Billboard vegetation tests

[benpark]

Maybe I'll make the clumps of shrubs into 3 separate quads, which can be placed in the MM as one model. Two shrubs will be half the height of a man, the third just slightly higher. That will give a variety of cover.

I'm running short on free time, so I want to get these wrapped up. I'm cutting the number of shrubs down to maybe 3-4 different ones. There will also be the rows of wheat and hedges (two short and two high). If I can, I'll include the swamp stuff as well.

[Stridor]

You can make even low grass block LOS by essentially making the quads tall (not too tall) and then just "alphaering" the top part. So to the player it "looks" like their heads are visible, but to the engine there is a blocking poly.

The exact amount will need to be experimented with, so that low grasses can't block LOS on a tank or cause it to be hull down.

Regards

S

[benpark]

I seem to be running into an issue with some of the faces not showing on one of the three parts :

[benpark]

Model and .dds attached.

[Stridor]

Ben,

MS3D and DX don't do double sided faces (materials - at least MS3D does't and I doubt the DX engine in PCK does).

However it is an easy solutiuon to your problem.

Do this in MS3D

In groups make sure all your groups (every face) is selected.

Then in the menu Edit->Duplicate Selection (or Ctrl+d)

Then in menu Face->Reverse Vertex Order (or Ctrl+Shift+f)

All fixed now.

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Rick

"...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.

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

Rick,

We'll definitly need to test Ben's shrubs on a flat surface with autogen ... then line them up in a row and see how many of them block the LOS. From my earlier testing thread ... tm.asp?m=1842254 ... I feel it's the number of polygons it passes through before it calls it blocked.

Who knows ... perhaps the Low-to-Low ray needs more blockage than the high-to-high.

I still can never acheive a hull down status on a tank no matter how hard I try [:(]. It's like the Low-to-Low ray is going Low-to-High instead.

Rob

[benpark]

Test

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: benpark

Ready for initial testing.

Add the .x and .dds files to Media/Mods/Benpark folder. I've included a "resources.xml" with all data entered. Must have MM to test them out.

http://www.myfileupload.net/download.ph ... e6d2f0acd6

Ben that is great.

Can I make a suggestion?

Each modder should have their own subdir under Media/Mods. In your case it is called Benpark

Media/Mods/Benpark. Ok cool.

Now you have put out quite a bit of stuff now, your original houses for example, and they were stored in the Benpark dir with their own resource.xml.

The problem with delivering incremental stuff all in the same dir with the same resources.xml is that it will overwrite the old one and leave a whole bunch of your original models unusable. So in the future you can either put new stuff in a subdir off Benpark (eg Benpark/Brushes) *or* use a different named resuorce.xml (like brushes.xml).

One more thing ...

If you can with any new release put a little 256x256 thumbnail bmp of each new model in the appropriate subdir off Map Maker/Structures (eg Map Maker/Structures/Vegitation), then the MM user can start using your work from within the MM autogen. This allows you to test out what huge numbers of your models will look like on the map instead of placing them individually by hand in the SE.

Just some tips

Hope they help, looking forward to your brushes, regards

S.

[benpark]

I didn't know we could use sub-folders. That's good-it was getting very confusing.

How are you doing the thumbnails? I want them to match everyone else.

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: benpark

I didn't know we could use sub-folders. That's good-it was getting very confusing.

How are you doing the thumbnails? I want them to match everyone else.

ORIGINAL: benpark

I didn't know we could use sub-folders. That's good-it was getting very confusing.

How are you doing the thumbnails? I want them to match everyone else.

Yep subdirs are fine as many as you like. You can use different named *.xml resources files if you prefer.

The best way to do thumbnails is as follows.

Fire up MS3D

In File->Preferences select Viewport Persp Background and click Choose.

Use color RGB (235,235,235) = very light gray

Ok next load up your model and frame it in the Perspective Window as you want it. Make the perspective window of a relatively large size > 256x256.

Press Prt Scr and then load the screen shot up into your paint program. Next just crop a 256x256 thumbnail of the perspective image.

Save it as the directX name and as a bitmap.

See the example for your "brushA" model. I would save this as brushA.bmp under the appropriate subdir of Map Maker Structures (in this case the vegitation sub dir).

The MM can now find and use your brushA model for both placement and autogen

Hope this helps

S.

P.S. I noticed a small error in your resource.xml.

The wheatST23row id had a ".x" after it. Easily fixed.

[benpark]

That wheat looks nice in the MM tutorial. The grass sprouts look good as well.

The trees are a world better, as well- did you use a texture in the pack I sent you to re-do them? There are a few other variations for fall etc I could add.

Anything else to make before I finish these up?

[Stridor]

Ben,

The trees are stock, but I used the _A (big) _B (medium) _C (small) to simulate different forest density. Of course there still needs to be a lot more tree textures.

The wheat I used the single wheat strip you did.

The grass I had to mod. I toned down the green saturation on the texture as I felt it was a bit too fluro. I think your idea of a 3 clump is great, but I needed to scale the whole thing down by about 50%, the clumps needed to be tighter and not so tall. If the clump is too wide then it will cause the model to "spill" over onto other terrain (eg grass near a road will be growing on a road). The MM doesn't know how wide or long the model is only its origin. If you wanted the MM to know how wide / long a model was then I could probably code it to read the directX for each model and then only deploy the model if it "fit". I could also probably then have the MM draw the little red "structure" pixels under mountable structures. The downside would be much longer build times as well as being only able to do that for directX models which were exported in ascII. Something all the modders are doing now, but something that none of the original game models are. So it would only work for the newer stuff. It would also be a huge programing exercise for something which you can easily fix in post map generation in the SE, so I don't know if it is worth it in the end.

I think that all your tri-grasses/bruhes could do with a scale back by about 50%, which is easy to do in the export.

Otherwise GREAT work Ben, your mods have made the MM and PCK even better [&o]