Zachs Full-on guide to Custom Weapons!

[zachgibson22 3]

Hello Everybody!

I have just finished a 30 page guide to Making a Custom Weapon for Arma 3.

Here is what it contains!

• Chapter 1 How to export a weapon from 3DS Max (Same principals apply to other programs)

---I May Make a basic Video in the future for modeling and mapping a simple weapon if people would like me to :)

• Chapter 2 Setting Up Oxygen 2 and Buldozer (3d Viewer for O2)

---ehh I kinda cheated this part out…. Just a video from another user.

• Chapter 3 Oxygen 2 and TexView2

• Chapter 3.1 Importing a Model into Oxygen 2 (O2)

• Chapter 3.2 Setting up all the needed/relavent LODs- Resolution LOD, Memory, Geometry, Shadow, View Pilot, and Proxies

• Chapter 3.3 Converting your weapon textures into an A3 Readable format, (paa, pac) using TexView2

• Chapter 3.4 CORRECTLY applying these textures in O2

• Chapter 4 The config and model files

• Chapter 4.1 The config file, making a fully custom one

• Chapter 4.2 The model file, for the weapon and hand animation

• Chapter 5 Making the custom hand animation for your weapon!

• Chapter 6 Custom UI Images for the Inventory screen

• Chapter 7 Binarizing the File CORRECTLY into a PBO

You will notice I skipped some weapon animation parts BUT as I get better at this I will update the guide! :)

It is complete with images and explanations.

Keep in mind this is my first big guide, but I did my best! I spent many hours on this hammering away!

I really hope you all enjoy it and find some use out of it!

Please send me messages if this has helped you or if you need more help! I too am still learning and have skipped a few minor areas.

Email info is in the guide.

Enjoy and Happy Modding!

Here is the link for the download! Let me know if it works or not!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kvx1hipaswpnkim/Zach%20Gibsons%27%20Arma%203%20Tutorial.zip

The 45 MB DL contains the guide, my weapon PBO as well as the source, and a couple other goodies to help out.

Also, I have no idea if my PBO works for other people. It works for me, so I don't see why it wouldn't work for you

EDIT: I realized I forgot to include the files for the handanimations. Redownload the file again to receive these files!

Also let me know how the guide is!

Edited May 7, 2013 by zachgibson22
Forgot to include some files.

[zooloo75 834]

Looking forward to it!

[zachgibson22 3]

thank you zooloo!

[zachgibson22 3]

Well It's basically complete! Where is a good place to upload it!?

[max power 21]

google drive in pdf format?

Also there's www.OFPEC.com for community editing stuff.

[zooloo75 834]

Dropbox is a great program. You can store whatever you want in it, it's free, you can share links to files in it, and if you update something in it, it will automatically update in the links you send to others.

If you plan on editing some parts of your tutorial, you can update with ease.

[zachgibson22 3]

Well there other files with it too so ill try OFPEC

---------- Post added at 21:55 ---------- Previous post was at 21:49 ----------

Awesome zooloo ill probably do that instead

---------- Post added at 22:27 ---------- Previous post was at 21:55 ----------

Before someone gives me another infraction for double posting, let it be noted i sent a PM to a moderator to take this post down... thank you.

[[aps]gnat 28]

Looking forward to the Tut

Not looking forward to the result of you fishing for infractions lol

[surpher 1]

You could host it on PDFCast.org

[zachgibson22 3]

Heres the link! https://www.dropbox.com/s/kvx1hipaswpnkim/Zach%20Gibsons%27%20Arma%203%20Tutorial.zip

[cifordayzserver 119]

look forward to checking this out!

I love people sharing their insights. I've been doing one of the tutorials in the Wiki and I think the language barrier is hanging me up a bit. I'll see if this one gives me some more angles on it!

Thanks again!

[zachgibson22 3]

I'm figuring out the weapon animations pretty well already so I'll be adding it soon once I get comfortable with it!

Edited May 6, 2013 by zachgibson22

[Guest]

Great job with your guide, thanks for sharing your knowledge :)

Release frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

Zachs Full-on guide to Custom Weapons!

[thedog88 4]

effing hero man! outstanding, will be checking this out when i find time this week. at all possible for you to make the same but for gear and vehicles? would be sweet to have a full out database to learn from. i know how to make objects but failed at making a vehicle :( had the model but no know how to get it in game and working. anyways, look forward to learning from this, thanks big time :)

[mecharius 2]

Thanks Zach - looks really useful so far.

[liukang168 1]

Heres the link! https://www.dropbox.com/s/kvx1hipaswpnkim/Zach%20Gibsons%27%20Arma%203%20Tutorial.zip

Nice, work Mr. Infraction :)

[zachgibson22 3]

Thank you for the response everyone! I'm glad people are actually using it!

@Foxhound, thank you that's awesome!

@TheDog88 As of right now I don't know too much about vehicles sadly, but I can't imagine it being tooooo different. All I've read on that is from the old OFP tutorial people kept linking me to. Maybe I'll give it a read a try and put it in better terms for you!

@liukang168, haha omg that's hilarious I should change my name to that! .... I have like 4 fractions already. Lmfao.... Not that that's a good thing :) I hope 5 isn't the limit.... Haahaaa

Also, i keep saying this, but let me know if I need to go over something better or add in cause since I have set up already its not hard to add changes or even extra images!!

Thanks Guys!

[freakjoe 3]

Really nice guide :)

[mecharius 2]

I've followed through your tutorial a bit and ... haha, it is "working" - my pistol is now in game!! errr... any hints?

http://i.imgur.com/mDNeTdY.jpg Watch your image sizes (>100kb).

I also noticed that there were a couple of empty "magazines = {}" variables in the config that needed to be populated before it loaded.

Edited May 7, 2013 by Alex72

[zachgibson22 3]

Ha yep been there.

1) the gun is too big(obviously.) simply scale it down in its p3d file and mess around with the size. This can take a little back a fourth.

2) obviously the arms are all crazy hah. You probably did(n't) do one of 3 things

A) When you packed the pbo with BinMake you did not check "binarize"

B) you did not name the correct location of the "handanim[]" file within the weapon config. ( don't forget to add ".rtm")

C) you do not have the OFP2_ManSkeleton model.cfg file in the same folder as the hand animation rtm

Let me know of this fixed it!

---------- Post added at 14:52 ---------- Previous post was at 14:50 ----------

Once I get home, I'll be sure to look over this part again! And make sure I didn't miss anything important!

---------- Post added at 16:27 ---------- Previous post was at 14:52 ----------

I've followed through your tutorial a bit and ... haha, it is "working" - my pistol is now in game!! errr... any hints?

http://i.imgur.com/mDNeTdY.jpg Watch your image sizes (>100kb).

I also noticed that there were a couple of empty "magazines = {}" variables in the config that needed to be populated before it loaded.

ALSO check out how my folder is set up. it's in the folder of "Everything related to my weapon"

As far as the magazines go, you could easily just use one of the already existing pistol magazines to make your life easy.

Here is a link of the class names.

http://browser.six-projects.net/cfg_magazines/classlist?version=67

These are the pistol mags currently in A3. Just put these what what should be line 9 and 91. then delete the last area of the config dealing with mags and ammo! (You shouldn't need it since your not making anything new!)

"16Rnd_9x21_Mag", "30Rnd_9x21_Mag"

^^both 9mm pistol mags

[hogthar 295]

Thanks its really useful.

[mecharius 2]

Yep thanks - I fixed the scale and got the texture working...

2) obviously the arms are all crazy hah. You probably did(n't) do one of 3 things

A) When you packed the pbo with BinMake you did not check "binarize"

B) you did not name the correct location of the "handanim[]" file within the weapon config. ( don't forget to add ".rtm")

C) you do not have the OFP2_ManSkeleton model.cfg file in the same folder as the hand animation rtm

The file is binarized so I assume its to do with B or C ... I'll look into it! Its a lot to take in all at once so I've probably just misread or forgotten to do something. For the magazines, I started with the empty configs you provided. However I just had another look through the template and you do have a comment "// magazines used" so I just missed that on the first go around :)

[zachgibson22 3]

Yeah no sweat. Look on the forums, I have like 15 topics posted in a week just asking random question. Hah

Also on a side note, since your making a pistol you should go to the config and find anything that says recoil. It'll say something like "defaultrecoilrifle" you could probably change rifle to pistol I assume. That'll make it more realistic!

If you try those other solutions and they don't work, send me a message on steam or Skype and ican help more!

[mecharius 2]

Ha... re lots of questions know the feeling :) At least you are giving something back though!

Also on a side note, since your making a pistol you should...

I had a look through the A3 six config browser and changed sounds and recoil etc. to match existing A3 pistols. When I'm happy maybe I'll attach on this topic so you can add a pistol sample config as well?

I've also got the weapon lined up and the animations sorted - my initial issue was with an incorrectly named rtm file. To make it align properly I had to follow this thread http://www.armaholic.com/forums.php?m=posts&q=19183 and go through all the LODs and add named properties:

autocenter: 0 
class: vehicle

I don't think you need all of them on all the LODs but I did it to be safe :)

Now I just need my texture to show up in 3rd person as well as 1st! Its set in the "e" menu but doesn't show in game for some reason.

[zachgibson22 3]

Oh I see, yeah I never had to deal with that auto center issue. But you got it fixed so that's all that matters!

As for the textures, are they showing up at all? Remember that is you have multiple LODs you have to set the textures for each LODs (unless Ty just copies and pasted after you textures, then you should be fine)

What do you texture paths look like?