Billboard vegetation tests

[benpark]

I have extracted the vegetation files from Tin Soldiers:JC for testing on a PzC map. I've saved them as .dds files, and entered the file names into my mod folders .xml, and added the files themselves to the folder.

In order to get these files to appear in the MM interface, should I add these folders to a folder in the MM main directory? Do we need a separate folder for billboard files?

[Stridor]

Ben,

At the moment you still need to "make" the billboards yourself. Ie you need to make a quad and then texture it with your brush texture.

From experience I suggest you you do a little cluster at different Z depths rather than a single quad. Add in some variability in size + shape. Also for reall dense grasses you will want to put more than one grass texture per quad to keep the poly count down as low as possible.

Then just export your model to Mods/Benpark and set it up for the MM by doing bitmap thumbnails as previously described.

Regards

S.

[benpark]

I just looked through a few models in the Tin Soldiers folders, and everything seems to be in there to be able to add brush, grass etc. I'll just need to do some tests on converting them.

Most seem to "float" above the ground level in MS. I don't know if sinking them would look better or not until seen in the scene editor.

[benpark]

It will need a little scaling down, but it looks like infantry will soon have some more hiding places.

[Biffa]

Works for me, but is that hiding places for just pvp or against the AI?

[benpark]

I hope it would work vs the AI, but that would be something for the devs to answer. It would be good to see if we can add cover types and assign them a color code, spotting modifier etc as well.

We have "brush" as a setting in the color code now (whether and how it works as cover remains to be tested). I like to have a graphic representation of the terrain, so if the "brush" setting indeed does give improved cover, it should look like it.

As far as things like grass go, it's all about making the maps look less like billiard tables for now. If we can add in coded terrain on a given map, things like "tall grass/wheat field" might become useful.

[benpark]

Nearly done, but need to tweak a few heights. These are conversions from Tin Soldiers, resized and tweaked. I've clumped brush together to make hedges, and rowed up some of the yellowed grass to make wheat stalks.

I'm waiting to hear from the designer of that "Sticks and Twigs" mod pack to see if I can use some of his textures. If I can, there will be more to chose from (and some great looking wheat fields).

They will hopefully blend in nicely once a better terrain base is applied in the MM.

[benpark]

I am noticing that the middle quad is showing only one of it's faces. I am saving something incorrectly?

Also, will these types of models be ticked as "billboard" in the MM? or are they fine as is, due to the multiple sides?

[Biffa]

The aerial view, i.e. the one players spend most of their time viewing from is presenting a problem for some of these textures imho. The low flat view is fine but from above like your shot here isn't. I'm not sure if you have the billboard effect on in these shots since the one missing half of it's elements is at 90 degrees to our view.

I'm wondering if we can mod them and use these as a base?

[benpark]

This is in the scene editor, so there is no option that I know of to use the billboard effect.

Erik said we had could use these as we liked for modding PzC. Do you have the TS:Caesar game?

"Brush" seems to be fine as a terrain type in the MM.

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: SAF_Biffa

The aerial view, i.e. the one players spend most of their time viewing from is presenting a problem for some of these textures imho. The low flat view is fine but from above like your shot here isn't. I'm not sure if you have the billboard effect on in these shots since the one missing half of it's elements is at 90 degrees to our view.

I'm wondering if we can mod them and use these as a base?

Set isfacingcamera to true. It fixes that problem. You can do the same in the MM by checking the B [] option.

[benpark]

This is the level I often play at.

The issue is color matching to get this to look decent. The darker greens of the brush seem out of place on the bright green ground texture, likewise for the grass. The wheat and brush in the woods look good to me. At ground level of course, the game looks quite good.

[Stridor]

To best support grasses/brushes the engine should have built in support for such things.

1. The Zfar for brushes needs to be less than that for larger objects
2. The brushes should be generated on the fly (? based on map color)
3. Particle effect grasses are better than billboard system which look great from pre-rendered views only.

The reason for this is because in RL brush and grass density is really really high. If you make each grass/brush model be seperate and load in the scene you will have 100,000 objects to load. This equates to a 15 minute load time, not to mention the stupendous ploycount. For this reason only a small area (clipping plane) of brushes should be onscreen at one time (distance textures should imply grasses beyond this plane), and the grasses should not be loaded as individual models but randomly generated at runtime (can have a fixed seed) so that the map load times are kept down. Lastly a particle system will give better looking grass / brushes.

Now we don't have that.

We still might be able to do something with the current system, but individual billboard quads probably won't cut it.

I suggest brush clumps with multiple brushes (but one texture) per clump. Probably not billboarded. As Ben as pointed out the underlying ground texture is vitally important.

The other idea I am playing with is to somehow have the MM generate models (like tree models and brushes models etc) at build time to suit the map. So you can have one tree but at different scales, or perhaps a wheat field which the MM builds a model for to suit that map.

All that stuff is some time away however ...

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: SAF_Biffa

Works for me, but is that hiding places for just pvp or against the AI?

Biffa if you spec the AI color as brush it will apply to both the AI and PVP.

Another thng that PCK has going for it is the ray casting LOS system. This means that the terrain type is used for sighting calcs (like CM), but it also takes into account how many polys the LOS ray needs to travel through to get sight! Of course if we have 1000s of brushes the calc times will likely go up, but it *will* improve the infantry game.

Regards

S.

[benpark]

Are things like the wheat field and hedge feasible as I have constructed them? I have no issue with quite a few models in the scene editor (which runs far slower than the regular game).

Will these hedge and wheat models as I have 'em block LOS? My goal in trying this out is part of my larger goal of IMP (Infantry 'Mprove-Ment) for PzC.

I'll try to make up a new brush clump for a look-see. I'll drop the grass for now.

[Mraah]

Ben,

Great looking brush!

Now, consider this with regards to spotting ...

The brush polygon vertical height HAS TO be higher than the soldier for it to properly block LOS when considering the "per-hit" rule for the sighting rays. If the brush polygon is lower than the soldier (ie, waist high) then you can have an entire brush field full of those models and it won't block LOS, which means it will only have a -5 modifier factor against the soldier, whereas, if it was higher it would accumulate additional -1 modifiers for each hit ... minimum of -5.

The best way to check the height is this way (other than loading them up inside the game and checking) ...

1. Start MS3D with a new project.
2. Import a soldier model
3. Export the soldier model as an MS3D ASCII text file.
4. Start a new project.
5. Open you brush model file
6. Import the ASCII model of the soldier and check the height

All of this assumes that your brush model is 1:1 when you export it as a final X file.

Hope this helps when you finalize the height of your brush models ... otherwise your models will be just be eye candy.

Rob

EDIT NOTE : The polygon has to be higher than the soldier, not necessarily the image on the polygon. I hope that makes sense.

[benpark]

Rob, great info thanks.

I'll do the finishing on the model stuff that visually looks ok being tall- the hedge and wheat. I'll also work on a larger brush clump and see if it looks realistic, and not like some prehistoric mega plant. I'll pass these along to Stridor with a few last buildings in a day or two for everyone to mess around with.

I'll leave the grass and smaller stuff that would only have a visual impact for now until we have some kind of idea if some of what Stridor mentioned might be possible in a sequel.

[Mraah]

Ben,

Cool ... one other consideration too if you want to simulate a wheat field that blocks LOS ...

Look at p. 46 of the manual ... it shows you the chart and which terrain type has the "per-hit" values. So, it's important that your active wheat filed have at least a brush underlying terrain. You could be even more clever and have the middle of the wheat field defined as heavy woods to assure you can't see that deep into the field. I know it sounds strange but until PC comes out with more terrain definitions we'll have to make do with what we got.

I'm going to PM you my wheat field texture that you can use as an underlying terrain pattern. It will be JSGE ready and places all the info into the MODS folder so it will be ready and compatible with MM. For now, the MOD will be called MRAAH-Wheat so it won't conflict with the MRAAH folder that currently resides in the media folder.

If any other beta testers want to try my wheat texture then just PM me ... Stridor, I'm sending you this as well to add for the final version if you want.

Rob

[benpark]

Is this more like what people think would work better for brush? It's a few quads that are taller than the soldier model. It seems too large to me (more like a tree), but it seems it needs to be this big to make an LOS impact.

I have the go ahead from the guy that made the texture and model pack to use a few textures for these. There are nice wheat textures in there, as well as brush and swamp ones.

[rickier65]

Benpark -

I think they are too high - though I like the looks otherwise.

I re-read the LOS section and below is from page 41 of manual:

"...two rays are generated from the spotting unit to the enemy unit. One ray is low to ground and the other is at ...head height...The ..system...checks EACH [my caps] ray notes every single obstacle.........game computes average of sorts between the results of the two rays to come up with a final estimatation of your line of sight to the target."

So it looks to me like even low shrubs will impact line of sight. Taken together with the terrain type modifier, maybe the brush doesn't need to be head high.

Rick

(or maybe what I read isn't really the way it works?).