Tutorial: creating new vegetation for battlemaps

[Duke John]

The biggest difference is that I use a texture that on its own already resembles a tree. My model is designed in such a way that the texture looks good from almost all sides (flying high looking straight down is the exception).

Most of the textures used by CA which on their own have little to do with trees and are applied to models that have little to do with trees. The result is recognized as being a tree but when put next to a real tree the mistakes become very visible. I guess that the artist thought that vegetation did not matter much and came up with a quick solution.

I might release my trees as a minimod useable by any mod, but that won't happen before NTW2 has its first release.

[Duke John]

A new example of what you can achieve:

[waitcu]

wow!!!! we just thinking of this question , thanks very much !!!!
btw , do you know how to change the trees 3d model on campaign map ??
i don't know where to setting it .:(

[Dol Guldur]

Yes, I would be interested in that too.

Great work, Duke.

[Duke John]

The source models will be released, probably next week.

[Soviet_Warlord]

The source models will be released, probably next week.

You promised us!!

[Duke John]

Hoggy, you should delete all files in the vegetation folder (note NOT the directories). You should then paste the textures folder in models_vegetation into the vegetation as the included images are used ingame. (The models_vegetation folder is only used to generate the vegetation files.) It works every time for me, so you are missing something.

The TGA.DDS files in the sprites and texture folders override the TGA files. This is done by CA since DDS files are better for system performance. That is why you are seeing the old sprites. The bit about deleting the contents of those folders will avoid this happening. Once you have finished your trees you can see the sprites and textures as DDS files to get better performance.

Prometheus, looking at the screenshots I guess they are using the same type of model as used for the highland trees and trees in towns. They have tweaked it a bit and does look better. But I am not bothered with the M2:TW trees at the moment. If they look good, fine. If not, then I'll just edit them.

They are certainly not the same models as from M:TW as they were just 2D sprites with a photo like texture.

[Tux]

wow!!!! we just thinking of this question , thanks very much !!!!
btw , do you know how to change the trees 3d model on campaign map ??
i don't know where to setting it .:(

Well the models used in the camp map are in: data\terrain\aerial_map\tree_models
So you just have to change them and export them after with a new skin path and new mesh. Also i think you can use the descr_climates.txt to create new forest types and the path of the models.

Looks good there DJ, great job on the trees and on the tutorial.

[hoggy]

Hi DJ, I had a go at following your excellent tutorial with some blossom trees. The tutorial works really well and I got them in game. Unfortunately I can’t seem to get RTW use the sprite files. It generated a sprite tga for the tree which looks correct, but as you can see it doesn’t appear to use it in game.

It still uses an old pine sprite file even though default_forest_0 has the blossom tree on it. I’m using 1.5, I turned anti-aliasing off and have it set to 16bit colours. Also curiously, the game still has shadows for the old pine trees.

- One section I’m unclear about is:
Removing old vegetation files
I shouldn't be writing this by now, but back up in case you screw up. Remove the files in:
data\vegetation\
data\vegetation\sprites
data\vegetation\textures
Remove:
data\descr_vegetation.db
When I remove all the contents of these folders the world has disappeared and the units are hovering in space. So to get my result I just deleted individual files that related to my tree. Should I only be deleting certain file types from these folders?

Hope you can help.

[waitcu]

Well the models used in the camp map are in: data\terrain\aerial_map\tree_models
So you just have to change them and export them after with a new skin path and new mesh. Also i think you can use the descr_climates.txt to create new forest types and the path of the models.

thanks Alin , try it asap

[PROMETHEUS]

DJ what u think of the new trees of MTW2 ? do they look like the RTW ones in way of construction or something better? may be they can be improved later with ur technique?