Custom trees and vegetation

[WhiteDevil 10]

Now I've seen some threads about these from other parts of the forum but I'm going into more specifics here.

I know very well what kind of lods, normal edits and such I need since I've made vegetation models for other game engines in the past and I've looked the arma2 trees and how they've been made. But there's still a lot I do not know how to do for Arma3.

What kind of material setup(rvmat) do I need for my leaf textures and how do I make it?

How do I make my tree sway?

How do I setup my tree for destruction?

It would be really great to know these so I can start doing my custom tree and vegetation pack for Arma3, and maybe release it for the public in future.

[super-truite 54]

Never done that, but my maybe you need to rig the trees to allow for sway? Did you look into the arma 2/arma 1 samples? Maybe there are some trees exemples?

[doveman 7]

Why do you want your trees to sway? It looks ridiculous and is something I wish bus would fix.

[m1lkm8n 411]

If you look in the sample models all info you need is there.

In the geolod add class treeHard or treeSoft depending on the sway you want.

Damage= destrctTree for the fall over effect

As for the rvmats you'll need to look in the mlods. A3 trees are slightly different but still should be enought to get it looking good. We've asked dwarden to see if he can add a sample tree to the a3 sample models so hopefully that happens.

[WhiteDevil 10]

So what I understand is that I need a config file to define my model properties but none of the example packages where the trees/bushes/grass are includes these files. How do I do the make the config file and how do I define those properties?

I've never done any models for arma before so it looks a bit confusing to start writing a text file defining how the model behaves when other engines just have a properties window and you just check buttons how you want the object to behave.

Edited May 14, 2014 by WhiteDevil

[mikebart 1]

Im not too sure about A3 trees but they seam to still use the TreeAdv shaders from A2OA, not sure but it looks like they're doing something different from looking at the tree textures in A3, I noticed the far lods share the same texture maps, maybe batching groups of tree models in distant lods?

Here are some trees, bushes and clutter mlods that use the TreeAdv shaders, theres some .psd's in there aswell:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/fhrf8kypq91zihx/mb_veg_mlods_v0.9.rar

you can get the .paa textures from here: http://dev.withsix.com/projects/mb-veg

edit: you dont need a config file unless you want to be able to place your models in the mission editor, everything about the tree is defined in named properties in the .pd3

[WhiteDevil 10]

Thanks mikebart!

I think I finally got the hang of this. So I write down the properties for my trees to my geometry lod in the 'named properties' window(which isn't shown by default in O2!!!) and it should behave like a tree then?

I had no frigging clue I needed to reveal a hidden window so I can put down properties for my objects... Took me too many hours to figure that out. Maybe now I can finally get things going.

[mikebart 1]

yep, I can remember being in exactly the same boat as you when i first started delving into Oxygen 2, everyone was talking about the named properties window which wasn't there :)

[m1lkm8n 411]

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Oxygen_2_-_Manual

still relevant

look at the geometry classes for the named properties