[WIP] Ground texture mod

Originally Posted by Ekar

Hi Philip.

I've been dabbling with the terrain a bit but I haven't been super focused on it. I'm more familiar with the different textures being used for the terrain now as I've been flying over England to get a better understanding of things, but it has made me aware that there is more work to be done than just the four main landscape tiles, which was my original goal. I guess that's the problem when you start to update textures, the old ones tend to stick out more. Going through the original textures, another thing which strikes me is the fact that, especially the ones relating to towns and built up areas, there is just an incredible amount of work there. Whoever made these must have spent hours upon hours moving around little boxes all over these tiles. I am simultaneously impressed and also a little bemused, because the result is not really very nice. Just thinking about it makes me feel a little sad actually. All that work...

My predominant feeling now is maybe to wait a bit, see how CloD matures before jumping in too far. You never know what's going to happen- I just caught the new update, which looks fairly significant in a number of important areas. The whole thing could be changed around tomorrow, there's no telling. Maybe the landscape guy is putting final touches on things, or maybe the whole terrain is just a placeholder and is about to be totally stripped out. It doesn't make sense to me, looking at these textures- that Oleg could be confident in saying that his system could stand up to photorealism. You just can't get there with these textures. Either his vision and timeframe for the completion of CloD was much broader than what was provided on release (seems fairly likely- there's enough evidence that they're still working hard), or he was stretching the truth in order to make a sale. If it's the former, then their obviously working on the terrain in order to lift things to a higher standard. If it's the latter, then that doesn't exactly inspire me to pick up the ball and run with others in the community, to finish others work.

I think we'll see some good updates over the next 6 months or so. Someone brought up in Luthiers latest thread the fact that reflections had been turned off for planes in the official patch. With reflections turned on in that video posted, the plane looks really fantastic, metalic, realistic. Right now the planes look very dull. I'm a patient guy so I have no beef with the devs in terms of progress. They obviously need time to get things to a level where everyone's happy. They seem to me like they are being rushed. What's with the horrible new/old map border for eg?

Haha, sorry, long post.

that map border was just a placement taken from the old game when they patched the ingame map to work better.

reflections. dont think they were turned off, but more toned down through the mma files. i didnt like the effect, it looked nice and shiny, but they were not so nice and shiny back in the day 1940. granted though because of the presence over enhanced effects it can appear to look better because its more interactive & dynamic in its environment but for me its wrong not realistic. when we see bare or polished metal then we should see these effects and through the series and modernised materials we should see this more.

regards photorealism. we dont get to that level with textures. its shaders that do the job of reality. the texture is just a scale presentation of an object in a non dynamic state. At the core context of Photorealism is the dynamic aspect, One example of further development was the furthered use of a shader that mimmicks distance and atmosphere and the combined colouring chaanges it can make as i had discussed here in this thread, and as luthier told us in the last update.

its all about the shaders with this sim and the context of photorealism.

you have touched upon the 4 tiles factor too Ekar. I had previously commented that if we had 1 or 2 more tiles in that mix to make 6 interacting tiles then we might be able to get further with what seems wrong as youve stated. i agree with that.

if i had free reign to mod an englaish scenery the scale as is. i would have a 9 map grid system, but at 1024x1024 size. This would allow regional variations upon the patch quiltwork effect. 3 main field types and for each type a transitional tile. If i get the chance to for e.g. fully re create the current scenery of england i will attempt this. but within the current format i just dont see the outcome of the work being actually worth it. i.i. no better than what we have at present. no point modding what 1C have done already, in many respects 1C nailed it given the current possibilites even though you may dislike it or be very opinionated of it.

[Ekar]

Originally Posted by Ali Fish

that map border was just a placement taken from the old game when they patched the ingame map to work better.

reflections. dont think they were turned off, but more toned down through the mma files. i didnt like the effect, it looked nice and shiny, but they were not so nice and shiny back in the day 1940. granted though because of the presence over enhanced effects it can appear to look better because its more interactive & dynamic in its environment but for me its wrong not realistic. when we see bare or polished metal then we should see these effects and through the series and modernised materials we should see this more.

regards photorealism. we dont get to that level with textures. its shaders that do the job of reality. the texture is just a scale presentation of an object in a non dynamic state. At the core context of Photorealism is the dynamic aspect, One example of further development was the furthered use of a shader that mimmicks distance and atmosphere and the combined colouring chaanges it can make as i had discussed here in this thread, and as luthier told us in the last update.

its all about the shaders with this sim and the context of photorealism.

you have touched upon the 4 tiles factor too Ekar. I had previously commented that if we had 1 or 2 more tiles in that mix to make 6 interacting tiles then we might be able to get further with what seems wrong as youve stated. i agree with that.

if i had free reign to mod an englaish scenery the scale as is. i would have a 9 map grid system, but at 1024x1024 size. This would allow regional variations upon the patch quiltwork effect. 3 main field types and for each type a transitional tile. If i get the chance to for e.g. fully re create the current scenery of england i will attempt this. but within the current format i just dont see the outcome of the work being actually worth it. i.i. no better than what we have at present. no point modding what 1C have done already, in many respects 1C nailed it given the current possibilites even though you may dislike it or be very opinionated of it.

You might be right about the reflections- I do prefer a bit of shininess on the planes exactly because its a more dynamic look. But I do have trouble believing the original planes were that matt. I mean, they were mostly straight out of the factory I assume. Watching this video the other day-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFj8NDqZhlc

I also noticed the shininess of the Spit- right in the first shot you see a very metallic looking reflection along the side panels, much closer to the video posted in Luthiers thread, than what is ingame currently. I'm not a WWII plane expert at all so I can't tell you if they've gone to extra trouble to polish the planes up for display or not. Anyway... it's probably just another thing to argue over, like the colour of the grass.

Regards shaders and the environment, it will be interesting to see what changes after the next lighting update. I think they might be headed in the right direction but I still think the textures are very important. They both work off each other. One thing I thought might help is the use of a detail texture- just like WOP uses on its terrain, in order to break up the pixelation at lower altitudes. I can't imagine WOP's terrain textures are higher res than in CloD, but the detail texture helps to sell the illusion of higher res.

PS, Going off topic now, but I'm also really into shaders. In fact, I've just started a blog about shaders and materials in Maya. Its a tutorial driven site with tips on how to make various handy shaders. Check it out when you've got a free moment Ali (although not much content right now)

http://materialism-blog.blogspot.com/

Philip-

Currently the look of the textures is like a patchwork quilt, whereas in reality, the fields in England are usually grouped closely together reuslting in large areas of grassland and similar areas of crop-fields

Yeah, those were my initial thoughts about the landscape as well. I voiced my concern to Oleg some months ago about it, he reassured me at the time but I can't remember what he actually said now. PS, I haven't abandoned this terrain mod stuff, I just want to tread lightly and not use up all my energy, or waste all my energy. Be good to let the sim settle down a bit I think.

edit- finally, working AA....

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=25281

Happy days

[CrisGer]

I saw the threads about working AA last night, that is quite a development.

So is there any form of this landscape texture mod that we can try out?..i understand the decision to let the developers proceeed....so if not that is fine.

Re the shine, i have heard some crews (ground crews) tried wax to gain speed, perhaps that is what they were aiming for in the sim..... i have no idea if it helped back when.

is there any way we can adjust the ini or the settings to get back a bit of that shine? I kind of like it for at least some things.

howdy

i think Ekar has a project of sorts. i wont do more untill i have official help on modding, ie the SDK.

i do have a tree mod that recolours the trees to a more appropriate darker tone. see thread.

re shine, its all personal preference indeed !, personaly i just try not to confuse the eye candy that is a simple reflection with reality of materials. but there are " .mma " files that configure many of the shaders. so im sure it is possible. for this image i changed the shader effects. So it definetly is possible. suprised nobody is tinkering.

Originally Posted by CrisGer

I saw the threads about working AA last night, that is quite a development.

So is there any form of this landscape texture mod that we can try out?..i understand the decision to let the developers proceeed....so if not that is fine.

Re the shine, i have heard some crews (ground crews) tried wax to gain speed, perhaps that is what they were aiming for in the sim..... i have no idea if it helped back when.

is there any way we can adjust the ini or the settings to get back a bit of that shine? I kind of like it for at least some things.

[Ekar]

Ali says:

" for this image i changed the shader effects."


This is one of the nicest images I've seen from CloD. It's been the main pic to my custom homepage for months.

[philip.ed]

Ali, is that completely unedited?! That's that nicest CloD shot I have yet to see (I remember being equally gob-smacked when I first saw it)
The lighting looks perfect.

[adonys]

well ali, maybe you can share the modified shader with us, please?

Originally Posted by philip.ed

Ali, is that completely unedited?! That's that nicest CloD shot I have yet to see (I remember being equally gob-smacked when I first saw it)
The lighting looks perfect.

prior to v v14550 i changed a few shader settings. the shaders have subsequently changed.. the result was the same image but i used colour balance on photoshop to simply balance the colours out as at that time i was discussing how il2 general colour balance seemed wrong. (to much red balance everywhere) the result was that image which blew me away too lol. the original image was exactly the same i just balanced the excessive red. when this sim is upto par with "MY" expectations i shall continue to do what i do.