Simple O2 tutorials

[eggbeast 3673]

I made some simple tutorials for the unsung mod team based on my fairly limited knowledge of rigging models.

They may be useful for beginners, kinda like Gnats old ones that got me started.

Thanks to vilas, hcpookie, von knudenberg, myke, john spartan and wld427 for mentoring me over the years.

 

Happy to take feedback, especially if i'm making any mistakes, as it will improve what we do in unsung mod.

I am not a modeler, i only rig and config models - have always been a scientist not an artist.

 

Model Properties

Mainly focussed on managing property values in your model.

Not definitive, doesn't include class house for example.

Tip - later in the vid we see the properties of an old model carried over to the new one - always clean up your "donor" model properties before working with it.

 

 

Geometry lod

Making a simple geometry lod

in this vid i show how to make convex geometry

BUT i forget to close it. geometry should be CLOSED and CONVEX

 

please don't roast me for having less knowledge than you guys - happy to take feedback as always.

just thought sharing this might help some folks.

 

[eggbeast 3673]

Distance lods

How to make your distance lods in O2

in an ideal world you would make a new model for each level, but beggars can't be choosers.

still there are some things you can do to reduce mishaps in the animations etc when merging points.

 

handanims

Making a custom handanim for a weapon

I make a mistake at 6.50m NOTE: in my vid i am moving bones without using proper axes - this is bad. so it is important to make sure 'points\transform 3D\show local axis' is switched on. This means when you select the bones/limbs (selection xxx with a - in front of it as -xxx) the center of rotation will switch to the position defined as the joint within the skeleton. This is a better way to position your fingers etc.

 

 

this is the final handanim in-game - not bad huh?

 

 

 

 

[eggbeast 3673]

Memory lod creation

- animating a weapon - the basics

- Does not include a full model.cfg, but shows correct placement and creation of axes

- I use a pre-made template for reference - always a good idea to work from something else you have to hand. In this case thanks to Toadie2k for sharing his ak47 model.cfg with us.

 

 

 

to follow

if i can wrestle my sons headset back off him (mine is busted!)

- making shadow volumes

- understanding fire geo

- hitpoints and destructioneffects

- making hiddenselections and decals

- adding a weapon turret to a jeep

 

 

[UK_Apollo 475]

Thanks for taking the time to make these!

I've watched the first one so far.

 

Personally I only add lodNoShadow = 1 to the visual LOD's, as I don't think the non-visual Lod's could cast shadows, but I'm sure it doesn't hurt. Agreed with the collection of other LOD properties into Geometry, keeps things nice and tidy. It would be so useful to be able to switch off the copying of LOD properties with vertices/objects, but alas not that I'm aware.

 

I've never come across "lodNeeded" in Arma3 before though. None of the models I've worked on have it, or appear to need it. I suspect it's an old Arma2 thing, from before we had dynamic LOD display.

 

Looking forward to watching the others, always something new to learn from each other. :-)

[Delta Hawk 1829]

Thanks for the tutorials!  Any chance of a custom reload tutorial?  Maybe even a mo-cap work flow?

[eggbeast 3673]

i use NI Arms and Von Knudenberg for my moving anims.

Would be great to have one of them, maybe Toadie2k doing a tutorial on their process.

 

ok i think this may be it, but it uses 3ds max instead of o2.

http://credmo.updatedtuesdays.com/tier1/products/support-products/3ds-max-animation-rig-v2/

[eggbeast 3673]

@Apollo, thanks for your feedback mate. yeah it's all knowledge we pick up along the way by word of mouth as there is no concrete guide on these subjects, and wiki often either has too much irrelevant info or too little info, or none at all. Also tips and tricks in practice don't come out in a wiki really.

 

re properties - anyone know? needed or not? in which lods?

- sbsource = shadowvolume

- canocclude = 1

- canbeoccluded = 1?

 

[giallustio 770]

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Named_Properties

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

 

canOcclude

Usage: Geometry LOD / View Geometry LOD.

Objects hidden behind view geometry are normally not rendered by engine. Unfortunatelly, some objects like trees, have many "holes" in their body, so if object will not be rendered behind tree, it will dissapear and it won't be visible.

Using CanOcclude = 0 property will prevent this undesired effect from happening.

 

---

 

canbeoccluded

Usage: Geometry LOD / View Geometry LOD. If it is set to 0, the model will be drawn even if it normally would be culled away by occlusion culling (ie. the view geometry is completely hidden behind another objects view geometry).

 

sbsource=

Which LOD will be used for shadowbuffer casting. If it is not set and shadow=hybrid is present, resolution LODs are used. It uses following values:

visual  
//use resolution LODs

explicit  
// Use special SB LODs <11000,11999>. 

shadowvolume  
// Use SV LOD

none  
// Do not render anything.

 

[eggbeast 3673]

yeah i had read these before. but in terms of real use, what is best? that's what i wasn't sure about.

 

[eggbeast 3673]

Tip for configgers - especially in big mod teams - set your TAB settings to 8 in all instances of Notepad++ you are using for configs. This will result in every user formatting their configs and scripts in the same way.- no more nasty time-wasting tab changes every time you open another guys work.

 

[Bnae 1431]

Awesome job. I know it can be a pain in the ass to figure these things out and i'm glad to see that someone is taking time on making these tutorials for newbies.

Keep up the good work 

[eggbeast 3673]

thanks! i have plans to add a lot more - see pm - i'm interested in your shotgun pump anims

 

i just finally conquered how to do animated sight ladders, after puzzling it through for months, despite a lot of talented people sending me examples, i still couldn't get my head around the concept.

here's a 2 part vid on how to do them.

 

Arma 3 weapon animations tutorial: How to animate a ladder sight so that it works properly in-game.

 

- Using Object builder and buldozer, and notepad++
- Shows game footage if the animation effects, followed by detailed (probably overly so - apologies!) explanation of how to animate your weapons ladder sights, set the aim point, the eye points, and config the weapon.

 

process:
0. set up weapon config entries for zeroing functions
1. rotate your weapon (all lods) in Z to establish correct alignment of cqb aperture and front sight post (remember to rotate mem lod back afterwards)
2. set your aim_point on your front sight post
3. make your selections (rearsight, rearsight2 and optionally rearsight2_rot)
4. make axes for rotation of rearsight up 90 degrees, and translation of rearsight2 and optionally rotation of rearsight2_rot, and add 10 eye points at the right distance from the aperture (your choice)
5. set your start point of your rearsight2 in lod 0 and adjust selection position in viewpilot
6. add bones and animations to model.cfg
7. check all anims work in buldozer on zeroing1 source
8. using buldozer determine max point of rearsight2 translation axis so it doesn't clip
9. now go in game and modify each eye point (in OB) so the aperture and front sight post are centred.
10. destroy your enemies!

 

 

part 1

 

part 2

 

apologies it took me half an hour to explain something you can do in 5 minutes once you're onto it.

but it does get pretty complicated, and i wanted to cover all the angles.

 

 

 

[eggbeast 3673]

ok some more tutorials

 

weapons again

 

this time:

In this video I align the scope and muzzle flash proxies for a new very high poly weapon model, for Arma 3 Unsung mod.
The model was supplied by Luchador and imported to O2 by Razorback.
We have 9 model variants and so I am explaining the model rigging processes for our team to learn it.

 

In this video I align the sights of the weapon, then realign the proxies and memory points, and then make a new geometry lod and check the shadow lod for a new very high poly weapon model, for Arma 3 Unsung mod.

 

 

In this video I make simple distance lods for a new very high poly weapon model, for Arma 3 Unsung mod.

 

 

[eggbeast 3673]

a new tutorial just uploaded - fixing various issues in older models

 

In this vid I am working through some of our old donated or imported models, checking for:

1. no redundant UVmaps, especially in special (non visual) lods

2. closed, triangulated and sharp shadow lods

3. distance lods in visual and shadow

4. correct properties assigned to each lod (esp. shadow and geo)

5. closed and convex sequential components in all geometry lods

6. every component has mass in geometry lod, no mass in other geo lods

7. every component has appropriate rvmat in fire geometry

8. components and selections include all faces in a part (not just vertices) Missing components in the geo phys lod was likely causing the CTD in the editor.

 

P.S.

a) At 27.40 I should have made sure that the roadway lod components were named as the turret selection (otocvez) so that they also rotate when the gun is rotated

b) you should leave crew proxies in geometry lod if a person can collide with them when mounted.

[eggbeast 3673]

Making animated muzzle flashes (rotating when weapon fires) on multi-turret vehicles #101

 

 

Stages

1. Make a barrel axis from your chamber and muzzle memory points (for each gun)
2. add a new bone for each muzzle flash to your model skeleton (inherited from each gun bone)
3. add sections to your model.cfg for each muzzle flash selection (so they animate hide and unhide when the weapon is used)
4. add a new animation to your model.cfg for each muzzleflash, which rotates each flash around the relevant barrel axis
5. add a custom animationsource to your vehicle config, that has weapon defined (for the turrets weapon) and ammorandom as the source. This new animationsource is what is used as source in your model.cfg animation. You need a separate one for each turret gun (you can use the same one for pairs of flashes on a single turret though, like a twin M60 for example)
6. check your muzzle flash / barrel axis is aligned in each weapon, if not, set the axis in the correct position relative to the gun model, and then use that to realign your muzzle flash.

7. Rinse and repeat for each gun / turret on the vehicle.

[eggbeast 3673]

Zeus list fix

ParamRevivie.hpp not found MP mission fix

 

 

[Icegrind 1]

Thanks for your tutorials!

 

One thing about the ladder sights / animated iron sights - you say in your first video on the subject that the bullet will hit the center of the screen at the zeroed distance (if aiming horizontally). That's what happens normally where the game adjusts the initial angle of the bullet automatically, but if you go the route of (animated) multi-eye sights that goes out the window. As a result, the weapon you show in the video starts to get really inaccurate by 700m (it's not your eyes, the bullet just wasn't going where you aimed).

 

The initial bullet angle required is still the same, but now the player has to apply it manually, and the mod author has to help with that, by placing the cameraDir and discreteDistanceCameraPoint[]s so that the front post and eye mempoints line up with the bullet's trajectory at each distance. In order for the aim to be accurate, rather than animating first and placing eye mempoints where they look good - you need to first place eye mempoints accurately, and then animate the rear sights so they look good.

 

Step by step, this means:

 

1. Decide on and stick to an airFriction and magazine/weapon initSpeed. Once you're done, any change to the bullet's trajectory will throw off the aim. Keep in mind ACE overwrites airFriction and adds Advanced Ballistics values to vanilla ammo, which will change the trajectory.

 

2. Place your cameraDir mempoint on the front sight.

 

3. Place the discreteDistanceCameraPoint[] mempoints so that the bullets hit where you want them, by trial and error. If the bullet goes low, heighten the eye, and vice versa. Or theoretically, I suppose you could calculate their proper positions. Ruthberg's VR training course helps, as does setting something like opticsZoomMin = 0.25/25; and dispersion = 0.0001; during testing. Zeroing a PKM 100-1500m like this took me an evening.

 

4. Now you can animate the rear sights. Again, probably through trial and error, to line them up at the right height or angle so it looks good. This took me another evening.

 

I found NIArms RPK12 a useful case study ( hlc_rifle_rpk12 ) with config, p3d, and model.cfg all available. In particular, how the RPK's stepped animation is set up can be seen here (search for Range_100_rot ).

 

I just recently did this for a PKM, and thought I'd write down my lessons learned - if nothing else, in case I need to do it again. Your videos were one of few sources that directly spoke about this, so I thought I'd post it here.

 

Edit: Oof. Currently, rather than fall back to Arma 3 ballistics, if ACE AB is enabled it assigns some default values if its variables aren't found, meaning if you care about ACE compatibility you can't just leave AB variables undefined. If you have a look at ACE's ammo though, their airFriction and ACE AB variables should result in trajectories that are in the right ballpark of each other. With only a little experimentation on the ACE_ballisticCoefficients[] variable, I got a good result that matched up with my eye points.

[eggbeast 3673]

hey Icegrind

 

Thanks for taking the time to explain it. I now understand what chairborne has been telling me these past months 😉

A very useful summary that was.

 

CB added these tips:

 

Quote

 

I set the zoom to much much lower values and hardcode dispersion to 0 while tuning the sights

also disable fatigue so the character doesnt run out of breath and shakes the gun around

 

thanks again.

 

EB

[lawman_actual 24]

Anyone suggest why the model I've made for a beam-riding missile isn't following the beam? It ends up veering off in odd directions.
I'm fairly sure it's something I've missed in the .p3d as everything works fine until I set the model.

 

At my wits end trying to figure this out...whatever I'm missing is apparently not obvious in all the guidance provided.

 

 

 

Cheers,
Law

[eggbeast 3673]

so if you set it to a bohemia model it works perfectly? and not with your own p3d?

100% certain?

 

[lawman_actual 24]

Ended up resolving this somehow following an almost complete rebuild.

Something to do with maneuverability and air friction which didn't seem to get on with the mass of the new model perhaps?

[lawman_actual 24]

Sorry to bother you folks again but I'm still unable to find an answer to my forum post here:

 

 

Quite frustrating modelling missiles for the first time, since it seems to be a bit of a gap in the tutorials market 😕

Figured most of it out now but can't get the fire coming out the back and it looks a bit dead, while also being very hard to track.

 

While I'm here i'll also mention...is there an animation source someone can suggest relating to the missile changing direction (in any axis)?

The missile I'm modelling has a part that rotates in order to maneuver. Would be great to be able to simulate this but not really necessary, would settle for just continuous rotation.

 

 

 

Cheers,

Law

[eggbeast 3673]

you'd be better off asking in the Arma 3 discord config editing channel.

https://discord.gg/Ge8WY9u

 

the missile doesn't need a memory pointfor the trail t oshow. it uses the centre of the model - make sure you have "found components" in your geometry

 

you can find rocket flash in the P drive here

`P:\a3\data_f\proxies\muzzle_flash\muzzle_flash_rocket_Zephyr.p3d`

you need to add that as a proxy in your missile ammo/fly model (not the "proxy" model used for the unfired missile mounted on your vehicle)

 

way i know of to animate the flame - create a hide anim (requires a bone in skeleton)

		class Animations
		{
			class rocket_fire_hide
			{
				type ="hide";
				source ="state";		// 0 = init, 1 = thrust being applied, 2 = after thrust time runs out
				selection ="rocket_fire";
				minValue = 0;
				maxValue = 1;
				hideValue = 0;
				unHideValue = 0.7;
			};
			class rocket_fire_hide2: rocket_fire_hide
			{
				source ="thrustTime";
				hideValue = 1;
				unHideValue = 1.5;
				maxValue = 65;
			};

add this to your ammo

missileFireAnim = "rocket_fire_hide"; //animation class of exhaust flame un-hidden when firing

 

should get you a bit further along

 

 

[lawman_actual 24]

18 hours ago, eggbeast said:

you'd be better off asking in the Arma 3 discord config editing channel.

https://discord.gg/Ge8WY9u

 

the missile doesn't need a memory pointfor the trail t oshow. it uses the centre of the model - make sure you have "found components" in your geometry

 

you can find rocket flash in the P drive here

`P:\a3\data_f\proxies\muzzle_flash\muzzle_flash_rocket_Zephyr.p3d`

you need to add that as a proxy in your missile ammo/fly model (not the "proxy" model used for the unfired missile mounted on your vehicle)

 

 

 

Amazing, thanks again Eggbeast that's all I needed to know! Didn't realise the flash was a proxy of another model.

Noted regarding discord...guess I'll have to download that now

 

Cheers,

Law