Having been sick for a few days I have been working on some new seamless textures for the AUS/PNG map.
From around Ingham to Port Douglas there is a huge sugar cane belt.
Using the Tutorial from AAA for seamless textures I made some myself.
I used GOOGLE EARTH to capture the textures.
A few questions
1) In the tutorial he uses 700 X 700 pixals for the new seamless texture. What is the recommended size for IL2? I have seen 512 X 512 pixals and smaller like on the Darwin map around 245 X 245 pixals.
Saving them as a TGA file at 32 bits a few more questions.
1) Are the new textures (perhaps after resizing-smaller) are ready to be placed in a Tex folder like Tex/summer/land and can they be utilized in the load ini editing as of now?
2) What is a bumpH file (anything to do with tgb?) and is this necessary as I have seen textures with bumpH files and textures without bumpH files in maps .
3) With the current new texture do I have to do any rendering to it in 3DO Light Wave which is what I use.
A MAP question.
In Queensland for example with low level land I would want to have a lot of cane fields In PNG I would not want cane fields on the same level of land but maybe the Burma low country texture
How do I separate these areas from one texture to one country but on the same ground level like low country I think.
Cheers
KIRBY
If you can pull this off, HELL YEAH! I LOVE YOU LONG TIME!
But, I do have two concerns. 1) Australia has changed alot since 1945 (Queensland especially so, the whole state was just about designed for returned servicemen to establish farming plots) and 2) I think that IL2 uses the same few textures "tiled" over the whole landscape, with different tiles respresenting different areas of land (e.g. there is one tile style for farms, another for grassland, another for bocage etc) which mayormay not be a problem. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a map modder.
I'm not Thai but my wife is Northern Thai. he he.
Fabian Fred gave me the map region as a gift so I am starting the process of retexturing the entire map.
I am from Queensland and yes there were sugar cane farms back then mind you not as much as today. They did all the cane cutting by hand. A buggar of a job.
Nothing in IL2 looked anything like cane fields.
Am also thinking about coconut plantations for PNG
CHEERS KIRBY
CHIANG MAI
Hi farang,
Good to see you getting into some modding. I have just started and will help as much as I can although textures is not my specialty (nothing is acutally) - am currently doing my first map, of my home town of Wellington NZ! So, to your questions
1) I understand that there are two recommended sizes: 512x512 px and 1024x1024 px. Both represent 1600x1600m in game, with the 1024x1024 px size rendering the texture in higher resolution. (PM me if you don't understand the next bit) As map_t.tga uses a scale of 200m per pixel that means a 8 x 8 square of pixels in your map_t will represent one whole rendering of a texture.
1) Yes. If you are using the AAA unified Mod installer that directory will be [il2 root]/MODS/Mapmods/Maps/_Tex/[texture location]
2) It is a bump-map file. It applies shading to the texture based on grayscale values to make it look more 3d. For more info ask Wikipedia - the source of all knowledge. .BumpH files are not necessary, but like any little extra, quite nice.
3) No... I would recommend using GIMP. It is the preferred editor of the AAA community.
4) You may also like to know about .tree.tga files for applying patterns of trees to your textures and using Autopop tool or the FMB to populate your textures with objects.
MAP Q) IL2 does not apply textures to your map based on the height of the terrain. It applies them based on the grayscale values contained in the map_t.tga for the map. Each grayscale value in map_t corresponds to a different texture defined in the load.ini of your map. For example a pixel of RGB = 0 on your map_t.tga at location X,Y will apply one 200 x 200m area of the texture assigned to Lowland0 in the map's load.ini at that location. RGB =1 to Lowland1 etc.
CAUTION) I have tried texturing but I gave up because I found applying custom textures to my maps gave IL2 serious performance issues. I don't know why. If you also experience this but find a solution please PM me and tell me.
I hope this helps. Any further questions, please PM me. I know how difficult the learning curve is.
T
Hi Thanks for the good information.
I'm not familiar with Gimp so I'll have to check up on this this coming week end.
I'll post up a couple of photobucket links tonight so everyone can have a look at them.
I think I'll have to have custom textures for Far North Aus and settle for in game textures for PMG
There will probably be a long list of custom textures in the load ini.
I've read your thread on your Wellington Map.
Fabian Fred gave me a flyable map.
Things I have to do are round off the shore lines, have ships on the map I can't do that as yet, and find some height data for the lower left corner of Far North Aus. Fred told me there wasn't any available.
So there is plenty of work to do on it.
The two countries are so diverse in ecology and environment I do want to achaive some form of realism with this map.
CHEERS KIRBY
I live near ingham actually I live an hour south in Townsville. Most of the cane farms are in a narrow belt going up north, so to the west and in the Ingham to port douglas area its mainly forest and bush. In the 40's there would have been more bush and forest then cane farms. Alot of the cane farms now are there because of the huge influx of immigrants after ww2, mostly Italians. Actually its sort of a joke around here that Ingham is inbreed because most people from Ingham have Italian last names.
Anyway what you need is primarly is tropical forest, towards the cost it should be dry shrubary. Also there would have been some cleared land for grazing, these will not look dark greeen but more of a dry colour.
Hi, So basically what your saying is I should have the tropical burma jungle textures for mountain ranges, tablelands, hills around Cairns etc some low areas as well as the main environment
followed by a dry bush land region like the Darwin map perhaps towards the coast. An idea of using a plate of cleared land came from your post then I could place it inadvertantly around the map in certain locations and not as a Lowland 2 ...... file in the load.ini . That would be I think more realistic .
Before moving to Thailand I worked on Orpheus Island as a last job in Australia.
Have passed through Ingham many times.
Cheers Kirby
Chiang Mai
you probably want to concentrate on Aussie for your textures....since PNG was all jungle and you can paint the whole of PNG with the colour for jungle/forest and just clear little bits around the coast and towns
there is a Copra texture at my download site which I made for the Slot team to use...but I think they used somebody elses
Just playing around with textures, learning about the load ini structure and also looking at different water in the load ini.
I've asked Mr. Lowe if I could use some of his textures from the Darwin map no problems on that issue from Mr. Lowe.
Starting to think I may keep the textures of Aus and Png the same but centre on different wood files for lower environment regions such as bush.scrub Aus coast , tropical forest lower areas of PNG etc.
I remember seeing at M4T some one created a very large tropical forest plate. Could possibly use that and generate a couple of different forest plates to suit the different types of forests.
The structure of the load ini is very interesting. I've had Aus and PNG all Burma jungle, I played around with my toying around textures and looking at water as well so far.
Sorry I don't like Gimp but downloaded Photoshop 10 last night.
HUGE LEARNING CURVE!!
Hmm,if you mean the .tree.tga file,it's not using another slot in the load.ini file.
I know *.tree.tga file don't use slots in load.ini. They're associated files.
But i know my post is difficult to understand, my english is bad. :mrgreen:
What i mean is:
to avoid textures repetitions (in large areas of fields), i sometimes mix 2 different fields textures (They are not really different, see picture in my previous post: just changed some colors etc.) that have identical *.tree.tga.
Example:
lowland0= 43_0_fields.tga
lowland1= 43_0_fields_2.tga
Those 2 textures are mixed on the same area on map_t to make a sort of patchwork (so 2 slots instead of 1).
They use the same *.tree.tga (of course with different name: 43_0_fields.tga > 43_0_fields.tree.tga 43_0_fields_2.tga > 43_0_fields_2.tree.tga).
This avoid to have trees that don't match with textures if you mix 2 fields textures to "break" repetitions. That's all. It's not really usefull for small areas in my opinion.
Don't know if it's clear (i hope).
Well,
The opinions and help are of great great value, May Bug , Gringo and map provider Fred.
I understand about mixing two or three textures on one land level. Midlands 3 = ------.tga ; ------.tga.
Today I worked on some textures from the Darwin map via Mr. Lowe's permission.
Those fields were an idea and a trial run and wanting opinions from the experienced etc.
Will post some screen shots of what I did tonight in the morning.
The map now definitely looks more like the Darwin map.
Keen to know about the following how to's
1) Rounding off the square and rectangular coast lines etc.
2) More about installing trees especially a tropical forest (make my own?) and maybe bush/scrub (Dawin map)
3) Having ships work properly on the water
4) Coast line foam etc
Will post pics in the morning
CHEERS
KIRBY
CHIANG MAI
![[Image: fieldsexyl6.th.jpg]](http://img515.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fieldsexyl6.jpg)