Geezer

Shot of revised station. The photos of lorraine ancienne train stations showed the blue in shadow, so I had to guess what the blue looked like in sunlight. Also threw in some French soldiers and a Citroen T23.

Thanks! I'll modify the station tonight.

The "color"? Do you mean the color of the building's plaster? Working from an old B&W photo, I had to guess. What color should it be?

Interesting stuff about each company using the same design? You can see I simplified the train station, but it looks authentic when flying at low level. Also shown is a 1938 Citroen TA and Millet locomotive.

Thanks for that information. It looked like they were standardized designs, but I don't read French so I could not be certain.

My 'Nam chopper buddy wondered how I scaled the buildings, figures, horses, etc. I make all my models in 3dsMax, the industry standard for computer game stuff - the movie Avatar was made with Max. When working in Max, you can toggle a grid on/off at any time, and set the grid for any dimensions you want. I usually work with a one meter x one meter grid - you can see the faint grid in shot below. When building something specific, like an airplane or truck, I can key in the dimensions from data found in references. When making buildings, I use a figure as a kind of yardstick and eyeball the doors to sorta/kinda fit the figure. Obviously, there is a lot of slop to this method but so long as the figure/door relationship looks about right, the buildings will look about right. :o)

Another shot of rural, village, and town stuff. Most art is 256x256 JPEG, with larger objects 512x512 JPEG. It remains to be seen if the game engine can draw all this, but I aim to find out.

Keep adding more stuff - some winter versions for Baffmeister shown below.

Close up of some of the new buildings, figures, and vehicles.

Thanks for the vote of appreciation. I realize you are really busy, but when you finish your present Verdun terrain, would you be interested in adapting gterl's new Vosges map to 1938? It would be "the same...only different" to his present map. EDIT: shot of some of the aircraft that would be employed in the 1938 "what if."

I sent the above shot to a buddy, who liked the train station. Its something I've had laying around for several years, and is sort of a generic station based on a French design used in the colonies and rural areas of France. Bottom two shots are from Tunisia 1943, during the battles around Kasserine Pass.

Shot below of most of the new objects. Primarily, they are rural, village, and town objects, with one big city fragment for evaluation. Only the French figures and vehicles - for 1938 - are shown here.

Progress shot of rural and village objects. I want to make a few more of each, and will then send them to Baffmeister.

Got some more 1938 buildings done. Most of them are only 256x256 artwork, so - hopefully - they won't have a negative impact on frame rates. Buildings with snow covered roofs will be sent to Baffmeister for his SF Bulge map.

Good idea. I've started doing that to my new models, though I'm not gonna revise the old ones. Too much work!

Been working closely with Baffmeister on new or improved ground objects suitable for both SF and FE. Shot below of some rural buildings, plus a test article for an urban block.

Threw together a test big city facade that could be merged with other similar models to make an urban block like shown above. Theoretically, the blocks - given enough time - can be made very large and complex. The big question is can the antique TW game engine handle this much detail. Back when TK was answering questions on the TW website, he once said that - short of ridiculous extremes - poly counts were not a big problem. Instead, it was the graphics load that slowed down the frame rates.

I found a shot that could be used as a starting point for the kind of LARGE urban block that gterl is proposing. Everything would have to be simplified, but it would be possible to approximate the square and surrounding buildings in one model. Can you guys post more shots? Understand they would have to be low level shots that are similar to the one shown below.

Sure, its possible to make urban blocks that large. It would also be possible to design the layout of the block to look more authentic. Better still, a street grid matching the building layout could be painted onto dedicated tile art so everything matches. Would there be any problems placing a model that large on a game map? For example, suppose the geographic location is not entirely flat? Shot below shows what is finished or nearly finished. Baffmeister and I overcame some initial confusion when we discovered that SF objects are full size, while FE objects are 63% of full size. Shown are just habitation objects, not military or industrial objects.

It will take several months of intense effort to produce Baff's models, but they should roll over into SF and FE nicely. Shots below of first test articles in SF2, plus shot of rough un-skinned models yet to be done. Will also make more urban blocks for towns, but probably won't make big city stuff.

These are still WIPs. The vehicle you marked is an unfinished Dodge WC51 weapons carrier, and will be a LOD for use in SF2. There will also be a small range of horse drawn wagons for SF2 and FE2.

The WW2 winter stuff is intended for SF2, while the 1930s summer stuff is intended for FE2. Baffmeister and I have only just begun to experiment so I don't yet know if there is any difference in the production process. I'm guessing there is no difference so the models should be usable in both sims, but I don't know for certain - yet. There's a lot of file-related grunt work in addition to making 3D models and then skinning them. Once the 1930s FE2 objects are complete, I'd be happy to send them to an SF2 guy so he could make releasable SF2 objects.

Thanks. All my stuff is intended to be viewed from very low level, that's why I put more than usual detail into the models and skins. For the 1938 "what if" I hope to include a lot of light flak guns, similar to my WW1 flak pack.

Link below to work by Polish artist Jakub Rozalski. He is a "painter" in the true sense of the word. He does excellent landscapes, populated by war machines and werewolves. Go Figure. But...he's good at it! http://designyoutrust.com/2016/12/bizarre-paintings-of-mecha-robots-attacking-east-european-peasants-of-the-early-20th-century/

Stephen1918 did similar experiments in FE and found that artillery engaged more reliably when an enemy observation balloon was located near/over the targets - that apparently gave a direct line of sight. Dunno if this still works in the latest versions of SF2. If it does, maybe a "special" model of just one tiny poly - that gamers don't see but the game DOES see - could be placed over targets? Below is WIP shot of your new ground objects.