[REL] Ground texture mod
 

Looks like i have mod #1 in progress

working on enhancing the colours on the default map.

This image is 2 images, on the left default on the right new textur colouring by me. same time of day same mission. looks better ?

http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...h_69c7f75e.jpg



http://i.imgur.com/F8n5cs.jpg

Maybe a tad bit too dark, but a great start!
Is it possible for the trees/foliage to be a darker, murkier green?
Also, can fields have darker borders to show where hedgerows would be?

but very nice work. It's hard to gauge a full opinion without seeing it from a higher altitude.

to be honest,the first second i looked at the right picture, i thought that it looked better.but the more i look at it, the more i feel it looks a bit too brown.so maybe something between those two pictures would be perfect.but thats of course only my opinion.
i know many people think that the colours are correct the way they are.i think that at low sun,the colours are great, but at midday they are a bit too green.

how did you do it?

yep agreed. BUT but but... this is the autumn pack you see \o/ only joking but thats my idea.

ill try just dropping the saturation next time and increase contrast a touch. suprisingly easy to do, once i get the correct colour change formula i want ill apply it to everything terrain based and it will bring a non intrusive mod to use at your descretion. so later on tonight i hope to have some nice comparisons. 8 main field textures between here and france, golf courses and all the independant airfield textures.


im trying to not get into the realms of artwork just yet. although i have played with a snow style layering effect generated from the original textures. but regards foliage yes it can all be changed, and its all contained in 1 file. not to mention the cartoony style grass can be re designed easily too. so....

i will change everything via te choosen colour formula you guys give me feedback on.

How about a look through this (subjective, but maybe useful?)

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/gallery/v/kent/

the first picture looks like midday, the last picture looks like dusk. I don't think the green is off. Just came from england yesterday, england is really lush and green this spring :)

looks much better and real to me, great work.

ok ive modded every assett now. sadly theres a mip mapping bug with the trees file which i had darkened. It produces an error on the console readback too. i have created a photoshop action file for modding the files in bulk ( an autumn and winter mod could be generated in minuites mwahahahha.)

here is where iam at. its subtle now. top pic is original lower the update. trying to create the same images is nigh on impossible lol. feedback ?

TIME= 09:00 settings:
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/53d7c96e.jpg
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/36619879.jpg

low shots which just seem crap in general.
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/74099495.jpg
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/28f02134.jpg

BTW i could so easily make this game look like WoP ? but i dont think so.

Looks great!

Excellent! You got the right color here IMO... when are you releasing this "patch"? :grin:

thanks ! not sure i'd call it a patch but i see your meaning lol.

not sure about releasing to quickly as everyone using this might intefere with the developers getting there necissary performance information etc, although my DXT profiles are similar, mip map levels the same too (asides the trees). so there shouldnt be a problem. discussing mods is one thing, releasing them at this time is another.
but we will see after a few more tweaks. what you recommend Near Miss ? last thing i want is to annoy any development processes etc. anway i think i want to bring out the contrast more and work some of my own art in there, ala hedge row darkening etc. !

156 meg worth of files, 66 meg in rar so far.


my next mod will be in the form not so much as a mod but a full template for the mkIIa spitfire. including all the panel lines, details of what the overlay parts are and new specular and normal maps. damage maps decails etc...that should be finished by tommorow \o/ i wont be happy untill i have a ficticious metalic spit showing how good these lighting effects really are.

Yes looks sweeet mate..nice work

though id better test it in the evening time, low level light characteristics and i must say i just impressed myself lol. everything looks even better. dare is say with the default trees in the shots ,even they look better and more "part" of the world naturally. cant give comparison pics here, but these scenes feature better building integration with the scenery due to the changes, new grass colourings, and new darker foliage on the close tree lods. and a messier grass system around the airfield. even the clouds even mix in better with there light characteristics,

having probed further into the performance of this mod, i see no differences to vanilla scenery whatsoever. If the devs could give us our route to pack and unpack the mods without kegety's tools id be a hell of a greatfull..

Buildings along side the changes. default trees looks better ?
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/02347463.jpg

General shots.
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/4dbcb3a7.jpg
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/460a6b04.jpg

New foliage and grass colourings (not the best illustration),remeber the really yellow grass ?
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/67fa2f3b.jpg
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/fac797c5.jpg

new airfield- more dirtier unkept concept.
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/4a055bd6.jpg

Definetly going to go down the new artwork route with this too. an autumn/winter version without snow and all the green hue's should be good. Ohh yeah. so if you got any good aerial autumn shots of england pass them on for referencing.

darker trees and thins will eb perfect. nice work.

Will this work online?
Or will Steam boot and ban you?

No boot or ban here, but then i was not expecting either of the two possible outcomes. Its just a texture reload. Individual file sizes are the same.

just ran it online in those last pictures. on my own server, actually thats the only way that mission works. but i would like some testers for the online aspect and an ATI tester of the mod too.


do you have any examples of this, i can do it but without a model of the hedge it might not work to well,, ahhaahh. unless i add this idea as a raised area to the normal maps with darkening on the diffuse. ( the effect will only be prounced from distance (+500m) and at low level light situations)..... hmmm. examples please if you got any. !

nice improvement 4me Ali! Great!
Please, where did u find the maps files to modify? Are these normal bitmap files or encoded one?
Thanks

i was going to say it loks so much better now like WOP but i wont.good job.

im impressed by the way the grass looks now.much better in my opnion!

Looks very good to me. From my experience of flying (gliders) over the South of England I would say not to be afraid of making the greens of the fields quite intense, they just need to be darker than the rather pale greens CloD uses by default. Here's an example taken over Wiltshire in (IIRC) August.

Cheers,

Nick

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...g/DSC01760.jpg

Brilliant work! I still think that, for midday, it might be slightly too dark...see RD's post above :cool:
But even so, it certainly is a great step towards something great.

Great work,much better,well done friend:)

~If this isnt implemented into the game I will be soooooo dissapointed!. This is fantastic work!!!!

they are 12 mip map stage DDS files of DXT variations 3 and 5 for the trees. located in the parts folder and the $core folder within SFS files.

thx!

Maybe something more similar to this in colour...(although, IMHO, as photos show, the terrain in England would probably be slightly lighter in summer)

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.ph...ml#Post3220047

Great work, thanks.

Btw, this kind of visual options should simply be standard in any game, so that every player could play the game he likes.

A bit too dark, but I like it MUCH better. Relly looking forward to it !

Thanks for all your superb feedback its really encouraging. anyway for this next image im hoping you can see past my exagerated effects and understand the concept of where iam going with this. also i think by the end of this it will appear like a totally new scenery. i have far to many enhancement ideas.

a few folks have posted some aerial shots over england in various posts, what i take from this is that there is an atmospheric involvment between the camera lens and the ground textures so to speak.. i can recreate this an a rudimentary form. many summer shots see the horizon blending in with the atmosphere and blending in with the sky all at same time. and this is what iam attempting with the following screen shot. this 1st sage test is a deliberate exageration , i did this just so i could prove it works. please dont dismiss the image as nonsense as i fear most will. also i have only changed 4 files here for the test. many textures have not been changed, thats about 23 in total., forrest texture is dark coz its not changed,

i think between this method and the present i can give the scenery a presence of atmopheric involvment, a feeling of summer haze. and when its tuned it should provide a good go between the non saturation we see down low and the saturation we see from height.

VERY EXAGERATED: hope you can understand where iam going with it. obviously the image is vloody crap in terms of visual appeall. just a forced demo. i do like the way the horizon meets with the land with the haze. my approach to the shading is linear as we go up the mip map stages. when i envolve a curve non linear concept it should make more sense.

regards the dark trees texture, that would blend out with the rest of the scenery no prob. ill be testing with various colours of atmospheric sheen, this blue may not work too well at dusk to night time.

http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/6a229aa8.jpg

sadly i think the balancing for daytime might not allow this to occur in the evening but thats a test ill do now. will the blue sheen work ??? . its like ww2 smog though. but we will "only" have the effect out at the horizon areas +/- 2-5km providing the blending involved is without fault.

oops thought id edited last post, ahh well.

last test just there has been a total eye opener. what i might do is not re colour the landscape, i may just apply my technique to the mip maps. which should keep everyone happy and adding atmosphere to our lovely game. it might be a bit dreamy, but thats character.

quickly tested evening time with the mip map shading, and well

SUMMER HAZE y'all! The blue does work ! \o/\o/\o/. Notice when lower down (2nd image) more saturation and detail is present through the blue haze which has been made grey -ish at dusk =perfect. didnt think that would work.
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/ec871d9d.jpg
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/d2b84578.jpg



ive thought of a problem too where integration with the rest of the sim is concerned. the haze concept might not work too well in with aircraft without the mip map shading applied too. if they were applied it would then make sense. the effect would be fracken brilliant too. never in my life have i witnessed a professional developer play with mip maps at all. and this is the perfect playground for it. Effectivly like an additional dirextx shader.

Oh man thats really good. Top shot in particular v.convincing. Great work.

@alifish
do you use a dds plugin for photoshop?

correct. I also use windows texture viewer for ascertaining various attributes of the original DDS files.

Nice, I'm familiar with PS and I focused pretty well the final result I'd like to get... if I have spare time I'll try some experiment.
Thx

i hope you are ready soon ali!i like what you are producing.seems much more convincing than the vanilla version!i want it.

Wow Ali, that looks so much better to my eyes anyway. Great work. :grin:

ive been thinking about the eventuality of the SDK and what it might mean for implementing such a mod as mine. given that its simply a new set of textures that supercedes the originals. currently a package of approximatly 66 meg.

i think its going to have to be done as a full standalone 322 meg side addition to the present BoB module so people can have the choice. But presently and before its fully developed im not understanding the present layout of that module. as its split between the core and the bob modules. hmm. i would like to keep files sizes down as much as possible. but without the SDK i have literally no idea how this will pan out. for testing it it will involve the kegety dll method but for finalisation ive no idea whats going to be the outcome.

trees and close detail such as airfield grasses etc are in the core, the rest is in te BoB. it maybe the case the putting trees into the bob might still work with config file changes. but thats another world of investigation.

These are more the colours I'd expect to see over England in the summer (paired with RD's excellent photo too. I'd imagine the fields would have had a slightly burnished look from the heat, although there were short rainy periods in the battle, so this would have an added effect too)

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...d-db60589a.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...l-aa06320b.jpg

[QUOTE=philip.ed;282666]These are more the colours I'd expect to see over England in the summer (paired with RD's excellent photo too. I'd imagine the fields would have had a slightly burnished look from the heat, although there were short rainy periods in the battle, so this would have an added effect too)

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...d-db60589a.jpg

Burnished, excellent comment. This all very subjective but i must go out on a limb here.

that top picture is exactly what i want to see in cod. but its taken at around 4 o clock if its at summer. its nice though. you can even see the saturation in the distance together with the atmospherics, thats the image im concentrating on. every single image anyone can provide will always be different, so i will take that as my reference. great picture thanks.

[QUOTE=Ali Fish;282669]except....that image has a red colour cast..otherwise I agree, the atmospheric effect is what we need.

Yes, I know what you mean about the slightly red tint...it's hard to find photos that will represent the terrain perfectly, but a certain amount of artistic license should be allowed :-P

Excellent work Ali looking forward to testing:)

thats exactly what im doing now. just adding some idea on top of the reference picture. and theres a old style sentimental flavour in the aesthetics that i kind of like with the desaturated version.


http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/9b4103bd.jpg

You see, in my humble opinion, the slightly reddish look is characteristic of the summer-season. I think you're fix is great, but some of the fields should have the golden cast that some of the fields in the original picture have... :cool:

sorry if I appear to be quite picky

Maybe that coud help ? (from reality cam) : http://vimeo.com/23387659

All Credit due to Luso 83 from C6 (http://www.checksix-forums.com/showthread.php?t=169078)

i agree to be honest.

reality cam through a window and through what is probally a "digital" lens. im wanting to apply what the naked eyeball might see. and i see all sorts of anomolies and inconsistancy with cameras. but there are a few key points there in simply how the general colour reacts in bright daylight. cheers ! its like the patches have various mass of light. this is the refelctive element of the colour itself. what the yellows and ligher colours need on the map is a bloom style effect for that mass of light. or atleast a filter in photoshop. ive got various plans now. must chill and take direction.

anyway time for a break, must have put 15 hours into this in the last 26 hours.

If you want to make a good texture my proposition is: do it like the painters of old: go out into nature and paint from sight.

But use different computer screen types.

Do it for different weather and lighting conditions at different seasons and at different day times.


Three reasons for this:
A photo will always distort colours. It is inevitable. Even the best will have an optical system that changes some parameters slightly so that in the end the result will differ from reality. With digital cameras the sensor will add to this. For analogue cameras it is the film material that will change the colours.

Each computer screen type has its own colour scheme that alters the overal colour tone. So the same photo will look different on different computer screens. Some better computer screens will allow you to select a warm (redish) or cold (blueish) tone or some more advanced settings. But whatever you design on your screen will look different on the screen of another guy.

Memory is treacherous and shifts the perception of things - even the colours.
Also colour perception is strongly influenced by comparison the eye or brain does with other colours. So an item that you percieve as pure white will appear to you to be more yellowish or more greyish or more whatev' when you hold close to it something that is in fact whiter.

been watching rise of flight video most of the day lol. its the best point of reference actually. the scenery should never be brighter than what we see there because its a game world and this bright stuff and shaders and generally how its done is not photgraphic. (nvidia head said in 5 yrs we will have that capability, presently we have the capability running at 2 fps). also the haze effect is done so well in rof. just like in that webb aviation image. hmmm.

But rof definitely does NOT depict realistic colours. It looks nice but it is purely artistically nice, not because it is realistical. In fact just go out now (if it is still broad day light where you live) and tell me if the gras you see is really desaturated as it is in rof. Unless you live in a region where it is very dry and the gras almost dying because of lack of water the answer will be that it's very green.

I agree though that the haze is much better in rof than in cod - at least on sunny days. I always said that the mist should be blue and not white as long as there's no complete cloud cover. If the latter is the case then the mist may become white as what we have in cod now on any day.

Looks really good and more natural to me, the current game ones look a little cartoonish at times.

Keep up the good work :)

If 1C could give modders a hint how to put them into ClientAddIns folder, maybe sooner?

excellent:-)

Hey you know you can just desaturate the graphics in the windows display control panel and get the same effect .

Some nice pics
 

http://www.aghoyle.com/channel%201024%20x%20768/021.jpg
http://www.aghoyle.com/channel%201024%20x%20768/012.jpg
http://www.aghoyle.com/channel%201024%20x%20768/013.jpg


More here:
http://www.aghoyle.com/channel.htm

One thing though; there were no rape fields in 1940...but replace those with the brownish/golden crop fields...:cool:

I think what you clearly can see, raps or not, is that the landscape is definitely not desaturated. It may have a different basic tone than what we have in Cod but what is definitely not the case that saturation is to high in cod imho.

I am not completely blind to the fact that rof colours look good and I am quite sensitive to aesthetical issues. But Rof definitely does NOT depict reality in terms of colour except in terms of haze colour where it is definitely superiour to cod.

look at the shadows, its not midday, nice pic, but i cant take much from it.

Not midday, but IMHO these are roughly the colours I'd personally love to see

http://www.picturescolourlibrary.co....&query=1871414

sorry, the picture is rather blurred.

and this one looks nice too, although again it's not middday.

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...nt-ba27118.jpg

The easiest solution to all these complaints of the color not being to saturated, or to green, or what have you would be to add a user adjustable color grading shader to the game.

Looking at what can be found through the sfs extractor, this should be possible, and there are plenty of parametric color grading shader that can be used or adapted to the game.

If the developers added it, they could even make it user adjustable. If someone wants to fly in spielbergian faded colors, they can. If someone wants the landscape to scream color, they can.


As for the creator of this texture mod, it'd be wise for you to look over the shaders as well as their associated config file. You may find that you can get that horizon look you're after without altering the textures.

will wait for the SDK.

@ phillip very nice pics, id like to see that too eventually.

Yes, dark green trees, specially a darker tone for the lime color that looks tropical. Looking forward for your mod.

In my opinion, the ground colour should not be desaturated, nor turned "brown-er" but rather just shifted to a slightly darker, fresher, green in comparison to the weirdly toxic one we have now.
In fact conio's pics basically sum up what I am looking for, except take out the rape.

Philip, did you ask permission from the devs of WOP2 for that screenshot?:)

Please keep in mind that when you show a photograph (even if it was the right day time) and also this on a computer there are two effects combined:

The photograph in itself never shows the real colours. Only our brain makes us believe that these colours are the right ones as we when looking at the picture usually lack the comparison. If you hold the picture up right on the spot where it was taken at the same daytime and the same weather condition you would realize that the colours on the picture are in fact different and have a certain colour shift. This colour shift is inevitable in photography (I do myself quite a bit of photography since my childhood).

Your computer screen has a colour shift of its own. So even IF the photograph showed the right colours (what it doesn't) you still would see wrong colours on your computer screen.

Now in fact you have both effects combined. And I'd say it is highly unlikey that they compensate each other.

PS: When I talk about colour I also mean all the other effects like gamma etc. that go with colour.

Whilst I realise that the photos will never represent a perfect image, what is the solution? Go out and take samples of crop plants and grass, then go home and aim to translate that colour across in photoshop?
I think that the best solution is to give the people a representation, as near as possible, of how they imagine England to look like (either from past flying experiences, or from what they've seen whilst atop a relatively high hill).
Obviously, none of the pictures posted match perfectly, but an equilibrium can be attained which may not be far off reality. Indeed, one can tune their monitor to reach a different balance as well. No matter if Ali got the colours down to a tee, people would still see different results because their monitor isn't correctly calibrated.

I agree that photos will all vary, maybe to considerable degrees, but I can't see perfection being reached on purpose. ;)

Thanks Ali.

I'm actually okay with the textures as they are, but I will look forward to trying your mod.

Nice work.

Dunno if you know about it.. but AMD has a nice little tool for compressing textures into .dds format, with mipmap building, mass (batch) compression etc etc.

Personally, i use it all the time (like for the power&glory GTR2 mod). Saves a lot of time.

http://developer.amd.com/gpu/compres...s/default.aspx

cheers will have a look at that tommorow. interested in the dx10 implementation and if there are any difference to the good old photoshop plugins. and maybe i can fix the trees file issue as im sure luthier mentioned initially it was a mip map problemo.

back in the day mei was an rfactor designer for IDT champcar and others etc etc. and later GMT (mostly private work).. never tried mdding the gtr range though. roll on rfactor2.

power& glory mod looks brilliant id love to try it tbh. reminds me of the historics rF mod. not a gtr owner here though.

this is what im waiting to put into rfactor 2. yes its the AI driving and a very old video simply testing TIR.
http://youtu.be/4TmKiJPUeNM

the new textures are fantastic, i find il2 cod's default textures a bit "garish" but i must say, the ground with ecverything on full is an absolutely amazing sight to behold.

Ali, how is the terrain coming along? I was looking back over pictures of the CoD terrain, and I noticed that there seem to be a lot of fields which are either really dark or almost pastel in colour. It seems to be that, from photos I've seen (indeed, from mostly all the photos posted in the thread) that such variations are 'rare', as in that they don't appear as often as in CoD.
Is it possible to edit the actual textures in this way, to really alter to way the terrain looks?

its a tough one. one hand i want to just do my own brand new textures, but i need info on how the shaders work. on the other manipulating the default textures is proving quite tricky. other than just de saturating every colour in it at once. which is a abit lame imo. will experiment again tommorow. LOL from what ive tried so far i just keep ending up with WOP. seriously. its hilariously not funny. !

I don't envy you for your endeavours! But if you pull it off, it will be awesome.

Count me in Buddy, also I use photoshop a lot so if you'd like any help I can try my best to pitch in there too.

i'm guessing you will pm about testing?

ok hmmm. pondering this ...... its summery but still garish. i like it. maybe if i apply some sheen to the mip maps it might help, i dunno. HELP ! feed me with ideas please.

http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/b40448ec.jpg
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/ade6d661.jpg

Pics not loading.

And why don"t you just batch process the textures?

iam processing them in bulk via photoshop with a custom made action for the changes. what difference does it make how i do it ?

with mod but at 19:00 hrs. i like this personally. its going to have to be video comparisons from now on, the bandwidth on these images i produce is incredible.

taking off and getting to these images was prettydamn cool at this time with the new detail. up close the textures are so much more alive with fine detail. maybe a bit rough tbh.
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/64633c00.jpg

http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/bed262c3.jpg

http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/385f3c91.jpg

looks amazing

France wip. ran these through the same changes.
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/6886ad1c.jpg

ok so the image below ive tweaked in photoshop. added some red a little blue and minus a touch of green. such a basic change, but its getting that burnished summer look i think,

ignore plane and sky colours for now. but ill say this. the developers in my high opinion have too much yellow light thing going on. to much characterisation in this sim. or well there computer monitors are set up quite differently maybe i should try a cold temp settings ???, because i think thats it. everything becomes so much nicer with techniques i should not have to employ. i believe i have a good eye for things and i sware theres somthing not right. anyway voila.

this practically emulates a colder temperature setting in comparison to all others and for some reason its now looking "propa" all images are the same mod pack. no changes other than time of day. either 19:00 or 13:00

fufufeedback time !

http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/46176ce6.jpg

im off to bed with a phat spliff to chill out \o/ i believe im finally getting somewhere. and adding to the overall pallette with more different colours has made the tiles less distinguishable whilst adding a realistic element of chaos out to the horizons, enjoy navigating lol.

further changes may involve a more hazy look with the mips especially out to the horizon. not sure. the effect should work well with the morning mist and general dusk time.

Looks great but maybe reduce the contrast a tiny bit, just to soften slightly the colour difference.
The last picture looks nice but i couldnt put my finger on what it was that seemed out, then i realised straight away.

Its the water!! at the moment it matches the crazy luminous stock landscape, plus the game engine for some bizzare reason does the opposite of reality and lightens textures with distance rather than darken them, but you wont be able to change that.

Water here in the UK has a brown type colour especially the English channel,
http://www.fiked.com/wp-content/uplo...sh-Channel.jpg

most inland water ways are a very similar greeny brown colour because of the sand and silt.

http://www.henricksblog.com/England0...URTON-0764.JPG

If you could try to emulate those colour i think with your current textures it would maximize the effect beyond belief.

EDIT# Sorry but i just realised there's some dirty bastard letting his dog shit on the grass :)

That last picture looks brilliant!
But I think that, in the textures themselves, there are too many really dark fields, and also too many really light fields (like the yellow/rape one, which is rather unhistorical)
Not your fault though, Ali! Indeed, I think that overall, the fields are too dark for Summer. In CloD, the textures seem too washed out...maybe a correct colour balance can be achieved, where the fields are fairly light in colour, and the trees are contrastingly dark?
And, has been said numerous times now, dark hedge-borders for the fields would be lovely. But all in good time. 8)

Interestingly, when I had time to fly Il-2, I used to use a program called powerstrip, which allows one to calibrate their monitor to represent colour temperatures, to simulate 'true' day-time colours. I use settings that Avala posted, and it makes Il-2 look wonderful.

mornin !, feedback is great thanks. still need some more though. its a must that we compare similar pics in terms of atmospherics and cloud cover with attention to distance from objective.


looking at my images today, yes its definetly not right still, but for me the "design" is better, just need those colour compromises etc. at dusk time im so very happy with it in general. as we all are with cod even with vanilla textures. so i reckon its about compromising.

water colour. im not going to mess with that. on a summer days from height water reflects as blue, because of the bounce of light from sky off the sea and also the mass concentration effect. i know the brown comes from the overcast sky and a mix of sand particles in the sea. i live in blackpool so i know the sea. and were in a game here that isnt quite doing enough sshader wise to satisfy me/us.

Big Pickle. id love to see that awesome image you posted without overcast sky, totally blue sky etc etc. just to compare the colours.

Hi! Great job so far. I find those last screenshots a bit oversaturated IMO, maybe reducing contrast would help... I know the absence of haze and atmosphere affects the high altitude looking of the ground though...

Agree that the water should be browner... Don´t know if it can be changed through textures though...

Looking forward to this :)

damn you all to hell ! LMAO

ill be back with brown sea folks. but really what are you guys on ? i know what im on. but the sea is blue, its translucent with alot of crap in it. up close without blue sky, it is brown. but not so with a blue sky above. then depending on the concetration of sky cover mixed with further light bounce it becomes grey. and when the light it fully diffused and in direct with low bounce its then brown.

I disagree about the sea. It should be murkier around the coast-line, and more blue/black/dark as it gets deeper...

FAIL ! got the animations of the seascape but cant find anything else. and i like blue sea anyway, seriously it wouldnt look right any other colour other than more grey. it also exists everywhere (under terrain) so maybe its hard coded. not sure.

Hmm, I recall this picture:

http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-conten...6897336743.jpg

But then again, the detail isn't really too visible.

Although....

http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-content/cap031.jpg

I will add that, in CloD, the sea doesn't seem to flow towards the cost; in some cases it moves perpendicular to the coast...(wish the game would run on my rig so I could have a go at testing myself)

I totally see what you mean Ali, not brown like poop brown just not the blue it is at the moment, it almost looks a little tropical. You have the north sea, its a fresher and deeper than the channel, the channel is very sandy and that gives it that brownish hue, but as i said its only brownish a little.

I can grab some photo's for you if you want when the weather is better of the canals and water ways around the birmingham area, they give a real good green/brown waterway colour.

But hey mate, its your mod, the community will support how you want to make it buddy.

One should consider that the colour of the sea is depending very much on light condition, what is inside the sea (algae), how shallow or deep it is or if it is real clear water or if there is much plankton or dirt in it and water temperature and the ground composition. I guess also the air may alter the appearance of water.

I remember having visited an Island just short south of Brittany in France (Atlantic ocean) so quite north and nothing that should look too different from the Channel.

Well, it did. It looked on this particular day as if I had been in the Carribean with locally turquoise cristal clear waters. The same water may look completely different on a rainy day.

Some images of the Blautopf, a location in Southern Germany that translates roughly into Blue Pot called this way for some good reason as you immediately will see in the pictures. As I have seen it with my own eyes: it is definitely and really very blue:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blautopf

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...opfKloster.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...opf_Quelle.jpg

lovely pictures !.

http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/46176ce6.jpg

Maybe too many colors, from plants they didn't use back then?
And also seems a bit overwhelming, like colors from spring,summer,autumn mixed?

That's all a bit psychedelic. not right at all.
I'm sorry I don't have the knowlage or words to provide anything more constructive than that.

Alifish I think you are getting there, but so far its all been too much, something inbetween yours and the original would be much better. Just find the sweetspot. you are not there yet, its waay too much in all of your own screenshots. Just some input. Looking forward to the results, Good luck

yes...last pict posted by Ali is too much psychedelic, but the intention of adding more contrast is the right way..
4me (if looked at distance) CloD terrain appears to much washed-out.
I just played 2min with Photoshop on a previous posted pict in lunchtime break...

Attachment 5953
Attachment 5954

..and the trees should be more contrasted, in these pict they look to much merged in landscape, they disappear and don't cast shadows

Cheers

Ali, I think your earlier efforts were much better. It seems to me you've been a bit derailed by the plethora of photos people have posted.

This shot, for me, was definitely the closest to what I see here in the U.K.
The most recent ones look surreal.

http://http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/...1&d=1305720153

Cheers, gwpc

Hmmm, to me that looks far too green.
I actually think that there are too many fields in CloD which are 'funky' colours. By this I mean that some are almost pastel in colour, whilst others are really dark and murky. Throughout a season, most fields in a given area would suffer the same weather affects, so consequently, although the colours will differ, the actual weathering (or, should we say, burnishing (as it is summer)) will be largely universal.

I think CloD needs a large number of fields which are grass-green (not luminous green) and then others which are able to reflect the colour of the crop.
Obviously, when I say a large number which are grass green, this will all depend on what the weather has been like, so if it has been really warm, then the colour will look more washed out and dry.

I think the photos posted in this thread: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=22249 give a fairly good representation of what I mean ;)

I mean, look at this WoP shot. It's very green, but the green itself doesn't look too bad IMHO

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...4&d=1304698427

Although the colours look nice in this CloD picture (which looks edited) http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/1467/codtest6.jpg

Clearly the trees need darkening. Looking at CloD, the texture for the terrain under the trees is quite a sickly colour. Maybe if it was darkened to almost black it would give a much better impression?

And obviously this is an edited photo, but IMHO these colours are quite nice

http://www.bugbog.com/images/galleri...ds_airview.jpg

(maybe the green needs to be washed out a bit more. The photo is clearly edited)

i watched the battle of britain last night. i also watched this which was fantastic.

for uk'ers only as it bbc iplayer. Its an hour and a half long, mainly about british lansdscape art, last 20 mins is about war time british propaganda landscape art, ohh and theres some spitfires lol !

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...cape_Painting/

basicly between the two is all the information needed to semi accuratly re create south east england.

the colours displayed in battle of britain were just awesome. but the scale of the texture in il2 is seriusly wrong. i.e. the average size of a field basck then was probally the size of the texture tile itself. so there are too many patch fields ! i believe that the devlopers have looked at modern day field and land divisions and taken that as the scenic appeal. imo its not wrong but in correct for what im trying to achieve.

regards that last image phillip. its way to green, but only because every other non green hue as filtered with the same filter for the green. the trick is to extract each colour and configure independantly.

my latest efforts look pretty much like the originals, still only with a comparison screenshot they look better. which isnt good enough really for a mod so im not sure what to do tbh, its got me all wound up. one of the most important aspects of what i want to achieve is very much hindered by my
inabillity to darken the trees. and ive tried everything there. untill i can do that i wont be working on it much. unless i have a serious brainstorm and it all works itself out lol.

if i got the bandwidth left for images ill post some from these 2 media sources.

That video on iplayer is brilliant! I'd love to see terrain like that in CloD.
Interestingly though, my book on the BoB film explains that a lot of the footage was shot over France (because the weather in Blighty was too poor for filming) so I'd take everything there with a pinch of salt (as far as modelling England is concerned) ;)

Ali, do you have access to the textures which the trees sit on? Maybe darkening those would improve things?

yeah phillip done that. the lighter colour trees negate any effect of darkening the land base, now with trees properly dark my textures would look a whole lot better.

my photobucket account is perilously close to having exceeded its bandwidth use. ohh dear. my pics may dissappear soon :( but heres the last texture change with stupid trees. you may not be able to tell the difference but its there.
http://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...T/abecfc1b.jpg

That actually looks brilliant!
I think that there are still too many really dark fields (like the brown ones) which might look better if they were more golden, and similarly the really dark green fields look a bit out of place, but it definitely looks good!
Out of interest, how does it look when the colours are adjusted to look more natural (like you did before in photoshop)?

it looks dead with that styling phillip, it looks stylised, just like wop. people want the colourfull summers day pleasant green (&yellow) lands. not the browns the saturation changes make.

light isnt about whats hitting the object its more about what light the object is emitting in our game environment of course. !

lets take a rich yellow corn field. whilst viewed at ground level from a distance of say 10 metres its this colour, and bare in mind you also view everything between the corn field elements, that maybe the ground, the atmoshphere , its shadow against another element ! But...... when viewed from say 2000 metres its a different story, the mass of area of the cornfield has a further influence on the colour, brightness and contrast, in its mass it reflects more light back at the lens.

along side that rich colurfull yellow we pick 1 shade of green in abundance. at ground level we see much similar to the yellow from certain persepctive. but at height and in abundance or mass of green colour, that dark green colour does not get brighter because of various reasons. shadowing is enhanced thats an absence of light ! so its not quite as reflective of light in general thus it retains its dark quality. but with both colour examples you can throw all this theory out the window depending on the angles of light. so its a very dynamic arena, one we cant simulate in this game.

a tree or forrest has the same qualities as above but in scale everything is much bigger including the shadow generation qualites. its much darker.

each colour operates independantly in reality. in our beloved flightsim things are not and never will be so dynamic. so were left playing with this incredible balancing act thats pretty hard to manipulate with the tools we have. and basic shader use thats set with such an awkward colour base at various times of day.

any VU fans out there ?

White light, Aww white light it lighten up my eyes
White light, don't you know it fills me up with suprise
White light, Aww white heat tickle me down to my toes
White light, Aww white light I tell you now goodness knows, now work it