and requires splitting down into 4 x(2048x2048). its 600 meg presently lol.

but i'm well on the road to create somthing properly here which has been my hinderance so far. other notable point is we can sellect on a field by field. road by road basis for designing now. im not sure what to do with colours but what i could do is make ye old colouring in sheet if anyone wants to have a go. with a scaled image i can translate any field/colour patterns from that. ???
http://i.imgur.com/WxEZCl.jpg

if anyone feels like helping save this and go colouring in !this image is basicly an outline of the roads system and indicating field placement mimmicking what we have presently. It would be great to see folks ideas. of some basic realistic colour blocks simulating field colours and patterns, is anyone up for helping ? dont forget each side matches with its opposite side.
to get full image click twice through Imgur, ive put the cod tiles up as an example. but its a basic solid colour field colours i need before any detail gets layed down.
http://i.imgur.com/qmKxKl.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/lxScKl.jpg

EDIT: you know , ive been staring at this clod map image for a while and well i think what we might dislike about it is the mix of colours evrywhere, theres to much red in with the green in with the yellows etc etc. to much clour design in each field basicly. anyway i hope some folks can do somthing nice with the fields. after that i will lay detail down on each individual field. and also invoke a proper system for darkening the field hedges and hedge row placement with a view to adding hedges in the future via more official moding methods. and after all this im going to implement my own normal maps which will have more presence. woohoo it got a bit stale there but this is quite a leap forward imo. as opposed to simply trying to recolour that is. ill produce some examples tommorows.

possible colour pallette?
http://i.imgur.com/AqO2V.jpg

@ Ali,
grabbed 20 mins at work!
just a try
Cheers
Attachment 6245

If it can help:

A few other shots:
http://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/587486testtex01.jpg

Late afternoon (low alt.)
http://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/689472testtex02.jpg

Early morning (low alt.)
http://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/769955testtex03.jpg

One thing I noticed as important to achieve a good result:
If I put a plane above the landscape, how does it look ?
http://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/626802testtex05.jpg
They should fit well together, I think (planes camouflage colors should be in landscape color palette.

Another rule I found useful : to avoid as much as possible REGULARITY :
So, in a tex-pack I use for a map, there are some nearly uniform ones, others with large fields pattern, others with little fields pattern. Then, landscape are a patch of all that mixed together (some kind of pattern inside pattern ;) )
... I was so disappointed with CoD landscape :(
(btw, I don't know constraints to make a CoD landscape... )

test5
 

Attachment 6246

due the exiguity of field pattern and shape variation I suggest to limit the palette to:
2/3 textures for cultivated fields green hues (green hues)
2/3 textures for burned or plowed fields (brown hues)
1/2 textures for grass fields (pasture or uncultivated fields on green hues)
1/2 textures for wooded areas
cheers

Agreed !^

wicked stuff pupaxx! Very interesting the way you have done it. kinda need basic solid colour pattern as opposed to the fields you have put on. but! i may try what you are doing when i get time.


GilB :cod restraints. the only restraints we have are that trees and buildings are layed upon our tiles. obviously we cant change that yet, so conformity to the current field pattern is necessary ohh and roads. concrete & dirt.

there are 4 field textures that are tilable, my images above show the 4 fitted together. 1C thereafter impose a system to use these 4 tiles tiled accross the whole country. as seen here http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpos...&postcount=150

[QUOTE=Ali Fish;294719] but its a basic solid colour field colours i need before any detail gets layed down.QUOTE]

sorry, I had not read this..

thats alright. no need to apologise m8. its given me some ideas, which are very needed ! the reason is that ive got the ground detail planned already to some degree. like the pattern within the field itself etc etc

solid colours
Attachment 6247
i selected an average hue for each texture in my previous pict.
But I missed the relation between solid coloured areas and textured areas, how do they work?

well what im going to try is to add the texture detail over the solid colours, that info needs to be taken from the normal channels with a mix of my own art. theres a pic a few posts back of me in photoshop with solid colour and some texture lighting that should explain what im gona try. with your image try not mix more than 2 fields of same colour next to each other. and atleasst 2 light coloured fields in every quadrant. appreciate you thoughts on this pupaxx !

also im realising the the mimmick of the alpha channel needs split up more. like it is on the right hand image. Doh.

@Ali
about 'same colored adiacent fields' my thougt is I would avoid to fragment too much the fields, I'm afraid of patch-work looking.
In the pict below u can clearly see a lot of adiacent fields of the same color, they are differentiated by edge row, trees and so on. Here's why I made in this way. i'm with u it doesn't look good without edgerow and trees layer.
Attachment 6249

cheers

yeh agreed on too much fragmented is bad. roads between is currently a good thing tbh given lack of hedge rows. i believe that for those field areas without roads between a simple slight hue change would be good. i think half the problem with the original textures is fragmented nature. radical changes from 1 field to the next adjacent. think i might try 3 similar green everywhere on the map and break it up with the rest. top left quadrant must be fragmented as much as possible. the other quadrants can be "not as fragmented. 1 quadrant should have higher frequency lighter fields.

Does this mean that , currently, the roads/buildings pattern repeats the same all other the countryside ?
If only 4 different tiles can be possible, I suppose they have to be chosen very carefully (and also very contrasting to each other) ?

The landscape appeared to me very repetitive (not in the details but in the overall look) but I didn't knew why. Well I'll need to look more downside with my Hurricane I suppose ;)

well theres 4 for the fields. several for the towns, industrial, cities (london), trees etc and france has the same seperatly.

Ali- what's the resolution currently of each map tile? Is it 2048?

I've been thinking about having a go in the way that puppax has above, using photographic elements but with the aim of trying to fit them as best I can to the areas designated in the original layouts. I'm not sure whether to go ahead with a 4k resolution per tile or 2k just yet. I'm wondering if it may be better to go with 4k, that way you could have your colour map at 2k in game and possibly(?!) a 4k normal map that was generated from the colour map? It's a bit of a crazy thought really but that would give you a bit more detail down low when flying. It's just a thought (probably more of a brain fart). I'm not even sure if CloD handles 4k textures at present.

well doubling the size is a nice idea but by gcard texture memory wont cut it given how its running presently. i could be wrong though as i often am.

imo photographic work is a no go. 1C would have tried this along time ago. they did start with photography but ended up with what we have for numerous reasons. but i'd love to see anyone try !.

Cheers Ali. :)

I agree that it's probably unwise to tempt any further performance headaches by using 4k maps ingame.

I guess I'm interested in trying out a photographic collage/layering approach here as what turned me off originally about the CloD maps was the hand painted feel. Is there any other reason (apart from the insane amount of time this would take to do properly within the guidelines of the current layouts) that you would advise against this approach?

no reason. its technically daunting on one hand but very possible on the other depending upon the approach and consistancy.

meh !!! :( lol id be lying to say i liked this. but thought i'd show it anyways.

http://i.imgur.com/RTYDil.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/QoPZal.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Obexal.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/dUjFSl.jpg

Wip
 

Attachment 6253

Anyway, field patterns are too much unrealistic to be belivable.

nice job, my effort was about 20 mins, I would like to pop yours in the game when its ready ! this was what mine looked like for that test.

http://i.imgur.com/Ackfll.jpg

How would it look if the various greens and browns were taken directly from a photo? (using the photoshop colour grabber or whatever it's called)

pretty much the same. ingame shaders render what ever colour you pick irrelevant. its the association between all the colours that important. with my test i did i keep it as simple as possible, low range of colours, more consistancy over the pattern of the same colours. also less fields adjacent to different fields. some aspects of it have worked and some not. another aspect im particularly unhappy with is tree placement. so those light coloured fields need to be dark where there are trees. without knowing where trees are placed thats gona be a hard task. another aspect i take from this is that the range of colours the mottled effect on 1C textures destroys the feel of the field so more solid definitive field colour the better. 1 aspect of S.E england scenery is that its not all fields. if they had included a wild countryside tile the scenery in general would be better.

to be honest i just want to make a brand new scenery from scratch.

I sampled the colors from this picts
Attachment 6258

Attachment 6259

Attachment 6260

but, yes the result is not full convincing :(

Yeah, they look completely different to your one :? (not your fault, really)
The last sample to me screams summer, although a mix of all three would look awesome.

This is why i gave up. Seems like everything i did either made things worse or just didn't look right. I finally settled with just darkening my trees and taking all of the excess yellow out of the existing textures and calling it a day.

I was using exact samples of aerial photo's and once in game it looked like crap. I even went so far as taking some actual satellite imagery just to see how real life colors would look in game regardless of nothing else matching and the colors still looked terrible. I finally came to the conclusion that there is either something majorly wrong with the lighting or shaders.

Ali please,
would you make a simple test 4 the community?
Try to load into CloD this sole texture
Attachment 6262
just to verify the output given by game shaders. It's a waste of time create a patchwork if we can't control the output color.
As I told before, I sampled the colors in this way.
Attachment 6263

Thanks

Ali Fish, your screenshots actually give me a more realistic impression than what is currently in game.

I hope you ARE treating these as diffuse textures however. Do not expect shaders or normal maps to add all the detail for you, most of it is always in the diffuse.

You need to fill those tiles out with detail and or real image overlays.

Keep it up, in any case. :)

Ali, can't you release at least the darker trees first, please, while you're working on a full terrain mod?

pretty please :)

the thread titles Forrest Green is a darker trees mod. no point in having 2.

they are not so good as the ones I've seen in your mod, sir. The replacement tree model is not fitting with the rest of the trees.

PS: the ones from this post, please

http://i.imgur.com/9I33nl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/O4uzll.jpg

Some comment please...
 

Hey Ali,
I catched your secret! U re not alone anymore!;)
..just some test to evaluate how shaders alter the color palette...
I think googled picts are a good base to start.
I have some rudiment in 3dsmax and renderings, I think the 'Field' material in Clod is too much reflessive, it should be a matte material.
Attachment 6315
but I have no idea how shaders work :(

I'll post more later

haha good stuff :) i like those colours. bit low res but the googley style images in there are ok colour wise. we cant have trees in the texture though !.

shaders :

diffuse = texture
alpha of diffuse = NO IDEA. maybe lighting orientated (specular brightening ?)
_N variation files are the normal channells. (RGB specific) and they produce an element of height mapping to the texture from the general lighting.

I think that shows that the colour has to be tweaked a lot to fit in the game, as to me, the colours from google-earth don't look very realistic. It's hard to explain how you'd expect the colours to look; you really have to flie over the terrain in real-life for yourself, but the ambience is similar in some respects to RoF.

_N is the bump equivalent effect in 3dsmax

+1 the mix should be 1 drop of googled textures and 100 of artistic feeling.. but u may not match the community agreement!:)

some more
Attachment 6319
Attachment 6320

dds_test3 with darkened trees.
Good night

1 of 2 is looking better (original COD trees?)

throw a splatter of browns into the trees and darken the ground a tad and things could be well on the way


shots in post #242...

ground (original COD textures ?) is looking "toned down" but still too yellow - even though it is an example shot of what darkening the trees does

i think colourwise the second shot with the darkened trees looks way better than what we have now.

pict 2 of 2 on my last post is with darkened trees.
the green patch below the trees is original untouched.
The ground textures are quickly modded from google earth, just put togheter an photoshopped a bit. Starting picts are in post #235 #238.
What drive me crazy is that I made this little attempt in 40' mins; is it possible that in 6 years devs have not been able to do better? :mad:

Great progress in what I see here !
I applause !
Keep up the good work ;)

wasted time!!!
 

i thought my map was quite complete when I realized i was working on a 1/4 scale map ...wuaaahhh!!!:cry::cry::cry:

Attachment 6346

to low res to enlarge now!

lol oops ! hate to say this but you "must" remove the trees, otherwise thats looking good.

is it dead?..

for now yeah ! Ive not lost interest though :) However the patches for this game are going to have to be very interesting for me to spend anytime doing anything for it.

I understand. Though to be honest I was regarding your mod as a 'very interesting patch' that would make it worthwhole for me to spend some time with the game at last. :)

i have tried. i really have. but without that SDK and abbility to remove everthing what 1c layed down and then replace. its the most incredible amount of artistry required. Also i came to realise the only enjoyment i was getting out of the game was fiddling with it LOL. thats not good. when its time ill bust out somthing from scratch hopefully if the sim is in a fit state to be fiddled with. from trying what i have i must say ive come to really appreciate what 1C has done with the terrain and that it should be left alone.

well thanks anyway.. at least you exposed the gruesome error with the colour of trees. i'm looking at the Zeltweg airpower festival right now and the grass is as green as in COD, but the trees are way darker (and you don't get to see trunks just foliage). me thinks these things are the major reason why the map, dispite looking good, looks nothing like england hence the constant disbelief sensation

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?kyhfbs1kwyfwbet

good point! i should concentrate on those trees again with a view to modding them explicitly. <gets his thinking cap on> http://i.imgur.com/11bia.png

oh please do, is the visual mod I think we need the most, at least at this moment (besides of some work on some of the shaders though :) ).

still alive here
 

...almost finished 1/4 of entire map set, unfortunately very poor time to dedicate. I'm risking to be fired by my boss, wife and daughter ;).
The goal is to grossly complete the 4 sets and refine them in looking (tuning the wooden areas where needed etc). I downloaded an nvidia tool with which retool the bump channel. I have to study that.
Cheers
Attachment 6545

im not sure it will blend in the game but AWSOME first notch Work!

OK ive done the tree colours mod.
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpos...99&postcount=1

Ali Fish,

I like these new tree colors, but am not so sure about the tree trunks. Shouldn't they be be more brown, like tree bark really is? That way, they wouldn't be so obvious in amongst the leaves.

Also, is that a crucifix sticking up out of the trees in the background?

binky9

lol its a windmill.

I've been putting in some time in having a go at redoing the terrain textures.. very slow process... but here's a (detail) comparison screen of default and modified.

http://www.imageupload.org/?d=8889B8991

http://www.imageupload.org/getfile.p...arison.jpg&i=1

I realised that I really do like the tiles in higher res (currently the 1st tile is being authored at 4k), and the photographic detail looks great at low altitudes. There doesn't seem to be much of a performance hit on my computer- but I have not updated the bump maps yet.

Issues-

It's really slow going. I'm working from stitched together maps taken from Flash Earth, editing out the lighting/shadowing information, and then trying to work out how the bits need to fit into the original template.

This comparison shot isn't colour graded yet. Personally I don't have too much of a problem with the original colours, and I've tested ingame some modded textures colour graded to the originals. To me they look fine.. some people may prefer a more muted or desaturated look. Anyway, changing colours is the easy part- it's no big deal. What's really needed is to get that texture detail in there. I noticed in CloD, that anything below around about 900 feet looks awesome- it pretty much does the reverse of all other flight sims- where going higher produces a better visual result. After 900 feet, the vegetation in CloD fades out and you're left with just the plain texture, but to me the resolution isn't really holding up there. Using 4k maps takes care of that problem and things should hopefully look nice from any altitude above that range.

Anyway, just thought I'd give a preview. I'm a little busy so no idea when or if this will get done to a finished level. I'd like to imagine I have the energy for it. :confused:

dont give up, try to finish!in my opinion this looks great!!!!
if i would have the knowledge to do such stuff, i would give it a try as well.

fantastic texture

Very nice work! Out of interest, I think the darker green should be lightened, because even out driving today around the London/Westerham/Sevenoaks area, the grass-fields are still very light in colour (depsite saturation)
Keep up the excellent work though! :cool:

YES ! this is looking good. i dont envy what its taking to do it but iam ashamed ive not the patience ! wow. keep going man ! if u need any help shout me. the dark border upon the roads is essential, keep doing that please.




in respects to what i have been doing. i have been thinking of ways to change things indirectly. i have a new update ready for the trees that uses the mipmaps to fade out the colour and introduce some fake enviromental haze, it works nicely on the trees, on the ground it may eleviate the colour problems by viewing less colour at higher distances. its worth a try and if it works it could be added to anyones mod.

a new trees update ready? awesome!! when, please?

now its like this. Small change in all colours, with added distance haze effect. i like how it blends with the sea colours, Personally i like the colours in the high sunshine now. and at dusk there some extra blue/grey distance haze. when you get real close to the textures then the colour becomes more vibrant !!! anyway ill release this soon. itll be a pretty big DL though. 164 meg (74 meg rar)

http://i.imgur.com/pNVhHl.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/Ad2hfl.jpg
Extra atmosphere at dusk, notice the vibrancy at differnet heights from pic 1 to pic 2.
http://i.imgur.com/mlAOZl.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/gqphHl.jpg

one issue with the mod is what general texture setting you use in game :( higher the better the whole effect, Pictures taken with high settings. so.... yeah i hope this solves some issues for some people colours wise without actually changing things to drastically.

Thanks guys, and Ali- great work with the trees! I really like the distant haze effect and overall things seem that much more realistic. Looking forward to it. :)

Love all the hard work you guys are putting in,COD is taking shape v nicely;)

awesome ali, thanks for your hard work.

and if soon is today, it would be even better, i want to play some il2cod :)

a couple of folks are gona test it over the weekend. (whilst im at work) BOO !

Then I have volunteer for testing too, please :)

ali you are doing an awesome work!you really are a benefit to the community.
regarding your ground texture mod,...have you thought of continueing it?is it just too much work??have you thought of doing a patchwork mod, working with others like Ekar?i would offer help as well, but that would need step by step instructions, as im totally worthless when its about modding yet.

thats what post 273 is about. It is continuing. i think i was tyring to drastically change the scenery before i gave up. but with some very simple changes and the haze addition i think it''ll work out untill a real overhaul can be done.

ah now i understand the post.i thought you spoke about the trees only.now i see the difference you mentioned.stupid me.
this terrain actually looks way better than the default one.
hope i can test it soon.

Nice job Ali,
please, how did you tuned the distance haze effect?
thx

good effort there Ali... top left shot is looking good

thx for the appreciations.

ive given the mod to 3 peoples to try out. the first feedback comment is as i had half expected. Shimmering textures out at the horizon. This is related to mip map settings upon generating them.

Does anyone have any experience with this out of interest from other games modding ? i believe i can fix it but not 100% certain as ive never had the problem before when working with dds& mipmap profiles.

Another issue is the realisation that using Original or even High general texture settings is the root cause of Stuttering in IL2. When you set High your actually using a stage 2 mipmap of the texture. which is always half the resolution of the prior mip map. etc etc. The haze effect might need to be removed coz of this. the mod is for using using High or original settings explicitly due to the special haze effect ive added via the mip maps (your answer pupaxx).

try looking into shadows...
I run Original textures on HIGH and with shadows OFF it is smooth

Small update: :)

I was playing around with trying to replicate how bump mapping is done in CloD in order to use some new bumps for the modified terrain textures. Here's what I came up with (Ali, please tell me if this is wrong, as it's a bit weird, but actually seems to work)... Firstly, I extracted a normal map with crazybump- and then the red channel of the normal map, I put into RGB of the modified bump. The green channel of the normal, I put into the alpha channel. Then I saved out as DXT5 (there was a little bit of trial and error in this). Anyway, I tested this new bump out in CloD's evening lighting. Here are some pics...

(please ignore the white empty parts, there's no texture in there yet)


http://www.imageupload.org/thumb/thumb_85040.jpg



http://www.imageupload.org/thumb/thumb_85043.jpg


http://www.imageupload.org/thumb/thumb_85045.jpg


There's still quite a way to go with these textures, but I should proably say, I'm becoming pretty inspired to push ahead now. I'm quite happy with the way things are looking already. The bump map is working (even though I might be doing something wrong there), and I generally feel that the terrain is starting to be lifted to quite a nice level graphically. In motion, things are really starting to look great. :)

Ok, back to work,

cant see the images.

I'm trying to work out what happened. They showed up when I first made the post, but now they don't.

If you right click the broken link icon and copy url, then you can see the images. I'll edit this post when I've fixed things.

As far as i can see! colour me Interested ! lost of sweet effects your getting with the bumps, If you have emulated whats in the default normal maps. which i presumed as (DXT5_NM) then well i think excellent. youve done dusk shots because it shows the effects better ?, youve clearly given them more impact than the level 1C gave there. very interesting. show me some daytime shots man.

could u post pic during the afternoon ?
Please

infact... post ALL the times of the day!!! :grin:

Just so we can check what the colours actually look like, it looks mighty fine at the moment.

well the vanilla version of the game looks best in evening or morning time.
but these three shots, especially the first one, look stunning!!!

Sorry guys- here are a few day shots.

http://www.imageupload.org/thumb/thumb_85177.jpg

http://www.imageupload.org/thumb/thumb_85178.jpg

http://www.imageupload.org/thumb/thumb_85179.jpg

excellent!!

Great!
Can u post a day-time video?

Cheers

yep a vid would be great!

The textures still need much work. I only have one tile at the moment (well there are two ingame at the moment, but the other needs a lot of work) so most of the landscape is still just default textures. This is really just a proof of concept, and to post my little victory over the CloD bump mapping.

There is potential here to make a really nice landscape for CloD, but it will take time. :( I am inspired to push ahead now though after these initial results.

PS- how are people feeling about the colours here so far?

Images not showing Ekar?

Looks like image upload is down atm.

indeed proof of concept. im concerned though, its not much dissimilar from the original textures colour wise etc. but your normals are better if maybe just more emphasized.

i cant say i like cod much anymore now. i love texturing etc so i may help out but tbh if i could id (in a virtual way) smack that luthier accross the mouth for how he treats his european customers. Not to mention Nearmiss pulling an 8 page petition thread. Ive just about had enough of this farce of a sim.