Alpha modding, what help will we get?

[SpaceNavy 16]

I really don't know much at all about Oxygen..

I attempted to tinker with it while watching some tutorial videos by Gnat.

But even with the videos the entire process seems incredibly difficult. Especially with the lack of documentation or information that is severely outdated.

I can't even count the amount of times I've asked for help only to be redirected some extremely old posts dating back to OFP days.

I feel if the modding community is to grow, in-depth tutorials and videos need to be created for us newbies.

We really want to contribute but like InstaGoat has said it is really difficult.

I'd especially like to see more implementation for the free software, Blender.

Based on what the devs have said in this thread, I'm hopeful that we will get the help that we need, but only time will tell.

[johncage 30]

Any chance this process could be one of the first things well documented or made into a Step-by-step... I only say this because I just spent the last 6 months making an ARMA II unit addon in preparation for ARMA III and as a noob it's scary seeing the conversion described as "nothing too difficult" and realizing I don't have a clear understanding of how to transfer memory points, or how i deal with new proxies (when I basically just blind faith use the proxies luckily already in my base character mlod), etc.. I'm really sorry if this conversion process is super simple and I'm just horribly ignorant, it's just that after 6 months of being in the "modder wilderness" barely getting things to work through trial and error and reverse engineering, it would be awesome if it wasn't another 6 months of forum searching and bookmarking just to finally gather all the clues into a solution.

anyways, I'm super excited for ARMA III ... and big big thanks to every ARMA modder out there that took the time to document and post over the years .. you are true modding heroes and I salute you. Without the time you took to post on the internet, make videos, and share working models and configs I would still be dead in the water. And as much as I love DAYZ, ... I wish every search for ARMA modding didn't snag 200 dayz results per one actual helpful "modding" result :)

i suspect it'll be similar to transferring arma content over to arma 2. if i recall, memory points is just a general name for things that control weapon holster and backpack position, etc.

i wonder though, with the improvements in animation, if the rigging weights need to be redistributed. from my experience that has always been the hard part since it involved lots of testing and individual vertex manipulation.

[max power 21]

CWR has announced their withdrawal from the game, for understandable reasons.

The CWR2 devs have announced that they will not be making a CWR3. The individual CWR2 developers themselves have made no statement (that I am aware of) that they are leaving the modding scene.

[Alwarren 2767]

I really don't know much at all about Oxygen..

I attempted to tinker with it while watching some tutorial videos by Gnat.

But even with the videos the entire process seems incredibly difficult. Especially with the lack of documentation or information that is severely outdated.

My serious recommendation is to go with Blender, or one of the big 3D apps, but Blender does everything AND is free. I've streamlined my workflow to a point where I only load the models once into Oxygen to get the normals corrected, I don't need it for anything else.

[CubicVirtuoso 10]

I really hope that current modders, people who really understand the arma engine, help to develop the wiki or write some really great tutorials. It's more important, at this stage, for modders to help other newbie modders than to create new assets. One new developer can help increase the lifespan of arma. The reason games like Half-Life and StarCraft are so popular is because of the modding scene. Half-Life was lucky because the tutorials for Quake, which there were TONS, were directly portable to the Half-Life engine. If the arma community can make sure there is a substantial library of tutorials for Arma 3 this will do wonders for the future of the franchise and for the longevity of the game itself. So again, I can't urge this enough, if you are a modder out there, and understand the concepts and workings of ARMA please, please please, contribute to some wiki, write a tutorial, make a youtube video, the more the better.

[slatts 1978]

I can't even count the amount of times I've asked for help only to be redirected some extremely old posts dating back to OFP days.

That's because there still relevant and show you the basics which havn't changed ;)

[SpaceNavy 16]

My serious recommendation is to go with Blender, or one of the big 3D apps, but Blender does everything AND is free. I've streamlined my workflow to a point where I only load the models once into Oxygen to get the normals corrected, I don't need it for anything else.

If you read my post further you would see that I do use Blender. But even then you still have to import it into Oxygen to set up the LODs.

Thats when I just want to rip my ears off because I have no clue what to do.

[Alwarren 2767]

If you read my post further you would see that I do use Blender. But even then you still have to import it into Oxygen to set up the LODs.

Thats when I just want to rip my ears off because I have no clue what to do.

I overlooked that part.

But no, you don't need to set up the LOD's in O2. The only thing I do in O2 is press F5 once for each LOD to straighten the normals. Leopotam's export script work very well, and I have added a few things to it to get even more work done in Blender.

I'm going to release these changes soon, I'Ve talked to Leopotam and he's okay with me releasing an updated version, so I am going to do that soon.

[instagoat 133]

The CWR2 devs have announced that they will not be making a CWR3. The individual CWR2 developers themselves have made no statement (that I am aware of) that they are leaving the modding scene.

That was what I meant. Sorry, I wasn´t specific enough :(

At any rate, the question remains how and how much the process of bringing content into the game and debugging it in such a fashion that the frustration, work and reward remains with the model, and not with a physically demanding process of porting, so to speak.

With complex addons such as these, asking for a "push one button and the content is in" kind of solution would be way too much to ask, but at least a process that is so reduced in complexity that a beginner can at least grasp the basics of each step at a single glance. Any well designed process, no matter where, should be understandable at a basic level at the first glance, no matter wether it´s airport signs, installing a PC part or understanding the workflow of bringing a model into the game using the specialized tools.

Keeping all these hurdles will not improve the modding community, that much is sure. So I am looking forward to hearing how BI have improved the tools, and if it makes a difference to the modding community when actually using the improved tools.

[SpaceNavy 16]

I overlooked that part.

But no, you don't need to set up the LOD's in O2. The only thing I do in O2 is press F5 once for each LOD to straighten the normals. Leopotam's export script work very well, and I have added a few things to it to get even more work done in Blender.

I'm going to release these changes soon, I'Ve talked to Leopotam and he's okay with me releasing an updated version, so I am going to do that soon.

Oh wow, thats exciting.

Again, I'm not very ArmA mod savvy, but don't you have to set up the "things" that define geometry and what bullets can penetrate and different levels of detail at distances, and what is viewable from different postitions (pilot, cargo, etc) and the many others which I cannot remember?

Hopefully I explained that enough so you know what I'm talking about.. I thought they were called LODs.

[Alwarren 2767]

Oh wow, thats exciting.

Again, I'm not very ArmA mod savvy, but don't you have to set up the "things" that define geometry and what bullets can penetrate and different levels of detail at distances, and what is viewable from different postitions (pilot, cargo, etc) and the many others which I cannot remember?

Hopefully I explained that enough so you know what I'm talking about.. I thought they were called LODs.

Yes, those are the LOD's. Basically, this hasn't changed significantly since Arma, so that stuff is still very relevant. You should definitely check out Gnat's YouTube channel, he has some tutorials that explain these things.

[infernoofdk 1]

Depends on the improvements of the engine.

[slatts 1978]

Depends on the improvements of the engine.

Which is quite a bit, so I'm asking what help will we get to take advantage of them.

[wld427 1705]

I can confirm Arma2 character models WILL work in Arma3. They only need some slight modifications, like renaming of selections, transfering memorypoints, distributing new proxies and copypasting new bare skin hands if present. Nothing too difficult. Arma2 heads will not transfer, as the facial skeleton is completely different.

This is actually the first thing i find positive about Arma3.

[max power 21]

That was what I meant. Sorry, I wasn´t specific enough :(

Well, it wasn't the specificity. I just wanted to make sure that no one thought anyone was leaving the community.

At any rate, the question remains how and how much the process of bringing content into the game and debugging it in such a fashion that the frustration, work and reward remains with the model, and not with a physically demanding process of porting, so to speak.

With complex addons such as these, asking for a "push one button and the content is in" kind of solution would be way too much to ask,

While I think that an improved toolsuite would be helpful, I would be surprised of BI even had something like that for their own pipeline. Usually tools are just good enough to do the job, because when programmers develop tools it causes tool maintenance overhead. Now you have programmers maintaining tools rather than programming the product they produced the tools to support.

[Tonmeister 14]

what help will we get? I actually thought the purpose of the alpha was to help the devs, help them to help you... no doubt

[SpaceNavy 16]

Yes, those are the LOD's. Basically, this hasn't changed significantly since Arma, so that stuff is still very relevant. You should definitely check out Gnat's YouTube channel, he has some tutorials that explain these things.

Will the LODs still be in Czech? :<

[max power 21]

Will the LODs still be in Czech? :<

I think you are probably referring to named selections, and named selections could be anything you defined them to be. People just used Czech names so they could inherit from other classes and/or base their models on BI models. There was nothing forcing you to use Czech.

[Alwarren 2767]

Will the LODs still be in Czech? :<

As Max Power said, you are thinking named selections. LOD's are numbers, there are just a few predefined LOD values that have names assigned to them, and they're in English.

[pushbak 2]

Is there a trick to tracking everyone's progress getting stuff into ARMAIII in terms of where I should be checking.. is it primarily these forums and armaholic? I've been searching around for some wisdom or guidance from some of the modders that are very experienced (and not confused or intimidated by the switch from A2 to A3) as they test things, or start to clarify some of the unknowns, and I'm not really finding anything of substance. I guess it's too crazy to hope that there would be some central place where all the experienced modders hang out and document their findings for us noob modders, but I just thought maybe someone has their "hit list" of links they check for the latest info? Is there anyone with a working player model mlod/,p3d (or whatever a non-binarized player model is called)? And is there already some way of getting some clarity on the names of any new skeleton selections or getting access to the new proxies? Also is the config.cpp essentially the same because everything works the same as A2.. so like: class CfgPatches, class CfgVehicles, etc... but how do we know the names of classes to inherit from? Or it seems that modding for ARMAIII is becoming a bit different in that it's going to be like the A2 system of modding glasses and helmets, so that I should be looking at example configs that are more about that, as opposed to like the config I have now where my A2 units are "baked" with the gear they are displaying. Are new factions within OPFOR/BLUFOR/INDEPENDENT/CIVILIAN going to be possible during the alpha? Sorry if all this seems really ignorant, but I'm just excited about modding for A3 and I was only able to get my A2 units working by the skin of my teeth, and so I'm a bit shaky on how I should be interpreting the new A3 modding landscape. Is it a major paradigm shift in thinking, or is it really just more of the same?

Anyways yeah.. basically are there any experienced addon makers that can either share the sites/links/posts they hit on a daily basis moving forward into ARMA3 modding, or any experienced ARMA modders that might want to shed some light on any new workflow and process? Also If I just need to chill and wait cause there's no sample models or "it's too soon to know most of this stuff" I totally understand. I'm just anxious that somewhere on the internet serious ARMA3 modders are hanging out and getting excited, sharing info, and helping each other out, and I'm just left using the luck of google, searching here, and armaholic hoping to snag some knowledge. Is there an IRC channel that devs/modders hang out in or similar?

[Vespa 1]

A small bit of help: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?148130-Arma3-Characters-Modding-Tutorial

[pushbak 2]

A small bit of help: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?148130-Arma3-Characters-Modding-Tutorial

WOW, more then "small" .. that's a goldmine right there. PERFECT!

thank you sooooooooooooooooooooo much

[r8gato 18]

Sorry for piggybacking off pushBAK's post to ask my question.

Is there going to be tutorials/sample configs for animated props such as Rotating Radar Dishes, Flags Flapping in the wind, etc? Basic Looping Animation in Arma 3?

Pre-Arma 3 Alpha release, I have been browsing the Arma 2 dev forums for how to add this sort of 'life' into my static meshes. I use several engines, and I've never had this much trouble getting something so relatively 'simple' to work in an engine before. I approach Arma as an environment artist with little knowledge for Scripting/Coding. I admit this is my main shortcoming, as Arma seems very engineer heavy compared to the other art pipelines I have experienced.

[rushmonk 10]

Hey, complete newb to modding here, in the tutorial it mentions 3ds max, but specifically the 2010 version, do later ones like the student 2013 work ok for arma 3 mods? or does it have to be 2010 version?

[smokedog3para 365]

as long as oxygen accepts its file system .p3d or.obj .3ds they will work models should stay around 20k faces for bulldozer to work or if your model has more faces you need to proxy it make it into 2 .p3d's to show up when viewing with bulldozer.