:har::haha::yeah:

Tested it, installed mid patrol and it works like charm. Managed to see 2 ships so far: modded Liberty with checkered water line, and unmodded 4k tons type A freighter.

The only thing I don't like about your test mod is that it changes/adds some of my Recognition manual pages (to real-like looking photos). However the Liberty page was not changed (maybe a second one was added that I missed), which puzzled me a bit (thought you would alter only those pages that apply to modded ships).

Good job.

No Winter-skin showing up mid patrol. Will try back at base....

http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/4...0908151500.jpg

Only did 2 of the 4 Rec Man pages, so thats fine. Only left them in to see if the original are prefered. :up:
Will not have the REC MAN comdined with the ship reskin mod at release.
Will keep them seperate so only whats wanted need be downloaded. :)

Darn, I was afraid they wouldn't show. Unlike the Hull and deck skins they are not referenced in the GR2 files.
I wonder how the game is calling them :06:.
That white looks a bit to bright at night, may need to adjust that. Only looked at them in mission during the daytime :).

Icicles only seem to appear on the C-1B Meduim Type merchants during the Winter months. Other ships only have the winter hull skins. As it stands, the Liberty Cargo is the most common vessel you encounter in the Campaign and they never had icicles.

Woah there! I enhanced that screenshot with Photoshop. It does not acurately reflect the colours in the game. As far as I am concerned they are fantastic :up:

By-the-way, The same texture appears for every ship of that type in the Column. As you see in the screenshot above, each Liberty Cargo in this particular Column, has the white Superstructure with the Tri-Colour Hull. In reality I think they'd be completely random.

This image shows two files for Merchants side by side. The Folder for the C1-B (on the right) has 18 entries, the other only 17. I'm guessing the missing file is the icicles? :hmmm:

IMAGE REMOVED

Deductive reasoning
 

The missing file appears to be:

NKMCS_C1B_AO03.dds :DL

That is one of the Shadow masks I was refering to earlier, the type that gives the camo effect.

Good to know that the colours are ok, thought I may have made it to reflective. No way of yet to make skins random, the sh3/4 method no longer appears to work :wah:. Looks like the devs redone how shins are used from the old way using dat files to the new type gr2.
So for now its one skin per ship type, but still better than one skin between 4 ship types. For now untill workarounds can be found. ;)

Any news reaper?

Ok, started to rethink this one in order to get the random skins working.

I have a solution but it will a lot more work to skin the models.
The current method of editing the Hull texture works be tiling the models like wallpaper so only basic texturing can be applied.

The stock method of re skinning is to place a shadow map offer the texture to create a darker colour over the original - ok for camo effect etc.

So I tried an experiment and it works:
By converting the Hull texture to an overall white texture (I did a light Grey for the test), it will allow the Shadow mask to retain its full colour.
Now the shadow mask can be repainted how ever we like.
So curved lines, camo etc can be created and will now retain its full colour.
So now white can be created in the texture. Stock hulls prevented this - everything was a mix of the shadow colours with the blues and Grey's etc of the hull.

Now this is a slow process as the Shadow mask has to be worked out what applies to where on the model.
As can be seen in the following pic - its not straight forward - The hull is not on e perfect straight section, but is made up from a few pieces.


http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...ppalachian.jpg


This process will have to be done for each ship type also.

But once done it should be a relatively easy task to create a more textures, allowing multiple skins to be created for each ship type.
Also diff skins can be assigned via the roster for diff countries etc.

May need some help with skins though, any volunteers? :D

EDIT: Just tried this in user made mission. And once more all ships rendered with the same skin.
It didn't pick skins at random even though there were 3 variants. Will have to do some more testing.

[WIP] ShipReskin and Rec Man V3.0
 

http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/f...amerRecMan.jpgreaper7 Please make and release this skins-mod recognition manual
for you mod Enhanced Recognition manual and mod NewUIs_TDC__ERM_Reaper7_NightVision.

Where are the 3D objects for Ice-sickles that hang off the cranes comeing from?
:hmmm:

I'm thinking they are placed much like the crew you see on deck.
Those I know how to find so maybe I'll look closer sooner or later.

they are in the .gr2 files. At least that's where I've seen them while mapping the (GR2) files out.

Yes, the LNX at 1x20x10 kind of stuff is.
That's how you place Deck things like Crew.
But no 3D object for the Ice-sickles to appear on is in the GR2 file.

Any news in merchant ship reskin mod please?

Sorry Joseph, this has come to a dead-end I'm afraid.
Untill someone can figure out how to get random skins working, a reskin mod is of the cards.

As it currently stangd sh3/4 methods no longer work to get random skind working.
This is most likely due to the use of hardcoding in the GR2 files.

While I can replace the original skin in the GR2 file via Hex Editing, further skins created and implemented:

• A. By the use of the cfg file to call the skins or
• B. The use of shadow masks to create the skin

No longer appear randomly on ships of the same class.
What ever skin is first called is applied to all ships of the same class
:damn:.

Pity as I was really looking forward to doing this Mod, and have now lost Interest in SH5 due to all the road blocks it curtails. So much for SH5 Being more modder friendly. :nope:

BAGHHH!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey Reaper.

I Only discoverd this mod now. Dam I was getting excited as I read along.
If there was a breakthrough and random skin generation was possible would you finish the mod off?

Looks great. Amazing job. I love when the ships are brought to life.:salute:

Ego.