Merlin's Graphics Mod

[jarnomiedema]

Do you have a before and an after shot of those two and three deckers perhaps? I've been playing as Prussia today and sent my puny little navy out to deal with the Swedes.. But I can't see much difference with the Paradox models.. Perhaps I just didn't pay much attention to their textures, so what is it you changed? The sails are definitely different, but you also changed the cabin I understand? Anything else?

If you're looking for more images, here are few that might be helpful:
- Several Eastindiamen set sail, with the Mauritius in the centre
- The Spanish Flagship explodes during the battle of Gibraltar, April 27th 1607
- A French warship sails into a Dutch port under escort
- Dutch whaling ships
- The capture of the 'Royal Prince' during the raid on Chatham
- The 'Swiftsure', 'Seven Oaks', 'Loyal George' and 'Convertine' are taken back to Holland
- A Dutch Flagship coming to anchor with a States Yacht before a light air
- Model of a 72-gun Ship of the Line
- The 'Resolution' in a gale (great view of the cabin)
- The 'Fairfax', 'Assurance', 'Tiger' and 'Elizabeth'

I particularly liked this one:
- The keelhawling of Admiral Van Nes' surgeon (has several good cabin views)

Great job on the British uniform by the way.. It looks incredibly realistic!

Anyway, I hope these links might be of some use to your project.. I for one will be keeping an eye out for the next release!

[merlin2199]

LOL, you got all the changes backwards jarno I worked just the hulls on the earlier previews. Here's a side by side of before and after:



On the left is the stock Paradox two decker, on the right is my edited version. The only difference between the two and three deckers in the stock skins is the additional row of guns on the lower deck for the three decker. Aside from that, they were exactly the same.

And now, for the finished 2 decker:


I am almost satisfied with the 3 decker, still a few kinks to work out, but this is better than the last:

[Ayeshteni]

hmm, I seem to be posting this smiley a lot.

So I shall say something a little more substantial. VERY nice work, as ever I look forward to your updates, and fantastic work they are indeed.

Ayeshteni

[merlin2199]

IMAGES REMOVED TO SPEED UP LOADING

Still a work in progress. Also redid all levels of frigates. Dreading tackling the war galleon, don't even know where to start...

Some feedback, do you prefer the rigging on the three decker or the galleon? Trying to figure out a way to use alpha channel to get rid of the solid spaces within the rigging. If I can get it to work then I'll make the rigging a deep dark brown.

[merlin2199]

Well, given the lack of responce to the preview above I realised that more work needs to be done to get this ship up to snuff. The problem lays in my attempt to use the original files and edit them to have more color. However when you look at this:



There is really not much to work with. So, I went searching for more source images (the good folks at PotB have great resource links) and dediced to make a totally new skin from scratch. It look slike this:



It is still not finished, the stern is yet to be done. However, how's this for a tease:

[cool-toxic]

Looking good.

[gigau]

Keep on the good work... it's looking terrific

[tretii_sleva]

Looks good, but personally, I am more of the land units person.

[Modestus]

Well, given the lack of responce to the preview above I realised that more work needs to be done to get this ship up to snuff. The problem lays in my attempt to use the original files and edit them to have more color. However when you look at this:



There is really not much to work with. So, I went searching for more source images (the good folks at PotB have great resource links) and dediced to make a totally new skin from scratch. It look slike this:



It is still not finished, the stern is yet to be done. However, how's this for a tease:

That looks excellant much better then working off the originals. I wonder you should be able to copy a complete stern from some source and paste and transform it onto the dds, might give you a good base to work from.

[merlin2199]

I wonder you should be able to copy a complete stern from some source and paste and transform it onto the dds, might give you a good base to work from.

That's how I first approached doing these, but once you scale the source image down what is left is barely more than a blob. So I've been using ship plans and actually drawing up something that will fit within the ship's outline and is close to a historical model. It was actually faster and easier to do than editing the originals

[gigau]

When do we get these ships for downloading ? I'd like to play with them

[merlin2199]

Patiance young grasshopper

Started working on the War Galleon. This is styled after the early to mid 17th century heavy warships along the lines of the Sovereing of the Seas and the Vasa. As always, still a work in progress. Not 100% happy with the guilded ornaments around the cabin windows but you can get an idea where it is headed



I am going to do the two and three deckers from scratch also. The results are far an away better this way.

[gigau]

*jumps around with crazy eyes*
i want it... i want it... i want it......pleeeeeeeeease

[Modestus]

Well Merlin that looks lovely your only problem is with the rigging I suspect you cannot remove the solid black sections, as a work around for your problem I took some of the colours from the decking and used them randomly,very rough effort on my part but it does fool the eye, your still left with the black on the backside that might be shading so your stuck I think with that.

A bit rough but you get the idea.

http://img81.imageshack.us/my.php?im...1441998jj0.jpg

[merlin2199]

Well Merlin that looks lovely your only problem is with the rigging I suspect you cannot remove the solid black sections, as a work around for your problem I took some of the colours from the decking and used them randomly,very rough effort on my part but it does fool the eye, your still left with the black on the backside that might be shading so your stuck I think with that.

A bit rough but you get the idea.

http://img81.imageshack.us/my.php?im...1441998jj0.jpg

Certainly something worth giving a try. It appears that in the unit dds files the alpha channel is the opposite of the shield alpha. Meaning, what shows in the alpha channel as white is transparent, where as in the shield I did it was the other way around. Just a litle epiphany I'll test it when I get home today.

[Picpocdelta]

This graphic mod look great !

Here is a contribution, The historical flag of Granada muslim kingdom.



I take it from here.

http://www.armada.mde.es/esp/Ciencia...p?SecAct=07602

[merlin2199]

Thank you for the imput Pipcodelta, great resource for Spanish research. Here's Granada's flag:



It took me three days but she is finally finished:





And just so you see what it took to make her look that good, here's a side by side before and after:



Gonna try and start work on the two decker.

[Modestus]

Definitely going in to my navy, looks lovely.

[Modestus]

Right I think I understand know what you must do, first edit your mod file with

replace = “interface”

In your mymod folder place a copy of the whole EU3\interface folder seems to be all of this folder otherwise the game will crash.

Then edit the file in this case for Merlins large frame so you open core.gfx with notepad and change the following lines to point back to your new interface following Cagliostro example in my case in would be

maskedShieldType = {
name = "GFX_largeshield"
textureFile1 = "mod\\ModestusMap1.1\\gfx\\interface\\largeshield_ frame.tga"
textureFile2 = "mod\\ModestusMap1.1\\gfx\\interface\\largeshield_ mask.tga"
effectFile = "gfx\\FX\\maskedflag.fx"

Now your mod will look there for your new interface graphic.

I have to revise the above after looking at jarnomiedema new siege graphics it seems you should have extend = “interface” and not replace = “interface” in your mod file as then you only have to put the edited interface file in the correct folder in this case only the core.gfx.

[merlin2199]

Ah! I see what you mean. Just have to edit the core.gfx file to reference the ones in the mod folder and presto. Thank you Modestus, until now it was rather confusing

The two decker is gonna be a thing of beuty! By the time I'm done with it I'll stop naval research right after it becomes avaible so it will remain throughout the game If I get that one and the three decker done I'll release a new version probably tomorrow. Still in the to do list are the Caravel and the Carrack, though less higher priority. I want to give the frigates a go also.