Toadie's SmallArms and Animations for Arma3

[BadHabitz 235]

Any plans to share resources for weapons other than ARs and AKs?

[toadie2k 799]

I'm sure a million people have said this, but, have you considered making all of the HLC Weapons into a single unified pack? It's a little overwhelming managing a bunch of weapon mods as well as other mods like RHS or AIA.

It's still on the cards. Just gotta get around packing it properly and leaving it to upload for a half day.

I know you've got a full plate on your hands, but any chance for some Rifle Dynamics love for the AK pack? http://rifledynamics.com/products/rd-501

I've got plans for something around the corner, stay tuned. Additionally, that new Magpul AK Zhukov stuff as well, certainly better than just throwing Tapco junk on it,.

Any plans to share resources for weapons other than ARs and AKs?

You're absolutely right, I SHOULd have put up more of the source files by now, my apologies.

You should find more of them up on Page 1 in a few minutes, and I'll put up the remainder tomorrow morning.

When using these aks with jsrs dragonfyre there is a script error after every shot. Any chance this can be looked at?

What's specifically being said in the error? Can't say for certain, but it's more than likely something that's been deprecated from JSRS2.

small bug

The HK53, with the AGM mod, if you deploy it, it says "Bipod Deployed" instead of "Weapon Rested".

Not a big deal really but figured id let you know.

Good spot, will fix.

So I've got something that may or may night be big and exciting around the corner that I'll talk about soon enough, but in the meantime, check out my Bren Gun.

So a little bit about the model that it is, it's a Mk.1(m), the modified version that the British Expeditionary Forces of WW2 were fielding after Dunkirk (where the majority of the existing stock of Mk1s were abandoned). It's different from the original Mk.1 by a modest list of design changes to lighten, cheapen and speed up production of the guns( omitting things like somewhat ornate reniforcements below the magazine well). It's also the Bren gun most commonly associated with the title, with this specific pattern being the one most common amongst British Commonwealth Countries, manufactured by RSAF Enfield,Inglis in Canada,Daimler,SAF in India, and Lithgow Arms Works in Australia throughout the course of WW2 and beyond.

Been building it piece by piece, almost literally only from assembly charts and cross-sections, because a large chunk of the photographic resources out there of Brens tend to be from reconstructed de-mills, which vary in quality of reconstruction and thus not really reliable to use. Obviously, still not finished, there's still pieces to go, and I've got to actually make the High-poly as yet, and texture, but I'm pleased with how it's looking so far.

[wansec_6 200]

Great to see that you're making progress on the Commonwealth Weapons pack. Looking forward to seeing it in action!

[BadHabitz 235]

You're absolutely right, I SHOULd have put up more of the source files by now, my apologies.

:dancehead: Thanks!

[Guest HellGhost]

That's a real good work, do you think you can add the AA-12 ?

The tactical version I mean, with upper and side rails.

Thanks !

[gunny24 46]

hey toadie,

really good work with everything you did.

any chance for some more machinguns like the mg3kws, m60e6 or mk48mod1?

there plenty rifles out there but no good machineguns except for your m60´s^^ have you checked your PM´s? i´ve wrote some time ago. you have an error with the AGM barrelswap in your config on every update of the m60 package^^

[zukov 490]

It's still on the cards. Just gotta get around packing it properly and leaving it to upload for a half day.

I've got plans for something around the corner, stay tuned. Additionally, that new Magpul AK Zhukov stuff as well, certainly better than just throwing Tapco junk on it,.

You're absolutely right, I SHOULd have put up more of the source files by now, my apologies.

You should find more of them up on Page 1 in a few minutes, and I'll put up the remainder tomorrow morning.

What's specifically being said in the error? Can't say for certain, but it's more than likely something that's been deprecated from JSRS2.

Good spot, will fix.

So I've got something that may or may night be big and exciting around the corner that I'll talk about soon enough, but in the meantime, check out my Bren Gun.

http://i.imgur.com/BcgDvqRl.png

So a little bit about the model that it is, it's a Mk.1(m), the modified version that the British Expeditionary Forces of WW2 were fielding after Dunkirk (where the majority of the existing stock of Mk1s were abandoned). It's different from the original Mk.1 by a modest list of design changes to lighten, cheapen and speed up production of the guns( omitting things like somewhat ornate reniforcements below the magazine well). It's also the Bren gun most commonly associated with the title, with this specific pattern being the one most common amongst British Commonwealth Countries, manufactured by RSAF Enfield,Inglis in Canada,Daimler,SAF in India, and Lithgow Arms Works in Australia throughout the course of WW2 and beyond.

Been building it piece by piece, almost literally only from assembly charts and cross-sections, because a large chunk of the photographic resources out there of Brens tend to be from reconstructed de-mills, which vary in quality of reconstruction and thus not really reliable to use. Obviously, still not finished, there's still pieces to go, and I've got to actually make the High-poly as yet, and texture, but I'm pleased with how it's looking so far.

fantastic! ww2 back in business ;)

[3p0x1 74]

Great to hear Toadie! Thanks for your hard work!

[somesangheili 111]

Bug report: I was firing the FN FAL 'Para', and I could hear a very faint sound of a bird tweeting at the end of every shot. Very audible in the virtual arsenal

[war_lord 934]

Check out my bug reports from earlier if you missed em, also the G3A3 with GL has a textureless grenade launcher. This has been reported before, I'm just reiterating to make sure these things get quashed. To quote the Marines Slay the dragon.

[toadie2k 799]

Check out my bug reports from earlier if you missed em, also the G3A3 with GL has a textureless grenade launcher. This has been reported before, I'm just reiterating to make sure these things get quashed. To quote the Marines Slay the dragon.

I did in fact not spot it before, thanks for bringing that to my attention.

Edited February 18, 2015 by toadie2k

[toadie2k 799]

Update- G3KA4 GL textures no longer are white, Leupold AOTT corrected(now looks over top). Got a patch upcoming too that

So a little bit of a state of the... Mod I guess?

The cats a little out of the bag for this already if you're a subscriber to my youtube channel or caught the post on r/arma ,but I wanted to give a more technical breakdown of things coming for 2015, because it seems like the right place to do it. Advisory warning: Words.

Abstract

2014 was a fantastic year. I'm pretty sure I've said it already a few times, but it's been a phenomenal ride. I punched out a LOT of content in 52 weeks, and even considering some missteps I can safely say that it's been worth every second, and a lot of you have been along with me for the ride. To each and every player, supporter, well-wisher or person who's found a bug and patiently waited for me to respond, I thank you for making it a worthwhile experience.

So what's in store for 2015? All I can say is MORE and better.

Here's my current work-list, a hundred and 170 odd entry-long ride through the standard, the odd, the old, the new, and the fascinating. Some of it has been parts of requests made of me in the last year, some of it is personal interest, some is filling deficits in content:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ntyv14BqYyhabzDfBgnmEfnKlIk3exvM8WDOlU5Qv_g/edit?usp=sharing

As you can see, it's extensive but not exhaustive, and it it is my plan to keep whittling down this list as the year, and likely next two, go on. That's my general goal, keep going down this list, doing animation all along the way, and taking steps to take quality to the next level.

The two biggest things working against my general goals for creating tend to be-

1) Content not made for the Arma engine doesn't really always look or perform great in it (Iron-sights comparatively low-res for use, general poly-counts challenging Arma's vertex handling limits for two extremes). Sometimes you can get away with it, in the case of low resolution stuff ,you can use tools like Turbosmooth to increase smoothness on curves to varying levels of success, scaling down however tends to need to be re-topologied, and when you get to that point you may as well start from scratch anyway.

2) Content is not always immediately available, either of acceptable standard, or indeed at all.

If I wanted to do a set of Howa Type89 animations(now there's an idea...) tomorrow, I'd be hard pressed finding one in the wild. So it'd be a case of shifting to do something else OR doing it myself. Then it becomes a point of, “well, if that one thing would need to be done from scratch, aside from time, what's holding you back from doing everything from scratch?â€

Truthfully, nothing. So that's where we're at today.

Design Goals

2015, as part of going hard on getting substantial quality improvements in content, I'm going to be taking a focus on creating more of the content from scratch. In fact, all of it. As of this digest, aside from work being done for RHS, you'll find that nothing I'm putting out for public use and abuse will feature anything but meshes, textures and animations by me. My reasoning stems largely from the drawbacks mentioned previously, and builds on them to turn it a strength, as it is something I can do myself, I just lacked time to do it in an efficient manner. That situation has turned around somewhat this year, so I'm using that to my advantage while I can.

Doing it “in-house†as it were, also gives me the benefit of allowing to tailor and design the content specifically for the engine. From considered polygon budgeting and allocation for engine constraints (priority to sights, things up close, you get the idea), to more efficient texture usage, to taking advantage of engine-specific functions like the Thermal heat-mapping. All these things are the sorts of attention to target platform that starting with a clean slate gives you, and will be leveraged whenever possible.

Building Community through Content

I guess as a consequence of being a bit of an “art†kind of person, I'm a big believer in the common domain for ideas, sharing ideas, content, you know, all that huggy feely abstract stuff, and it's part of why I'm always big on things like Share-alike licensing, especially in the modding scene. Looking at other peoples work, and breaking it apart, putting it back together integrating, is to me one of the best ways you can learn to do something. Heck it's how I started doing modding 10-odd years ago.

In that vein, with this new content coming out this year being more involved, I intend to keep up the creative intertia of the existing animation releases. That is-

Sources available, engine-format content available, source code available. All under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share-A-Like license.

What this means is basically that as well as the content being available in total as mods, the source material will be free for any mod to use in it's totality, thus giving a viable way to fill out a project if it's missing a specific piece without the need to drag in other dependencies if they don't want it.

In essence an open library of Arma3-quality kit that anyone can use and modify, providing they stay within the grounds of the CC-BY-NC-SA and retain the chain of evidence in regard to credits.

QC Goals

I think the biggest problem overall I had in 2014 when it comes to releases was I think that not enough isolation testing was done(i.e., without other HLC mods), and I think that hurt the releases somewhat. Heck, as noted above, as late as this week, there's still bugs that could have been caught pre-release if I'd just run some of these mods by themselves. So that's one thing I'm deadly keen to ensure doesn't happen this year, and have got myself a written up testing schema now that should fairly well shake down things before they go live. We learn this things the hard way sometimes I suppose, but with steps in place to ensure it doesn't happen again, I'm committed to releasing as bug-free as possible.

Time Goals

“This is great and all, all this additional content and what not, but surely this takes more time?,†I hear you thinking. Yes, yes it does, and there's no escaping it. Conservatively estimation of development time for a weapon last year was about 12 hours per, from import to release. With some wide margins for outliers, creating a weapon from scratch (including animation, Mesh, textures, importing, config, the whole schmowzow) can run from 20 to 60 hours.

It's a considerable leap in time required, quite frankly, so conventionally that would mean that stretching out expected cycles in real terms to longer periods (say, instead of being able to knock off one or two weapons in a week, might only get HALF of one), but thanks to the nature of flexible work hours, I'm able to squeeze a few extra hours a week to moderate the distension. As it stands on my current maths, about a weapon every two-to-three weeks seems about most practical (talking whole weapons here, not including sub-variants), with a lag time for testing of about an additional fortnight before release.

Content Packaging

I think that, though the reasoning was sound originally, the whole Core versus packs dependency thing has kind of become a hindrance to distribution. While, yes it allowed me to keep a certain set of standardised resources and config material together, so I could make minor ballistic and animation changes, and in theory the HLC Core could be used to allow other mods to use animations and such without needing to also bring across potentially hundreds of additional MBs, with the source content AND code available for most everything I've done, it kind of deprecates that intention.

So going forward, You'll find that my mods won't require Core. The things that I've already put out will still require it, there's just enough there that untangling that into separate PBOs would be not be worth the spent time. From this point onwards, expect everything to be more or less self-contained in terms of requirements (with some exceptions, when more AK-pattern weapons come along they'll need the AK pack, and anything running 556 STANAG mags will probably require core, etc. You'll know about it when they need it).

Probably the only otherthing worth mentioning is that, with some patches coming up this weekend will be the last I touch of any of the pack already out (as releases will be more compartmentalised going forward), and everything will be bundled for your convenience.

Going forward

So I've pretty categorically stated, a few times before now, basically my goal it to jam as many durn guns into Arma as possible. By that I mean, currently my Work schedule of just arms is about 170 items strong, so it's clear that I will be here for a while still doing this, and I'm entirely fine with that. In my books, to have a content library of a constant standard is time worth investing.

To be clear too, I'm not trying to deprive or supplant any other modders out there. Given the length of that list you can safely assume that some of the items will be a LONG while in waiting, so if a mod already has a modeller, coder, etc. on hand, you can be sure they could give the kind of directed attention to creating something in all likelihood before I even start looking at it, and they certainly could do it subjectively better. I do not want to deprive anyone of the opportunity to do it themselves, heck I encourage anyone and everyone to do it themselves if they want to.

I guess the last point I want to make is about the Patreon, the whys and hows.

So very early on in the piece, like around March-April last year, I started getting sporadic offerings of donations. At the time I turned all of these down, for a number of reasons, not feeling that my quality was worth it for one, not enough of it independently was my own work to justify in my mind accepting it was another. Fast forward to now and it's a different story, going forward with doing it all, and importantly all work of a grade I'd consider worth backing. So I've opened up donations, with the intention of making sure you get every cent of value you can out of donating, above just as a display of support and gratitude.

The reason I've picked Patreon to do it through is because quite frankly, it's a great way of way of keeping 2-way communication between supporters and creators, it's simple to keep organised, and on the donator end, because of the periodic nature of billing it allows you to back out or otherwise manage how much you wish to donate. Clean interface helps, no way in hell would I do this through PayPal directly (friggin' nightmare).

So with donators given a window to do so if they want, I want to re-iterate -

Donations are an optional thing. Do not feel compelled that you MUST donate to see the results. Regardless of donation rates, you can expect to see high grade-work from me as per usual.

That said, if you like what you see, like what's coming up, and want to show some love:

http://www.patreon.com/toadie2k.

Here's to an eventful 2015, everyone.

Edited February 24, 2015 by toadie2k

[corporal_lib[br] 396]

I can´t believe I read "Colt RAILGUN" on your excel list, Toadie2K... I´m just in shock lol

Indeed a long list, and bravo for joining RHS and still punching a lot of personnal projects! =D

cheers!

[suds420 179]

Thanks for all your hard work Toadie! That is a very impressive list of guns you got going there, I can't wait to see what you come out with in the future. I'm especially intrigued by the CarnikCon sten. Is it gonna have an eotech and pistol grip attached with Spongebob duct tape?

;2884245']I can´t believe I read "Colt RAILGUN" on your excel list' date=' Toadie2K... I´m just in shock lol[/quote']

I think by colt rail gun he means this, http://www.colt.com/Catalog/Pistols/RailGun%C2%AE.aspx If he actually make a rail gun the would be awesome.

[Defunkt 431]

Thanks toadie, we're blessed with some fantastic, talented and extremely generous modders at the moment among whom you stand at the forefront.

[BadHabitz 235]

What this means is basically that as well as the content being available in total as mods, the source material will be free for any mod to use in it's totality...

Does this mean that the resources will be completely open source, like CUP? As it stands, the resources you've made available so far are pretty rough and more 'resource' than 'finished and open source'. Please don't get me wrong, I appreciate anyone releasing their unbinarized materials, and I appreciate that you directly released more information after I mentioned it, but I'm just looking for a more explained answer concerning this quoted line.

[toadie2k 799]

Does this mean that the resources will be completely open source, like CUP? As it stands, the resources you've made available so far are pretty rough and more 'resource' than 'finished and open source'. Please don't get me wrong, I appreciate anyone releasing their unbinarized materials, and I appreciate that you directly released more information after I mentioned it, but I'm just looking for a more explained answer concerning this quoted line.

More in the vein of CUP, yes.

All of the previous content I've released sources for, I'd really put out what I'd consider the core of what people would be interested in using - The animations unbinarised, with code snippets for implementation, pertainant data for application to weapons, and a sample P3D showing off how a weapon set up for the animations would look.

I'm going as close to entirely open source as possible from now on- PSDs for textures, Raw model formats meshes (.max,.fbx,.obj), Raw format animations (.3ds,.fbx,.max), as well as everything that makes up the mod (entire config.cpp, all .p3ds, all .paa and .rvmats, all .rtms, all .wss).

Basically, you should be able to take the content, binarise and pbo it yourself and end up with the same PBO that gets released as a mod, meaning you should be able to massage it into existing mods, configs, etc, with minimal fuss. So yeah I guess OpenSource is the goal here.

[BadHabitz 235]

More in the vein of CUP, yes.

All of the previous content I've released sources for, I'd really put out what I'd consider the core of what people would be interested in using - The animations unbinarised, with code snippets for implementation, pertainant data for application to weapons, and a sample P3D showing off how a weapon set up for the animations would look.

I'm going as close to entirely open source as possible from now on- PSDs for textures, Raw model formats meshes (.max,.fbx,.obj), Raw format animations (.3ds,.fbx,.max), as well as everything that makes up the mod (entire config.cpp, all .p3ds, all .paa and .rvmats, all .rtms, all .wss).

Basically, you should be able to take the content, binarise and pbo it yourself and end up with the same PBO that gets released as a mod, meaning you should be able to massage it into existing mods, configs, etc, with minimal fuss. So yeah I guess OpenSource is the goal here.

That's good stuff. Thanks for the clarification and for the effort to make this content, and to let others share in that awesomeness!

[Sniperwolf572 758]

More in the vein of CUP, yes.

All of the previous content I've released sources for, I'd really put out what I'd consider the core of what people would be interested in using - The animations unbinarised, with code snippets for implementation, pertainant data for application to weapons, and a sample P3D showing off how a weapon set up for the animations would look.

I'm going as close to entirely open source as possible from now on- PSDs for textures, Raw model formats meshes (.max,.fbx,.obj), Raw format animations (.3ds,.fbx,.max), as well as everything that makes up the mod (entire config.cpp, all .p3ds, all .paa and .rvmats, all .rtms, all .wss).

Basically, you should be able to take the content, binarise and pbo it yourself and end up with the same PBO that gets released as a mod, meaning you should be able to massage it into existing mods, configs, etc, with minimal fuss. So yeah I guess OpenSource is the goal here.

:inlove:

[gunny24 46]

holy crap, these LMG´s on the list....all my favorites wooohoooo :-D

[sorophx 25]

the List doesn't have M468 or REC7 *sniff sniff* :(

[13islucky 10]

Noice, liking the way you handle things, though the $4300 Hi-Point should probably be higher on the list hehe. Anyways, I'm liking what I'm seeing, and I'm curious as to what 'Project Darwinism' is.

Edit: Never mind that question, just saw the comments on the video.

Edited February 21, 2015 by 13isLucky

[war_lord 934]

Toadie is the Chuck Norris of Arma 3 weapon creation.

[Tsark 12]

Toadie, DAT list :butbut:

Plus Famas, PGM Hecate II, and the Minimis, HK416/7s, SCARs, G36s, even a P90! With all this stuff, we will practically have all the small arms in the French Armed Forces inventory, both French made and foreign, conventionnal troops or SF!

I feel bad about adding requests to such an already huge list, but since you' re already making a 416 D10RS, would you mind doing the 14.5 inch barreled variant too? And also i'm glad to finally see someone take on the 416A5, despite your apparent hate for these babies.:p

I hope that the assault rifles will come with their appropriate grenade launchers, the hk416/7s, g36s, SCARs,...etc.

Anyway i will stop the begging, i can honestly say that seeing this list filled me up with joy,and i will make it a point so support you as best as my financial situation allows on Patreon in the coming months (can' t right now since we just opened our server and other stuff, but you have my word that i will start making donations in the coming months man).

Best of luck in this (huge) endeavour.:)

[nkenny 1057]

Thanks for you excellent work Toadie2k! Your addons add exceptional quality to the arma3 experience.