Paid Addon creation?

[linuxmaster9 101]

when modeling and porting to Arma 3, what do I need to make sure I have? I am considering paying someone to do the modeling with textures, animations, and rigging on the Blender Artists community. I do not have the knowhow to retopo models I have to low poly. So, I am figuring I will pay someone to do it for me. I will of course tackle the configs and such but I figure, the model will be much nicer if a pro does it.  So, what do I need to make sure to include in the ad?

 

Like, the range of polys for low poly. I assume 1-15k max. and unlimited for high poly baked normals.

 

What about LODs?

 

anything I need to know about the Blender Arma tool?

 

Would anyone here be willing to do it?

[warden_1 1070]

 

when modeling and porting to Arma 3, what do I need to make sure I have? I am considering paying someone to do the modeling with textures, animations, and rigging on the Blender Artists community. I do not have the knowhow to retopo models I have to low poly. So, I am figuring I will pay someone to do it for me. I will of course tackle the configs and such but I figure, the model will be much nicer if a pro does it.  So, what do I need to make sure to include in the ad?

 

What kind of high poly models are you working with?

[linuxmaster9 101]

What kind of high poly models are you working with?

FLAK 38s and FLAK 18s and variants of those

[warden_1 1070]

FLAK 38s and FLAK 18s and variants of those

 

If you PM me some pictures of them I might be able to point you in the right direction. Low poly modelling is actually quite easy once you understand how the normal mapping will look. :)

[linuxmaster9 101]

[linuxmaster9 101]

Hope that helps. I am willing to put out ~$50 to have one of those made into an addon that would have ACE3 configs for ACE3 support and utilize the ACE3 Airburst rounds and Fire Control System.

 

I already have some models of those.

 

ACE3's Airburst ammo has now made it possible to actually have FLAK rounds fired from FLAK cannons.

[warlord554 2065]

Sry dude but 50$ for one of those, modelled, tex'd, ingame ready? Maybe a couple hundred, maybe

[warden_1 1070]

I was more asking to see the high poly models you had so i could try and point you in the right direction to make them.

But I agree with Warlord that $50 for that (not including importing to A3 which you can't charge for) is very very little. It would probably be quite a few hours work to do all that at a decent quality and no one would do that for $5 an hour.

[linuxmaster9 101]

ok, how about just the model rigged and textured?

[warden_1 1070]

I don't think you'll get anyone to do that for under 150-200.

If you would just show me the high poly models you are working with I can help you get started making the low poly on your own. It isn't hard once you know what you're supposed to be doing.

[linuxmaster9 101]

I don't think you'll get anyone to do that for under 150-200.

If you would just show me the high poly models you are working with I can help you get started making the low poly on your own. It isn't hard once you know what you're supposed to be doing.

Ill show you the models shortly. Would I be able to get a low poly version with baked details of an existing high poly model with textures for ~$50? Just the model. I can handle the rigging and animating and addon creation.

[linuxmaster9 101]

Here are screen shots from Blender. Verts/Faces/Tris are listed at the top of the screenshot.

 

 

 

 

 

[heroikred 11]

https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/184306-war-chronicles-ww2-modification/you could possibly work with these guys

[warden_1 1070]

Here's what I would do, contact one of the WW2 teams and see if they want to use the models. Otherwise it really wouldn't be that hard to make the low poly for those, they are made up of simple shapes. Also you have to understand that $50 won't really get you anything in the modelling world.

 

Do you know the basics of blender? Or did you just download it to preview the files?

[linuxmaster9 101]

Here's what I would do, contact one of the WW2 teams and see if they want to use the models. Otherwise it really wouldn't be that hard to make the low poly for those, they are made up of simple shapes. Also you have to understand that $50 won't really get you anything in the modelling world.

 

Do you know the basics of blender? Or did you just download it to preview the files?

I know the basics. Here are some models I have done. All High poly mind you.

 

 

 

[nodunit 397]

I highly recommend giving low poly modelling a try, its really quite simple once you get the hang of it and it is a LOT easier to bake things now that blender supports cages (in cycles)

If you have a high poly then you have the reference mesh, and there are two options...one is to rebuild the mesh piece by piece which in some cases is best, for example making new 12 sided cylinders for the gun barrels, muzzles, range finders, etc and so on.
Another option that is really helpful for complex mesh pieces such as spherical or something more 'fluid' is to create a new face, enter edit mode, delete everything but remain in edit mode.  After that is done toggle the Snap To tool on and set the Snap Element to faces.  After this simple place the cursor on some point of the high poly mesh and press ctrl+LMB to create a new vertex, it will snap to the high poly and allow you to build a new mesh around it.

Also I hate to say this but for a mesh bake, unless those meshes have their subdivision modifiers toggled off then I'm afraid you aren't going to get very good bakes, in some cases and especially 90 degree ones, you want to have a bevel or crease otherwise it won't be captured well...look at your high poly from a head on angle because that is most of the time how your normals will bake out, and if they are too 'flat' you get this problem. http://wiki.polycount.com/w/images/c/c0/Normal_slopes_hatred.jpg

As for low poly, the goal is to get something that uses the same space and matches the silloheutte but doesn't necessarily look exact..small things that aren't 3D enough or would require so many polies that it destroys the "low" aspect should be avoided.
If you don't mind I'd like to use some images of my own to show some example of high vs low and how they play together, if you want them removed just let me know.

Here is a high poly and low poly, you can see a few differences such as the treads but that is par for the course, keep in mind that edges are usually less visible in games because you are working with angled viewpoints and lively background...anyway on to the wireframes.

(Sorry about the HP tire lighting)  You can see small edges are not modelled on the low poly rim and neither are the curves of the tire The goal is to get a mesh with the same shape and space but it doesn't have to be 1:1.   If you look along the edges closely you can see that the normals baked from the high poly cover both sides of an edge to give the impression of a curved instead of a 90 degree change.  If you don't have that curve on the high poly then there will be no normals visible and by extension, no shading to display.  Also this isn't the best angle but would you have believed the edge of the low poly above was an abrupt end with no curve?   With the baked normals you get the appearing of the tires curve despite it not being the case.

On to a more varied example..

If you look at the hinges connecting the hood to the tub you can see an example what I mentioned above...the curve of the HP mesh is too small and when baked doesn't offer enough curvature to capture the normals, thus it doesn't show up well.


Again to compare how they play together, the low poly has 0 geometry to support the curve around the turn signals, intake, headlamps and even the mud guards...it's all essentially a set of flat boxy shapes with a similar form but when baked inherits all of that detail...keep in mind however that normals can only do so much, if you don't have enough geometry such as on a curve then the normals will visibily take a sudden turn..sometimes this isn't an issue because again you have to consider that once ingame a lot of these things tend to 'dissapear' or become less visible.  Another example of this is the hinges upon the hood/bonnet, there is no physical geometry so it doesn't pop out as much...wether or not this is a problem of course all depends on how it looks ingame and if it bothers you.




If you are interested I would recommend you start with something simple, make a new blendfile so you start off with a cube, duplicat ethat in object mode and apply a subdiv modifier, set it to two or three.  After that go into edit mode and create some edgeloops and push them towards the outside of the cube, enough to get a bevelled cube (you could just use a bevel if you want).   After that,  while making sure that the cubes are in the same pixel space, change Blender Render to Cycles and give the basic cube a material and texture (Note that the dimensions of the texture you create will be the dimensions of your bake), you may need to go into the node editor and assign one via a texture image node otherwise the next step will cause errors.
You will also need to unwrap the low poly cube, for a quick crash course go into edit mode then double tap A to select all, press Ctrl+E and click on the "Mark Seam" option, press U and click Unwrap.

After you assign the texture create a duplicate of the low poly cube, go into edit mode and scale it up  (I recommend Alt+S so that it scaled by normals) to encompass the low and high poly cubes entirerly..you should see nothing of them.  This is called the cage and I recommend you name it such, because the next step is to click the Render tab and scroll down to where it says "Bake", click the arrow to extend the box and then tick the "Selected to Active" checkbox, as well as "Cage" so that blender will know to look for one.  After that type the name of your cage object just below, then select your high poly while holding while holding shift, and select the low poly (this tells blender you are baking from the high to the low).  Click on the Bake button and it will render out your normal map and whatever else you want to bake from...such as ambient occlusion which is another key texture.