This mod aims to replace or improve textures in game with new high resolution work while retaining the original feeling and color palette of the game. Characters in game will be given much higher variety of uniforms, equipment and decals which will allow for much deeper experience for those who want to revisit the game or play it for the first time after long time. The textures are redone using original ones as base whenever possible (most are still nice and have at least basic realism) to retain original design, but all textures are upscaled to twice (or more) of original resolution, sharpened, and have decals either redrawn, or replaced with as much reverence to realism as possible. In effect the skins are extra realistic, but also don't look out of place - everything is done as to not ruin the original scene background and color palette that has been developed specially for SPR and MoHAA.
Presentation of US Rangers. Although Rangers were intended to be special forces unit, the equipment they used was the same as other units of US infantry. However, they do have one somewhat unique piece of equipment that is the assault vest - a big and rather bulky vest that was supposed to replace the standard haversack for easier equipment carrying. They were rather rare, with mostly only NCOs using them. Since they weren't very successful, they were almost unseen after Normandy operation.
Top row: assault vest skins, left to right: captain, sergeant, private.
Second row: rifleman, BAR gunner, medic.
All Ranger models have Ranger patch on sleeves and Ranger helmets (insignias for Ranger battalion are on back). Medic model is the same as Army medic, but he has proper Ranger patch and Ranger helmet. Just like Army, Rangers have HBT uniform pieces too, but since they were already shown on other image I didn't add them second time. You can just imagine the same skin with Ranger patches ;)
It's worth noting that assault vest skin is left as it was in vanilla, just properly recolored - it was given proper OD#7 coloring with OD#3 edges, and that's it; the vanilla texture is really good.
Those skins looks pretty good! Originally in 2020 (2 years ago) i decided to make a upscaled 4k skins (by the using Topaz AI Gigapixel) however... I've changed my mind, since the ranger (who is wearing a jacket) had bugs with a texture on his shoulder with a battalion badge. Fortunately, I found the best skinpack (as for me) than in some HD conversions. Improved and realistic textures. I can't wait for everything to be ready!
I was also thinking of using the AI resize tools, but since I found that .dds files of most textures have hi-res versions I'm using them as base and so far it's going pretty good.
About the Rangers, you mean the bug with Ranger patch being somewhat deformed on model? In both standard US army and Assault vest model the arms are separate sections which complicates the model somewhat. One solution to reduce deformation of patch texture would be to reduce it's size but so far I decided it's better to make it visible from far, and also since it's a cloth patch the deformations are not that big problem because it's not solid piece IRL anyway. Bigger problem for me so far was the german officer's trenchcoat model (eg. the Panzer battalion commander, two images back) - I had to move the belt texture up because the belt buckle would get stretched during movement animations, and now that looked very awful.
Also, about the AI upscaling I still am planning to try and use it to improve the other textures, like ground, walls, foliage, items etc., the world textures. I liked the HD conversions at first and still of course respect the work that went into creating them, but the problem I have with them is that they often take textures from other games or sources that are simply not optimized for this engine and lighting, or are so different from originals that they stick out in game and from other textures, that they're sometimes supposed to blend into. Another thing, often new textures are too clean - vanilla MoH textures have decals of debris, dirt etc and sometimes modders seem to forget that and replace them with completely clean textures that then make the maps look almost sterile. Then you have things like ruined town in M5L1 that suddenly has a clean granite road among the sea of rubble.
That's why I think the ultimate HD mod for replaying the game would be to stick to vanilla textures - just resize them to HD and adjust them properly if needed, with as little replacements as possible.
Yeah, it's about the Rangers patch. Well, how to say? The patch is on the wrong side of the shoulder, not where it should be. Damn, I could have taken a screenshot for the concept, and now I've scored on this project and deleted it. Finally, at least someone will be able to make a normal HD pack for skins. Speaking of modifications, i personally like the HD mod by [EOI]MoLoCh. (This is my opinion)
Yeah the screenshot would be good, I think the patch is on the proper side? It was worn on left arm, that's how it is on photos