Using the Arma Toolbox for Blender as an O2 Alternative

[Brian Tien 2]

I've tried to recently get into modding for Arma 3,
Modeling using blender, I also wanted to have the ability to work on other things from within Blender as well.
I am working in a team of sorts, and my role is mainly to model, texture and send over my stuff to the others to continue working on.

I've stumbled across the Arma Toolbox for Blender, and the description and website seem to say that it is entirely possible to use the toolbox coupled with Blender to do everything that O2 would normally do. Meaning that O2 is made redundant with the toolbox around.

I just wanted to know if anyone around has used/knows how to use this addon entirely, and can create a guide or tutorial on the complete workflow - well structured guides on this program is terribly lacking, and it seems to have good potential.

Thanks,
PS: I couldn't find an editing "general" so I put it here. I couldn't figure out which one this would go in so if someone would move this to a better one that would be appreciated.

[Lenyoga 326]

I've used Blender quite a bit for OFP and now Arma 3. With all the additional tools it's definitely the better option for me - you can add and edit materials, textures, unwrap and edit UV maps, and so on and so forth. The thing is you have to invest a good deal of time in learning the most important shortcuts and navigation.

 

The Arma toolbox is easy to use. Import and export function are done via the 'file' menu just like saving, applying options for LODs is done via the little menu brought up by pressing N while the object is selected. Vertex groups are exported as the named selections for Arma. You might have to normalize (F5) the model in O2, but I don't recall if this was just an OFP issue.

 

I'd suggest looking up a few basic and Arma 3 oriented tutorials on YouTube.

[Brian Tien 2]

Thanks for the reply.
I've sorta grasped the LODs, named selections and stuff like that. But I'm quite sure that isn't the complete workflow.
I haven't found any useful tutorials as of yet, still looking.

Mostly I'm not totally aware of firstly the O2 process (but thats quite easy to grasp thanks to an abundance of tutorials) and secondly transferring that to its toolbox equivalent (of which tutorials are terribly lacking).

Thanks anyway!

[Lenyoga 326]

The complete workflow can be a bit complex and varies depending on the project's specifics or my own volatile degree of mental capacity.

I'll try to provide a short overview. There's a few things to keep in mind also: make sure you're using the Blender Render engine (Cycles has a different set of features which don't work well for A3) and don't rotate, scale or move anything in Object Mode (this will generally cause problems with scale and alignment).

 

Basic UI:

• Object Mode lets you create new objects, it's where you apply the Arma Toolbox settings - you could make 4 objects for 4 LODs, one for fire geometry, etc., etc.
• Edit Mode is where you manipulate the separate objects, assign materials and edit the UV maps.
• Material Tab is where you add and edit the materials which contain the textures in Blender and also the paths to the textures and rvmats in A3.
• Textures Tab is where you add the texture files to a specific material (diffuse, specular, AO and bump are all you need for A3) - don't use Blender's Normal Map feature (wrong color channels), rather convert a black/white file later.

Workflow example:

1. Open new project and delete everything with A (select all) and X (delete selected)
2. Create a new cube in the Create Tab on the left, press TAB to enter Edit Mode
3. Edit the model (there are many basic tutorials on YouTube)
4. Enter the Material Tab on the right and name it / assign it (the path on the bottom only describes the final A3 addon path, not the actual file you'll see in Blender)
5. Do the UV unwrapping and apply the textures (best search for "blender render material and texture tutorial" and "blender render UV unwrapping tutorial" - there are many approaches to do these)
6. You can bake ambient shadows, or even re-bake textures from one UV map to another, check for tutorials again. Save the texture files for further processing.
7. If you need to, you can create and assign Vertex Groups in the Data tab on the left - those will be the named selections in A3. For the geometry LODs, I usually use Object Builder (Structure/Topology/Find Components...)
8. Save and export as .p3d, open with Object Builder and press F5 just to make sure the normals are okay.
9. If you're only using diffuse textures, just convert the texture file into uncompressed TGA and convert it to .paa or .pac using TexView 2.

If you're using the super shader ...

Spoiler

 

• Use a grayscale image (black is lowest, white is highest) for normal maps, convert it into the right format using a normal map plugin for either GIMP or PhotoShop, name the file texname_nohq.pac or .paa
• Use a grayscale image for specular maps (black is no reflection, white is super shiny), compose an RGB image: Red has to be a while image, Blue has to be the b/w image, Green has to be the b/w image inverted. The output should be some purple/yellow thing, name the file texname_smdi.pac or .paa
• Use a grayscale image for ambient occlusion (black is black when in shadow, white is normal diffuse color), compose an RGB image: Red: white image, Blue: b/w image, Green: white image, name the file texname_as.pac or .paa
• There's a tutorial with more detail for those shaders on here somewhere, too.
• Name the rvmat file after the diffuse file, here's an example:

ambient[]={1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000};
diffuse[]={2.000000,2.000000,2.000000,1.000000};
forcedDiffuse[]={0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000};
emmisive[]={0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000};
specular[]={0.500000,0.500000,0.500000,1.000000};
specularPower=32.000000;
PixelShaderID="Super";
VertexShaderID="Super";
class Stage1
{
    texture="LNN_TIEpack\tx\td01_nohq.pac";
    uvSource="tex";
};
class Stage2
{
    texture="#(argb,8,8,3)color(0.5,0.5,0.5,0)";
    uvSource="tex";
};
class Stage3
{
    texture="#(argb,8,8,3)color(0,0,0,0)";
    uvSource="tex";
};
class Stage4
{
    texture="LNN_TIEpack\tx\td01_as.pac";
    uvSource="tex";
};
class Stage5
{
    texture="LNN_TIEpack\tx\td01_smdi.pac";
    uvSource="tex";
};
class Stage6
{
    texture="#(ai,64,64,1)fresnel(3.21,4.01)";
    uvSource="none";
};
class Stage7
{
    texture="a3\data_f\env_land_co.paa";
    uvSource="none";
};

 

 

 

I hope this is a somewhat useful overview for an example of a workflow. It should be effective in conjunction with all the video tutorials that show only bits and pieces of the whole process.