Some thoughts about model design

[Tonci87 163]

Well I watched some Videos of the balkan wars on youtube today and I somehow started to compare the videos with Arma in my Mind. Something was different. Then I found out what it is. Every Unit in Arma is kind of to clean.

The Uniforms of the Soldiers in Arma always look as if they were just coming out of the factory, its the same witch vehicles. If you for example watch a video on an infrantry squad in the balkan wars nobody in this squad will have the same uniform, there will always be variations. One Guy will have a hat, another one a helmet and so on. You covered this pretty well with the Chedaki in Arma2. But still their Uniforms look to clean, not as if they are really at war.

Another Point are the vehicles. They all (exept one HUMVEE in Arma2) look like they were coming right out of the factory. That is not a good Thing. I for example would like to see some camotents and stuff like that on Tanks and so on (I remember something like that beeing on one of the Opfor Tanks in OFP).

I hope you understand what I mean and think about it for your next models.

If you don´t understand what I mean then watch some Videos on Youtube and compare them to Arma.

Thanks

[Curry 10]

Don't want to sound rude but eastern bloc soldiers look pretty much like bums. Scruffy and dirty uniforms, dirty faces and sometimes drunk... LOL

Especially if you watch videos from the chechen war, Dakistan etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC1UqmckASs&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zr1K4SylBc&feature=related

Western soldiers look much cleaner. I would say make the eastern armies dirtier and leave the western soldiers as they are now. LOL

You can also see the difference when you look in western and eastern tanks, APCs and other armored vehicles. Western vehicles are way cleaner than eastern vehicles.

Edited October 15, 2010 by Curry

[CarlGustaffa 4]

I agree everything look a bit too clinical. However I think most prefer a clean base to work with for modding. It's a lot easier to add dirt to clean existing textures than to change the theme of dirty textures, when doing a reskin.

For for that, I'd either leave the dirtying up part to the modders, or have some kind or additional dirt layer on top. Variable dirt due dust or mud? I would have loved the same dirt concept on windshield, with working wipers and wiper engine. Pay & spray anyone? :p

Maybe put that old cleancar animation to some good use :)

[Tonci87 163]

@Curry, I think its a little bit different than you tell it. Every Army in this World, with a sense for discipline will make sure that their vehicels and uniforms are clean. I would even say especially the eastern block ones, because discipline was and still is very important there. But if you are in a real war, under continuous fire and in combat, there are other Thing that are way more important then to clean up. For example look at some Videos that show the serb army driving towards Vukovar at the start of the balkan war, look at other Videos that show them a year later or so, you will se a significant change.

@ Carl Gustaffa Would this really be a Problem for Modders?

What about Camo Stuff on Tanks and APCs?

[Tonci87 163]

So only two People have an Opinion on this? Iwould have thought that more People would be interested in this discussion....

[NoRailgunner 0]

Vehicles do show some used style

Maybe someday we will see somekind of dynamic "used look" depending on terrain, weather and combat action and the need to clean all this dirty stuff. ;)

[pushkin22 10]

Chechen war was a special story, Chechnya is a really dirty area especially in the springtime, they have no good roads and the war was 15 years ago. At this times russian army had almost no money, it was uncoordinated, inexperienced soldiers etc., they had other worries than staying clean.

You should see more videos from modern "battles", for example from South Ossetia, in this short war the russian army looks as it should be, pretty clean and normally.

Edited October 18, 2010 by pushkin22

[STALKERGB 6]

I agree that often stuff can look a bit "clean" but it can be really quite a lot of effort to make everthing look worn or used etc. If we take the US infantry in OA for example. All the troops use a single texture (with the odd exception IIRC) called tex1. So if you made that look worn and dirty then all the troops would have the mud/dust in the same place which could look a little strange unless you went about making individual textures for each unit. Carl G's idea of an extra layer can be done, infact I believe it was used on some units in ARMA2 (Force Recon maybe).

[andersson 285]

A balance is needed as some cutscenes, missions and scenarios is better with clean units. Too obvious dirt might not fit all islands/maps either. I think its good as is due to this, its an ok balance.

[Tonci87 163]

And what do you think of Camo Tents on tanks for example? If I remember correctly the T 80 in OFP had something like this, at least it looked like that

[DaveP 66]

With tanks it would be the relatively simple proccess of modelling one that would drape over then using attachTo to, well, attach it

[katipo66 94]

How about something like dynamic worn/dirt textures that would be applied similar to how wound textures are applied, except it would be applied on units over time (game time)?

But then i guess in this game units dont last very long....

[pathetic_berserker 4]

As already pointed out it could end up being a huge amount of work. But it would be nice. I remember seeing a photo of a serb tank in the later stages of the war with its missing plates and battle scars and thinking it would be cool to see that level of atmosphere in a game.

Off the top of my head I could see it being done as say a 10% damage texture and hidden selections. If you wanted the look to be persistant in a mission you could stop the unit from being fully healed, and the lower armour value would represent the wear and tear.

As for the bags and bits and little customisations, don' know, how far do want to take it, and how much work do you want to do?

[max power 21]

I don't really see any netting on here. What do you mean?

OFP T-80 134kb

[b00ce 160]

I think that having a dirt overlay texture would be the best, and easiest route. you could literally have one or two textures, and reference it in the config file for the model.

I know left 4 dead did a similar thing with their cars. They had a car model, then a normal map/ detail texture overlay for each car, then had all sorts of different colors that they could use for all of their different car models by referencing the color texture. Because of this, you can have 40 different cars, with only 42 textures (including normal map) and a single model. (But to be fair, in left 4 dead the glass was a separate model/ texture.) AND the color textures are all cross compatible with other cars/ trucks & SUVs. So for 3 models (a Car, a truck and an SUV), you still only have 46 textures.

2:40-3:30

This can be easily be applied to ArmA, with a random muddy/ worn texture referenced every time a model is loaded. These textures could be universal for each class of unit (Infantry, cars, armor, static, air, etc.). It would be a quick and easy way to add variety without adding any new models, or a billion textures. Let's say you add 5 mud/ wear overlay textures to each class, that's only 25 or so textures being added to the game.

On top of the variety, you can also make it so the clean, non-disheveled, assembly line units show too, with a command line script to simply not apply the overlay.

It's a Win, Win, Win, Win. Variety, dishevelment, only a couple additional MB of space, and the option to go cookie-cutter if need be.

[katipo66 94]

Sounds good, lets do it!

[Tonci87 163]

booce thats an exelent idea, why didn´t BIS think of that in the first place?

[b00ce 160]

booce thats an exelent idea, why didn´t BIS think of that in the first place?

I don't know, but it can't be an engine limitation (Lol squad XML and explosion scorches). I think it's one of those ideas that's so simple people just look over it. :p

In all honesty, I don't know. But I hope BIS reads my idea and considers it. :D

[Tonci87 163]

I hope that to, would be really nice to have a BIS Members Opinnion on this...

[PuFu 4591]

In todays world, grunge textures, graphics, and in general everything related to digital media is highly overrated, although you can find it around every corner.

Back to the subject at hand:

Using additional textures (similar to the wounds for instance - which in all honesty is there to give you a visual reference, but is not really the best graphic representation) would only increase the section count. And as we know it, section count is the main culprit for poor performance (as it is the speed of the HDD).

I think BIS had looked at this possibility, so it is unfair to just say booce was the first one to have a thought about it. The end conclusion is that, most likely it's a feature that is down in the list. Why? Because, as we know it, graphics is something that is not on BIS top 10 positions, and neither is it for their core community members.

I really doubt it is worth using the current engine for random dirt textures, or for progressive dirtiness.

All in all i think the way it is today is mix between having units worn somewhat, and having the same units fresh from barracks. It fits most of the mission scenarios out there.

Now, on the same note, things could changed dramaticly if BIS would be using a algorithmic textures, such as what what Unreal 3 engine is using now.

An example i am getting used to lately is the substance materials (available for max and maya since 2011), which allows multiple maps to be generated from the same texture (displacement, ao, normal etc etc).

I do believe that procedural textures is the way to go for gaming, since it allows the environments (but now only) to be changed dynamically.

Some examples:

Allegorithmic

Demo Movie1

Edited October 19, 2010 by PuFu

[CameronMcDonald 146]

I don't really see any netting on here. What do you mean?

OFP T-80 134kb

Yer. I believe Tonci may be referring to one of the T-55s that was out... pretty sure it was an RHS job... may have been a T-64 even, but yeah, it had a camo net on it.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Procedural textures or materials can cost quite a bit. They are very suitable for stuff that you can't normally do with textures (refractions i.e.) or weak detail textures even when texture AA can remain at a fixed level. Textures only cost memory and time spent on mip blending. Procedural textures can have infinite level of detail, but cost is memory, AA (replaces mip), and calculus grows significantly with the complexity of the procedure.

For a dirt map in texture, you need the texture itself, maybe a bumpmap, and a blending map. As a procedural map, you need the procedure (say perlin noise as a basis), a clamping system to scale it properly, one for small details in that map, another procedure for bump map (maybe even specular map), and yet another one to define where it covers.

It's all a balance of cycle cost vs memory cost, and which degrades performance the most.

You may be right in that the cost can go too high (for both methods) compared to what it delivers (which isn't an important aspect of tactical gaming, only a visual pleasing one). It's also down to what the software supports. I've seen and worked with procedural textures that does Oren-Nayar shading (which you would typically need for dirt) for software that only supports (by default) Lambertian shading (for main surfaces), and blending them on the same surface can be tricky. Software like 3DStudio support shellacs like this with ease. It all depends on the rendering pipeline.

Working with visual shading is still a lot of work - nothing magic about it. And you may need additional specialists to handle the procedures instead of relying on the texture artists alone, unless they are skilled in visual shading programming naturally.

[Tonci87 163]

Well as said I will be happy if BIS thinks about it for their future Models^^

[b00ce 160]

Using additional textures (similar to the wounds for instance - which in all honesty is there to give you a visual reference, but is not really the best graphic representation) would only increase the section count. And as we know it, section count is the main culprit for poor performance (as it is the speed of the HDD).

Well, I guess having one extra section, that 5 or so textures could be applied to wouldn't do too much damage, yes? You don't need 5 extra sections for for 5 textures. Hell, the section for the blood map could be used, then the textures swapped on death. What I'm trying to say is have 5 universal dirt/ wear maps for each class of unit; infantry, cars, armored, air, and static, that could be used interchangeably on one section (an overlay would be preferred, but whatever). The textures would be the same size as the UV map(s) for the regular texture and be random mud/ nicks and scrapes.

Before you go and say; "but some things have UV maps that are split up and tires/ cloth canopies and other stuff that doesn't get scratches", consider the following, the extra section would be all exterior geometry that the texture would apply to. For infantry this is easy, but for vehicles there must be a new section added, from what Pufu says.

I think that it would just be easier (and all around more effective) to use an overlay and have parts referenced in the config for the application of a random overlay texture, which could in theory make things even more diverse simply because there are so many different pieces that all could have one of the five textures applied. (all of the textures are going to be loaded anyway so it doesn't really matter, right? (I could be completely off base with this though.))

I'm not talking about anything terribly fancy here, guys. Just a simple overlay that can be applied to all the models.

And for the record, Valve gave me the idea. ;)

[Curry 10]

Chechen war was a special story, Chechnya is a really dirty area especially in the springtime, they have no good roads and the war was 15 years ago. At this times russian army had almost no money, it was uncoordinated, inexperienced soldiers etc., they had other worries than staying clean.

You should see more videos from modern "battles", for example from South Ossetia, in this short war the russian army looks as it should be, pretty clean and normally.

Hey Pushkin yeah you are right. I read about it now and the Russian suffered in the 90's still from the Afghan war and the Army at this time was pretty much whacked. Watched newer videos and they seem to use Eotechs and stuff like that on their weapons or russian counterparts that just look like this. You can see that they pump money in the army.