[WIP] Rhodesia Bush War

[RhodesianScout 189]

I should have the mask for the map finished by tonight or some time tomorrow at the latest. I have spent extra time on creating the mask as this section of Rhodesia has a wide variation of textures for grass, granite kopjes and sand and somehow I needed to extract the hundreds of different colors in the satellite map and bring it down to 4 colors that will be used in the map which will be 

 

- granite texture for the hills and kopjes

- dry grass texture

- green grass texture

-soil or sand 

 

The picture below shows my conversion of the satellite map down to basic colors with the pink and purple areas showing where the granite textures need to go, orange shades being sand or soil and the other colors representing different types of grass which are then broken down further into dry grass or green grass.

 

It has taken longer than planned to do the mask but doing it this way will allow me to transfer the details from the satellite image into my map with great detail.

 

The next step of this procedure to finish the mask is to copy the mask into photoshop and combine all the different shades or purple or pink into one color, different shades of orange into one color and different shades or green or brown into two colors for dry or green grass so the end result is 4 colors for granite, soil, dry grass and green grass.

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

A little progress update of what is heading to the Rhodesia Bush Wars map

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

Color pencil view of my model of the Alouette III showing the open cockpit without the front side door attached....still very much work in progress.

 

[Alex150201 894]

Oh shit looks pretty cool dude!

[RhodesianScout 189]

With the satellite image of this area of Rhodesia there are potentially over 500 colors if not more in the picture and I need to bring that down to 4 or 5....... an impossible task with the detailed mask I am creating. In this particular area I am demonstrating the area on the left of the picture is mainly dry grass with few trees or green grass......while the area on the right is a mixture of mainly dry grass with many areas of green grass with trees spread through the area.

 

However today I found a plugin for paint.net which allows me to save a bitmap with as many colors as I want....... 256 colors..... 16 colors or customized at 4 or 5.    However if I choose the 4 or 5 color option the results are not  the detail I need for the map so I bring the map down to 16 colors and then work on each of the 4 or 5 textures one at a time.

 

For example, use the magic wand and the Ctrl key to pick up 5 or 6 bright green areas which in the map will  be the dry grass. With these 5 or 6 areas still selected I then copy them into a 2nd copy of my map which I then change to 2 colors ....black and white and with these areas still selected I then go to a 3rd copy of my map which is painted completely in dark green for green grass and paste the black and white images of the 5 or 6 areas . I then use the paint bucket to repaint these 5 or 6 new areas with the same hex color of bright green....resulting in a  the light green on dark green.

 

However one more step is required to get the detailed mask for dry grass.....bright green....... I need to save this image in 2 colors only which will give the picture as below.

 

The picture looks very busy and you might think there are more than 2 different color greens here....but all the bright green areas for dry grass have a hex value of #49F502 while the darker "Green " grass is #265539

 

The areas of grass on the left and the right of the picture look different with the one on the right having more detail. This is because the left hand area is mostly a dry grass African plain with very few trees while the one on the right has many trees with greener grass below the trees.

 

After completing each different texture...dry grass, granite and sand , each is saved as a layer which at the end will combine to give a complete layer with 4 or 5 textures...... I still need to look at whether I create the water as a texture or not.

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

This cute little animal........  did I say cute and little?

 

Let me try that again

 

This animal when  finished will be heading to the animation factory to get some animate gizmos and thingamajigs added so it will be walking around the map.... still need to script exactly how these animals will react to soldiers nearby.

 

 

[serjames 357]

Blimey - that Poly-Count... are you modelling it yourself ?

 

In which case "wow" but you may need to low poly that a little :-)

[RhodesianScout 189]

Blimey - that Poly-Count... are you modelling it yourself ?

 

In which case "wow" but you may need to low poly that a little :-)

 

I am doing both a high poly and low poly of each animal for the map....... the low poly version being the one you will see in the bush. Have plans for the high poly version if it works.

[RhodesianScout 189]

Fair bit of progress on mask since this morning.......... at this stage I am looking at the map being a summer based map so grass bushes etc will be brown and dry. The light green and dark green will be different looks of dry grass and bushes.

 

More light green areas to be added, then start adding the granite rock kopjes and hills and the sandy soil areas. Also add the smaller waterholes at the end.

 

Roads are added to the mask at the same time as adding sand and dirt...... the edges of the road will be sand and the actual roads will be added on top of this masked sand and dirt at a later stage.

 

[skelig 27]

Can't wait for this, give me a shout if you need configs done

[warden_1 1070]

You modelled the Alouette III and the rhino from scratch?

[RhodesianScout 189]

You modelled the Alouette III and the rhino from scratch?

 

While getting frustrated with some issues with the terrain early on I have being building models from scratch......using a combination of diagrams such as below as a guide... still a way to go with these.

 

 

 

[serjames 357]

wow... one map Modding Army... lol

[warden_1 1070]

Just curious because I think that the poly count is a bit high and wanted to say that details like the grill or small bumps and such you should remove from the main model to put onto a lower poly model and then bake those details into it. Otherwise there are performance issues ;) I had that problem with a pair of NVGs I made which were a horrible 18k tris and so when I redid them it ended up being like 6k tris which is still not the best but far more reasonable. Anyways the progress with the map looks awesome, been wanting a decent jungle style map of this size.

[RhodesianScout 189]

This picture shows where water can be found in the map....... most of the water being in the dam top left of the picture with smaller pockets of water in the almost dry river bed stretching south east.

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

I have spent most of the weekend on this mask and while I am still only 73% of the way through completing the mask there is enough here for me to have an alpha version of the terrain mask to create the terrain in Arma 3 for testing.

 

The mask I created for my first test map back in September , page one of this thread, only took 20 minutes to do but back then I was not creating a detailed map as I am today. I had to work out a procedure on how to create the detailed mask using paint.net and photoshop and apart from a few hundred small areas of grass, sand or granite still to add to the mask it is pretty much done....though the areas are so small it will take at least this week to copy them from the satellite map to the mask. I would say I am only 40% of the way through adding the granite kopjes and boulders to the mask.

 

Below is the alpha version of the terrain mask for my map 

Grass is light green and dark green

Granite is Grey

Water of course is blue

Sand is yellow

 

I have added the roads here as sand as there is sand / dirt on the sides of the road and I will be adding the roads directly on to the sand roads painted in the mask.

 

As you can see with the roads, the terrain is too rugged for roads to exist in large parts of the map so you will need to patrol those areas on foot or take an Alouette III in there.

 

 

Full Mask of Bushwars mask with zoom blur effect applied.

[RhodesianScout 189]

Early this morning I added my map to Arma III to get a first look at how it looked........ 

 

The results were not like my first map some months ago. This time the map is completely flat and completely covered in 1 foot of water.

I must have missed something somewhere with the configs and will check when I get back from work.

 

Until then I leave this picture of one of the kopjes in the map.

 

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

Yesterday I created 4 completely new textures for the map to cover the areas with two types of dry grass, sand or granite rock.

Also created the normal maps for each of the textures and then tested them in the map.

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

There had been a change to the map I had not mentioned before...... previously I had stated that this was based at the Maleme Dam however some weeks ago this was changed to a dam with a lot better scenery for this map.

 

This map is now based at a dam called the Mpopoma Dam... I think it is pronounced M-pope-ma........  I used to travel to this dam first on the western edges of Matopas and then head to Maleme further east.

 

Mpopoma Dam is shown in the picture below and is one place you do not want to swim in as it is home to between 200 and 300 crocodiles.........

 

I also updated my signature to the new map name      Battle of the Mpopoma Dam

 

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

When it comes to navigating in the Rhodesia Bush Wars you will be limited to using tools like a compass and a paper map...... none of the state of the art technology used today such as lasers, GPS devices or drones.

 

Early work on paper map.

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

Operation Cheetah - In development

 

A high value target is in the area and his capture is essential to uncover the location of two individuals whose capture could win the bush war overnight.

 

[john111 76]

If you want to save time,you could wait for the Armscore mod,it has a ton of Aluette helicopters.Just a suggestion.https://www.facebook.com/ARMSCorMod/

Maybe,you wanna`add some of them cars? This looks great!

[RhodesianScout 189]

The picture below shows some of the military vehicles you can expect to see in the Rhodesia Bush Wars. Where this map is based in Rhodesia the base is not permanent and is more a staging area for the firefight expected in the area. You can see the HQ is a camouflaged caravan in the picture below as well as a few army tents....... these tents have already being modeled for the the mod.

 

The Rhodesian forces will have Ferret Scout Cars housing a 7.62mm Browning machine-gun and the GM-powered Eland Armoured Car

 

The terrorists were equipped with  122mm rocket launchers, 75mm recoilless rifles and 82mm mortars as well as TM46 anti-tank mine.

 

Before 1979 the Rhodesian Army had not possessed any tanks and they recieved T-55 tanks from south Africa in October 1979 as a results of reports that terrorists under the command of Robert Mugabe were amassing  T-34 and T-54 tanks in neighboring Mozambique where Mugabe was based.

 

Due to how late in the war these tanks appeared, the T-34, T-54 and Rhodesia's T-55 will not be seen in this first map but will appear in my next map as an alternate timeline. In real life the T-55s were never deployed in the battlefield as the Lancaster House Agreement was signed just 2 months later leading to the end of the war.

 

However the Rhodesians have the Eland Armoured Car which has enough firepower to get the job done against the enemy.

 

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

If you want to save time,you could wait for the Armscore mod,it has a ton of Aluette helicopters.Just a suggestion.https://www.facebook.com/ARMSCorMod/

Maybe,you wanna`add some of them cars? This looks great!

 

Thanks for the tip...... the guy who is developing these looks like he has made a lot of progress on the Alouette in 2013 but have no idea where he is at the moment with it. I will keep on with my Alouettes in the mean time which will give you guys options on more than one model of the helicopter to fly in this mod.

[RhodesianScout 189]

Testing new textures I have created specifically for the map.... testing this afternoon.

Mask image updated last night with some additional detail such as sand areas around the water holes and the lake instead of grass.

Fixed an issue with colors in the mask

Created a new texture for the river bed

Creating default clutter for the map

 

low res sample of new textures