[WhiteCat]

Hi all!

I'm working in this currently, still some tweaking needed and no much time to dedicate to it, but I thought it was worth to show the progress.

Basically this is the result of making a cocktail of textures from mainly from Mixx, but also Redko, Cbal, and tweaking the T map but respecting the size, so it's compatible with previous campaigns (specially PhilK's of course . Ah, and a new texture for Suribachi by me, made from a Mixx base. When finished if everyone is ok I'll publish it, don't take too much credit, the ingredients were so good, I'm only the poor barman.

And, I know, it's quite green even if I was one of the lunar Iwo Jima defenders I feel this is just right. Almost all the pictures are with plain daylight, no smoke or dusk tricks so you can appreciate the color. With dusk, smoke, etc I can assure you is quite dark and frightening, specially with Philk's campaign.



'Let's cheer up those marines!'



New Suribachi



High altitude raids



More high screens



Being pounded



Rocky west coast



East beaches



South with Suribachi



Northern coast

[DK-nme]

Hi
This looks nice, but I think, this is how Iwo Jimo looks today. The US Airforce bombed the "heck" out of the island for almost 2 months, resulting trhat no vegetation was to be seen for miles, when the US marines landed there in '45...


DK-nme

[WhiteCat]

Hi
This looks nice, but I think, this is how Iwo Jimo looks today. The US Airforce bombed the "heck" out of the island for almost 2 months, resulting trhat no vegetation was to be seen for miles, when the US marines landed there in '45...
DK-nme

Thanks, anyway. Yes, I know, if you check Redko's Iwo thread you'll see a post made by me very similar to yours. The thing is, on the other hand there are many photos showing lots of vegetation, if you check that thread you'll see some of them. Maybe I'm not very right but I was just in the mood of doing it this way and if we want to be purists we can always use this map only for pre-invasion missions.

[DK-nme]

Yes of course it can be used as a prior to invasion missions. And by the way, sorry if I somehow was a bit rude - wasn't my intentions. I find Ur work excellent (I really dont like the original color of that map, but of course know, that much of the vegetation was gone)...


DK-nme

[Lejo]

Looks nice WhiteCat. The textures by Mixx from his Murmansk map fit well on Iwo Jima in my opinion and mount Suribaji integrates also good on the ground textures.

About vegetation during the invasion: we have had this discussion before when Redko made his version of this map and I've seen documentaries with original footages and there was a lot more vegetation than expected. Grass, shrubs an palmtrees.

http://allaircraftsimulations.com/forum/...a&start=30

[socorrista22198]

This is spectacular! I like it soo much! keep working thanks!

[agracier]

I was wondering if these were new textures or not. The retex looks very well done and atmospheric ... It's actually a bit of a tribute to mixx that his textures can be put to use in so many different regions and still look like they belong there - after all, Iwo Jima is a long ways from Murmansk ... mixx's textures are some of the most versatile textures around ...

Hope you go to work retexturing other maps as well ...

[WhiteCat]

Thanks Lejo, Socorrista and Agracier!

Mixx textures are amazing, they give good looking to every map you add them.. I don't really know if we can go on re-using them in many maps, but I selected the more 'volcanic' for this map and they fitted quite well.

@ Agracier: This is the first T map I edit though, before I only added textures to existing maps, I've done it manually which gives you flexibility but it's very time consuming, only feasible for small maps I think. I've progressed also on my Palau repainting but I'm still not happy with the jungle. I have to big defects, one I'm too perfectionist and the other I have little time, and those two fit very bad with IL2 mapmaking But maybe I'll give a go to other small maps. Your ones look good, by the way, I'm spanish and those earthy honest textures look very well.

[agracier]

Thanks Lejo, Socorrista and Agracier!

Mixx textures are amazing, they give good looking to every map you add them.. I don't really know if we can go on re-using them in many maps, but I selected the more 'volcanic' for this map and they fitted quite well.

@ Agracier: This is the first T map I edit though, before I only added textures to existing maps, I've done it manually which gives you flexibility but it's very time consuming, only feasible for small maps I think. I've progressed also on my Palau repainting but I'm still not happy with the jungle. I have to big defects, one I'm too perfectionist and the other I have little time, and those two fit very bad with IL2 mapmaking But maybe I'll give a go to other small maps. Your ones look good, by the way, I'm spanish and those earthy honest textures look very well.

Hand editing map_t is a big job and except for a few special instances, I've found that most texture placement can be done with other means, with a combination of normal commands in most graphic editors and with help from a few specialized Il-2 utilities.

I often use map_h to select areas that for instance surround or border river valleys, or are relatively flat areas that would be cultivated ... these can be selected with a 'magic wand' tool set to whatever RGB tolerance works best. Some randomness can also be introduced by adding or subtracting random noise from selected areas. This also works well for placing cultivated fields over large areas of map.

There is also the 'select height' and 'select flat' utilities for Il-2 which can help select specific areas on a map.

Using a combination of these, I've been able to get some very large maps decently textured, and without having to invest huge amounts of time in placing textures appropriately. For instance, I've been able to reduce cultivated fields creeping up on hill/mountain sides - an otherwise unfortunate occurence when using height selection only ...

[MOG_Marty]

i think it looks FANTASTIC! the stock map doesnt have anything on this but the thing that has allways bugged me is mount suribachi doesnt match the surrounding
terrain. well done Whitecat keep up the good work

[redko]

Wow hock: hock: !

Very nice work mate, very intelligent use of existing textures. Good idea to use Mixx textures, and Mount Suribachi looks for real, better painted than my version. Are you using Fabian's Mount here or stock one ?

I agree with DK-nme, this looks more to a modern island. Maybe you could paint from some samples of my textures and put into Mixx ones to put a little less vagetation, just a little. Or you could use some samples of his own texttures, those showing some rocky aspect, and paint it to the others textures to increase the ratio rocks/vagation. This would be an interresting painting exercice.

Anyway go on, waiting for this !


:wink:

Red

[Bombsaway]

I love what you have done to the map. I can see why some would like the 1945 look for some missions but I think your version is a must have just for the beauty of it. I hope you dont change a thing. Great work and cant wait to see the map realeased.

[WhiteCat]

Thanks all, I really appreciate your support guys!

I think I'll tweak a little bit more this map and then release it as 'Iwo Jima 1944', so everybody is happy as we don't have strong evidence to say that Iwo Jima wasn't like this before the U.S. bombing. Besides, it's a very interesting period for dogfights where still there were japanese aircraft to fight back the americans. And if anyone wants to use it for 1945, it's up to you!

@agracier: many thanks for your tips, I have lots to learn yet about IL2 map modding! IMHO though, the key thing is to have very good textures like Mixx ones. You can spread cleverly different textures about the map using different techniques, but the thing that really makes the difference is having top notch textures as Mixx's... (and I think making textures is quite fun, actually) so I think I'm going to try to focus more on create good textures if I can, rather than apply them, I think is the most needed thing now, what do you think? I'm waiting eagerly the work gillb57 is doing with the mediterranean using Viking's textures, for example.

[agracier]

... the key thing is to have very good textures like Mixx ones. You can spread cleverly different textures about the map using different techniques, but the thing that really makes the difference is having top notch textures as Mixx's... (and I think making textures is quite fun, actually) so I think I'm going to try to focus more on create good textures if I can, rather than apply them ...

You bet making textures is fun ... it's lovely to browse in Google Earth and happen upon useful and fascinating landscapes ... and I've also found that having a large collection of textures to choose from is more or less essential since going to look for specific textures on GE when you're making a map is an exercise in futility. You never find a good texture when you need one ... ha ha.

On another note on textures, making them seamless so they fit together nicely, I recently found software that does specifically that and nothing else. And this program works quite well for Il-2 purposes. It's a commercial program, though very cheap, more in the way of shareware. It is very useful and well worth the price. I've been using it for a short while now and the results on maps are very positive - almost no texture edges to be seen when flying ... it is much faster than trying to do it manually and better than the 'seamless texture' command in Paint Shop Pro ...

http://www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/

[Blumax]

That looks really nice with a very realistic feel to it