Arma3 Characters Modding Tutorial

[contrails 10]

Ah, you're right - overlooked that there is an import function for the txt.

[Vespa 1]

like to get a animal model.cfg for fish

I try to get it for you once approved

[dragula 12]

thank you very much for looking in to this and your time. mate, love the ocean part, my little girl

6 love to watch and show different fish wanted see different fish, and where the shark, funny she said if you hear music there shark. lol

Edited March 9, 2013 by dragula

[cross888 10]

Yes thank you very much our mod teams already made some plate carriers and UKF Helmets EG Para Helmets, and MK6A , Mk7 helmets.

This will definitely speed up our work thank you very much.

[da12thMonkey 1943]

Binkowski mentioned that an updated 'bysta.p3d' head model was not included in the A3_Character_Examples_1.1.zip archive for use on the proxy position in A3_character_example.p3d, although the non-O2 versions of the model (.FBX and .max) do include a full polygon mesh of the head.

The bysta.p3d model provided a useful scale reference for creating new glasses, goggles, helmets and other headgear items in O2 for Arma 2, so I felt it was important that there be some sort of scaling reference for creating these items in O2 for use in Arma 3 as well.

As such, I've converted the head model from the .fbx example character back into .p3d format for this purpose, until an officially released .p3d version of the head is made available.

Download A3_Head_mesh.zip

Because of the way the model was sourced it is very "bare bones", and doesn't include any of the selection names, weights or textures that were featured with the Arma 2 sample head (and may or may not have been in the original .fbx format), however the UV mapping remains intact. In this state the model doesn't represent a proper example model for creating Arma 3 heads, and should only really be used as a scaling reference and for other non-functioning purposes in O2.

There may be 'problems' with it that wouldn't be present in a copy of the Arma 3 head model as released officially by BIS, so don't treat it as an official sample model even though it is derived from an official materials (and is subsequently subject to BIS' Arma 3 Modding License).

I hope it proves useful in the interim though. :)

[troots 10]

Been trying all day, still no go - is there any fix for paa textures ignoring red channel in game? Every texture I have is fine in texviewer, but in game it simply ignores that red channel, resulting in all this stuff being green/blue

[Vespa 1]

did you do anything with .rvmat? Is your texture named "something_co.tga"?

[AlexVestin 24]

I've been playing around with the "passThrough" value for the Vests alot but it doesn't seem to change anything...

It takes the same amount of shots as without a vest to kill someone. I've tried with "passThrough" set to both 0 and 1.

might be connected to something else or bugged, I plan to explore this myself - I too get the feeling vests offer too little protection atm.

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/CfgVehicles_Config_Reference#passThrough

Not sure if it's helpful..

[Vespa 1]

additional/general Arma modding info posted:

OFPEC (Operation Flashpoint Editing Center) tutorial collection

Configuration of Arma1 soldier

Armedassault.info tutorial collection

Texturing and materials in Arma

(thx Leaulux

[antoineflemming 14]

hiddenSelections also work for OPFOR infantry, right?

[Vespa 1]

they should work on uniform and vests, selections name is "camo1" and "camo2". Helmets not prepared yet, will fix asap

[troots 10]

did you do anything with .rvmat? Is your texture named "something_co.tga"?

this is my rvmat

ambient[]={1,1,1,1};
diffuse[]={1,1,1,1};
forcedDiffuse[]={0,0,0,0};
emmisive[]={0,0,0,1};
specular[]={0,0,0,1};
specularPower=0;
PixelShaderID="Detail";
VertexShaderID="Basic";
class Stage1
{
texture="something\something_DT.paa";
uvSource="tex";
class uvTransform
{
	aside[]={1,0,0};
	up[]={0,1,0};
	dir[]={0,0,1};
	pos[]={0,0,0};
};
};

my texture is named something_DT.paa

it might be something with it's type, texview says that it's ARGB1555, while every other texture in game is DXT1/DXT5. How can I change this? And is there a way to preserve alpha transparency when changing to DXT, if it's even possible?

[Vespa 1]

yeah, you have it wrong. If this is color texture, then it has to be called something_CO.tga, and it has to be applied directly onto the actual model, not in material.

Look at Mondalb's example characters http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?148650-Old-stlye-US-Army-BDU and use his sources as base

[troots 10]

Hey, this actually worked, thanks Vespa. Can't believe I've spent so much time figuring it out

[pushbak 2]

Can someone explain the texture file that ends as "_ti_ca" ... I understand _co, _nohq, _smdi, and _as, but for some reason I've never seen a .paa ending in "_ti_ca" before ...

or maybe for us noobs could we get an sample unbinarized ARMA3 rvmat that is using a "_ti_ca" file as one of its stage configs (assuming its one of the stage configs) ?

thanks in advance.

[Vespa 1]

this is thermal imaging texture. For a character it looks like plain red, with alpha channel that indicates hot areas. White is hot, black cold.

I will include it into tutorial covering textures, just W8

rvmat stage:

class StageTI
{
texture="A3\Characters_F\BLUFOR\Data\armor1_ti_ca.tga";
};

[PuFu 4600]

ti = thermal imaging

[instagoat 133]

We need a step by step tutorial for new models and for reskins, from one end to the other.

I can´t make heads or tails of the reskinning and making a new Unit pack alone. I tried reading everything I could get my hands on, tutorials here, all articles I could find on the biki, I can´t even tell what step is to come first, or how you config a Unit, or how you even understand what is supposed to go in there, and how...

Mind, I am stupid McGoof when it comes to code of any kind, it is letters and numbers without connection and logic to me... but I still want to figure this out, somehow. Isn´t there a way to structure this to make it more simple, without these thousands of steps that seem barely connected to a layperson?

---------- Post added at 09:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:35 PM ----------

We need a step by step tutorial for new models and for reskins, from one end to the other.

I can´t make heads or tails of the reskinning and making a new Unit pack alone. I tried reading everything I could get my hands on, tutorials here, all articles I could find on the biki, I can´t even tell what step is to come first, or how you config a Unit, or how you even understand what is supposed to go in there, and how...

Mind, I am stupid McGoof when it comes to code of any kind, it is letters and numbers without connection and logic to me... but I still want to figure this out, somehow. Isn´t there a way to structure this to make it more simple, without these thousands of steps that seem barely connected to a layperson?

[scarecrow398 43]

Seeing i appear to be getting a message every day or so asking for help to create retextures of the BI models i figure i would write this up to send to them, though this just seemed like the best place to post so everyone could see it.

For this i will only cover PBO to Photoshop, the rest is upto you, i won’t be covering Configuring as i only know the bare basics (and Stillman already covered that a page or two back) Nor will i cover techniques as they’re different from person to person and most people find my technique to be a little tedious...

And for size considerations, i’ll break it into spoilers:

Preperation

First of all what you will need will be BI’s tool kit for reading .PAA files (BI’s proprietary format for texture files)

Mikero’s Eliteness (Version 2.95) & the Depbo.dll (Version 4.04) found here for DePboing Arma’s files and;

Photoshop or GIMP, for this i’ll be using Photoshop CS6 (Yes, i did buy it :P) but pretty much every version of Photoshop back to CS2 or even further back should be capable, as is GIMP, a Free alternative.

as should pretty much any Raster Graphic editor that supports layers, transparency and selections or paths, you don’t have to worry so much about getting the exact version or program used by others.

though Photoshop/Gimp’s layer styles helps

Extraction:

So, first off is to extract the PBO of choice, in the case of characters (referred to as units) we want the Characters_F.pbo, now we need access to this, to do that we’re going to need to open Eliteness, then navigate using the side menu to the Arma ‘addons’ folder, highligting the folder should show the PBO’s within

Then you need to extract said PBO by right clicking or double clicking the PBO:

Navigation:

So, Now that it’s extracted we need to navigate to the location of the extracted PBO, by default eliteness extracts it to the same location of the PBO:

Now dig through those folders until you end up here:

Now from here you can take 3 main paths (I assume this will probably become 4 in the future with independent), Opfor, blufor and Civilian, now i’m going to go with the one with i’m most i’m familiar with, there may be small changes but overall it should be the same files.

So lets go with BluFor, the first thing you will see is a list of Models (.P3D’s) and a Data Folder, the default Layout is for the textures to be in this Data folder:

As you can see i’ve focused on 3 key files but a basic look at the others is that there’s a .RVMAT which does a few things, primarily lighting based stuff which you shouldn’t need to worry about yet and a couple of .PAA’s all suffixed differently, being:

_Co - The colour map showing the colours that will be applied, this is the key file you’re looking for.

_Nohq - A Normal or ‘bump’ map, a funky coloured map that tells the game how light is supposed to hit the object, used to fake small details like bumps and scratches, in the blufors case, things like wrinkles, belt loops and velcro.

_Ti_ca - A red/grey alpha map that tells the game how an object is supposed to appear on thermals (From memory, the brighter the ‘red’ the stronger it will appear on Thermal)

_injury - Pretty self explaiatory, a file full of blood and such that is applied when a character is show.

_smdi - a Specular Map which tells the game how shiny a surface is supposed to be.

Conversion of texture file:

What we’re looking for at the moment is the Colour map or _co as highlighted to change the units camouflage, the three highlighted being Clothing1, Vest_rgr and Misc1 are for a different part of the body, clothing being clothing, vest being the vest and Misc being the helmet and some other bits and piece;

now obviously these files are in .paa which can’t be read by your graphic editor so we’re going to have to convert these to a file that can be read, the two most popular being .TGA and .PNG.

Although any format can be used it’s best to use one that supports transparency and a wide range of colours, my preferred being .PNG, so lets open these files in something that can read it, TextView2, a program created by BI Studios, which should be the default program:

Now what you’re looking at is all the colour textures of the unit’s clothing on a flat surface, now we have to convert these to a readable format, the easiest way being to hit Save As... under file and change the extension, save type and save location, here’s what i use:

Now once this is saved you should be able to find the file in the location you saved it, in my case the desktop, now we need to open this in photoshop to get some real work going:

And this is where i finish, now its upto you to find your own techniques, just remember you can’t delete sections of a model or change the bump map easily so you can’t remove a pocket or knee pad by painting over it, if you paint over the knee pad then you’re only going to get a camouflaged kneepad, likewise if you paint over the gloves at the bottom the gloves will change colour, so you have to work with the model, at this stage i recommend you select major areas like the undershirt, boots, gloves, knee/elbow pads, etc and make it inverted so you don’t paint over them and just leave them as the default texture.

After you’re done with the texture create a directory, like for example, P://My_addon/Data and put the files you’ve changed in the data folder, follow the above mentioned tutorial by stillman to create a config and place it in the ‘My_addon’ folder and then pack it all up with BinPBO (using the directory P://My_addon) and try the PBO in game :)

I hope the above was helpful to those trying to get their head around the initial steps :cool:

Edit: To add to the above, since the beta and full patches if you want new items like independent uniforms or stuff that's been added recently you may need to check the Chracters_beta, Chracters_epa or Chracters_epb for each of the stages of release the game has gone through.

Edited March 10, 2014 by Scarecrow398

[davids 10]

Top guide! Explains everything relating to re-texturing! Couple that with Stillman's Config explanations and you have a really in-depth guide to re-skinning units in ArmA3!

[wormeaten 0]

I can't find VM_s-P3D_Export.mcr to download. Anybody got a link?

Thanks.

[Vespa 1]

Scarecrow's guide linked in OP and in tutorial itself. Many thanks!

wormeaten - it is part of the examples package https://community.bistudio.com/wikidata/images/a/a7/A3_Character_Examples_1.1.zip

[pushbak 2]

Can someone shed some light on when to use SoldierWB vs. SoldierEB vs. SoldierGB?

is it that:

SoldierWB = when they will be inheriting bluefor

SoldierEB = when they will be inheriting opfor

SoldierGB = when they will be some form of independent and not inheriting stuff from bluefor or opfor?

I've looked at the sixupdater classtree stuff and this is my guess? But maybe it's something else entirely or it's nuanced in some unforseen way that a noob wouldn't be able to guess about?

thanks in advance

[Vespa 1]

camo selections for helmets fix added to dev build, version 44086

[scarecrow398 43]

camo selections for helmets fix added to dev build, version 44086

Many thanks Vespa :)