Unit Requests Filled!

EuroBoss · Post by **EuroBoss** » Wed Aug 24, 2011 12:00 pm

Very very nice work here thank you for sharing with the community
Also is it possible to do a dad's army unit with maybe a pitch fork or shotgun lol.

zombiehunter1977 · Post by **zombiehunter1977** » Wed Aug 24, 2011 2:25 pm

rivvendarke wrote:great work as always...but the swastika on the german flag is the other way round

I know, I know... the units are mirrored when I create them. Next unit pack I'll fix it.

rezaf · Post by **rezaf** » Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:40 pm

VPaulus: Thanks for the links, but unfortunately, I don't have Photoshop.
I'm using Paint.NET...
Though I find it most painful to use, I also have Gimp.

zombiehunter: You want me to give away my dirty secret? Well, actually it's quite simple, I've dusted off my 10 year old (well, 7 I think) PC running EAW, and I'm arranging the models there so I can take a screenshot and turn them into models. I'ts actually not quite as easy as it sounds, but basically, that's all there is to it.

So, since I gave that away, maybe you can give something away, too?

I have great trouble skinning stuff to be different.
For example, look at this collage of my current units for the Spanish Nationalists - I'm trying to modify the L3/33 so it doesn't stick out so much, but I have little success...

Care to give me some tips?

Thanks in advance.
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rezaf

rivvendarke · Post by **rivvendarke** » Thu Aug 25, 2011 4:34 am

Wow, they really look great. Cant wait to see the Reps.

Good old EAW, played it for hundreds of hours....

rezaf · Post by **rezaf** » Thu Aug 25, 2011 4:44 pm

Here you go, a teaser for the Republicans.

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rezaf

rivvendarke · Post by **rivvendarke** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 8:20 am

@rezaf
wow, really great looking!!

@zombiehunter
when you still like making planes maybe you could make the He-112 and the Yugoslavian Rogozarski IK-3 ?? Would be fine for my campaign. thx

zombiehunter1977 · Post by **zombiehunter1977** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 4:49 pm

rivvendarke wrote: @zombiehunter
when you still like making planes maybe you could make the He-112 and the Yugoslavian Rogozarski IK-3 ?? Would be fine for my campaign. thx

Certainly... though most any skin will do... most of these planes are damned near identical except for changes to wing chord and engine upgrades
http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/3895/he112b.png
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/6295/he112.png
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/5420/hunghe112.png
http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/3562/hunghe112b.png
http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/2602/ik3t.png
http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/9646/ik3a.png

rivvendarke · Post by **rivvendarke** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 4:59 pm

GREAT! Thank you very much!

rezaf · Post by **rezaf** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 6:03 pm

zombiehunter, no reskinning tips to share?

Hope you're not mad at me for polluting your thread with my amateurish attempts at unit making.
I guess I'll move to a thread of my own soonish (and not post anything else in your thread), ok?

Oh, and to return a favor ... I think some of your He112's have the perspective a little off...

They're all great, though.
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rezaf

zombiehunter1977 · Post by **zombiehunter1977** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 8:37 pm

rezaf wrote:zombiehunter, no reskinning tips to share?
Hope you're not mad at me for polluting your thread with my amateurish attempts at unit making.
I guess I'll move to a thread of my own soonish (and not post anything else in your thread), ok?

Oh, and to return a favor ... I think some of your He112's have the perspective a little off...
They're all great, though.
_____
rezaf

What tips can I give other than what I've told you? I find stuff with google, and use gimp to turn them into icons. I think you can see from my own creations that I'm no expert at it... hell the reason I make so many is cause half of them I don't like the look of. *LOL* I don't mind you posting here. Hell most of your stuff looks better than mine, and if anything I think we need a custom icon sticky *cough mods cough* where every one can post.

EuroBoss · Post by **EuroBoss** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 9:44 pm

Any chance of v1 flying bomb please?

rezaf · Post by **rezaf** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 10:09 pm

zombiehunter1977 wrote:What tips can I give other than what I've told you?

Well, I was thinking of something along the lines of a mini-tutorial or even just a link to one.
Many of your units you appear to have taken a base unit and used some technics that are probably not too complicated to reskin them. That's exactly what I'm struggling with.
I can select stuff and recolor, like I did with the spanish tanks, but I'm having a very hard time doing any more complicated changes.
Heck, even just getting that Trubia-Naval tank brighter to fit in with the other tanks I found myself inable to pull off.

Yeah, a unit registry might be cool. Maybe I'll compile a thread myself if nobody else bothers.
At least of those willing to share their icons - HBalck seems to intend not to allow the use of his icons in other people's mods...
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rezaf

flakfernrohr · Post by **flakfernrohr** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 1:30 am

I would love to see some different camouflage patterns used on German armor. There were a million variations of about three basic colors including just a plain yellow Tiger I's of Schwere Abtlg 502 used (the unit of Otto Carius).

jaldaen · Post by **jaldaen** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 1:50 am

I'd love to see mortar crews for the various nations, especially the U.S. and Germany.

Btw... you guys are doing a great job with these icons!

Keep up the good work,
Joseph

zombiehunter1977 · Post by **zombiehunter1977** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 4:07 am

rezaf wrote:Well, I was thinking of something along the lines of a mini-tutorial
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rezaf

OK.. not sure how long the explanation for how I make these units will turn out, but I'll spill it...

Step 1, Go to google and open a search for it, in images. For ease of explanation I'll say I want to make (yet another) Me-109 so I google that and then go to the images tab. The goal is to find a picture of an Me-109 that is from an angle comparable to one in the game. Save that picture to your desktop. The best one I found is this pic here

Step 2, open from your Panzer Corps/Graphics/Units folder an Me-109 (Bf whatever, seriously the Germans used both Me-109 and Bf-109 themselves so does it matter?). Generally I copy the unit file onto my desktop so I don't accidentally save over the original but it doesn't matter really how you do it. This will be a simple template to tell you what size the unit you're making should be and it already has an appropriate shadow. Open the desktop copy of the Me-109 with whatever photo-shop program you use. I use GIMP, and open the Me-109 picture from google with GIMP too.

Step 3, use your free select tool to trace around the perimeter of google found 109, I'm going to use the front 109 because it is easiest. Once you have it selected (omitting the wheels because our 109 will be airborne), copy and paste it onto your 109 template, mirror it, rotate the floating selection so that it is level, and then shrink it slightly so it all fits in the transparent space like so.

Step 4, erase all but the noses of the 3 left aircraft and the bottom right one. And cut away all of the other two except the fuselage portion (for sizing your icons.) Note here: the shadows have been left untouched.

Step 5, select your plane, cut and paste it again so that it is floating again, and move it up to the top right trimmed plane. Use the resize tool to shrink it until it is the same size (roughly, it needn't be perfect) as the previous 109. Then place it atop the top right 109 and trim away any of the old fuselage still showing.

Step 6, reselect your plane, copy it, paste it, mirror it, and then place it on the nose of the top left aircraft.

Step 7, select both top aircraft (without the shadows) and copy them onto the bottom most noses. They should line up perfectly or fairly close.

Step 8, copy one of the right two planes, paste it next to the middle right fuselage.

Step 9, Shrink it to appropriate size, and then paste on top of the old tiny one.

Step 10, Select it, copy it, and mirror it and place it where the left one goes. Voila. Done. New unit!

Don't forget to then name it something unique and appropriate so you can find it in the future.
Don't forget to put it in your Panzer Corps/Graphics/Units folder
Don't forget to clone an entry on your efx.pzdat file is you wish to use your icon in game.
and finally,
Don't forget to share with the rest of us, haven't I been good to you after all?

flakfernrohr · Post by **flakfernrohr** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 6:37 am

Thanks a million for the tip and instructions. I am going to give it a try. BTW, here is a great website to find great pictures of almost any airplane from WWII. I have long been a player of IL-2 Sturmovik, Mission 4 Today is a site just for skinning and campaign mods etc. Very active community.

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php? ... ads2&c=143

BTW, how do you get into the efx pzdat files? What do you use to open them? Sorry if this sounds silly to ask, but I really don't know, I'm sort new modding this game.

rezaf · Post by **rezaf** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 7:44 am

Heh, that's almost exactly how I created my units, except that, for the planes, I didn't hunt down images in google but took EAW screenshots.
While it technically doesn't answer my actual questions about how to reskin existing units, it's an EXCELLENT tutorial (and also much more in depth than I expected) that I'm sure will be helpful to many aspiring combat icon creators, huge thumbs up for taking the time creating it - it's very much appreciated zombiehunter.

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rezaf

rezaf · Post by **rezaf** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 7:50 am

flakfernrohr wrote:BTW, how do you get into the efx pzdat files? What do you use to open them? Sorry if this sounds silly to ask, but I really don't know, I'm sort new modding this game.

For some reason, while I can open this file in excel, saving it again messes up the file structure by adding quotes all over the place - so I just use the windows Editor.
Hunt down a line covering a unit that looks similar to your newly created unit, copy it, append it to the end of the file, correct filenames etc., and you're good to go.
If your unit wasn't that similar after all or you changed perspective for whatever reason, you might have to finetune the coordinates where the muzzle flashes show up, but that's not strictly necessary.

mgarnett's excellent equipment editor also supports editing this file, if you don't want to mess around with the files yourself.
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rezaf

VPaulus · Post by **VPaulus** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 8:08 am

I too am using mgarnett's editor.
Wonderful tool.

zombiehunter1977 · Post by **zombiehunter1977** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 4:20 pm

flakfernrohr wrote:BTW, how do you get into the efx.pzdat files? What do you use to open them?

I use notepad, seriously..... yes its a little cumbersome but its I find its easier to edit the efx.pzdat with it than the unit editor. That being said if you're editing the equipment file, the editor is WAY superior.

Incidentally I also use notepad to edit the .htm files, and the campaign.pzdat as well. The campaign.pzdat only really works though because I have heavily modified it so all the columns line up. To be honest it always worked.. it was just so messy it was hard to figure out what was happening.