WIP: stuff you are working on!

[dmitri 0]

I just think the Lake on the left looks different to the snow on the right:

http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/8316/icesnowqp1.jpg

Right, but the "2007 Google" watermarks still look the same on both sides

nice catch.

BTW, is there anyway to get the images from google without watermark or do you have to use photoshop/edit the sat pictures?

Endless rubber stamp tool.

[USSRsniper 0]

Not bad, USSRSniper - though I'd like to see the rear textures matching the BIS ones in terms of wear, etc. Keep up the good work.

The texture match betetr without .rvmat, applied, but with RVMAT for some reason the texture becomes darker, and its shiny everywhere... Eventhough same values as on BIS texture, and it should be working, solid pink doesn't react to light, while parts closer to white appear shiny on model. That how i see it on BIS humvee SMDI's. Only issue that i keep fighting for last days, making textures match closely...

[xnodunitx 0]

Do you mean as shown in bulldozer or ingame? I'v noticed that virtually all addons I'v attempted to view in bulldozer with their rvmat's appear darker on the applied areas.

[USSRsniper 0]

Do you mean as shown in bulldozer or ingame? I'v noticed that virtually all addons I'v attempted to view in bulldozer with their rvmat's appear darker on the applied areas.

So its buldozer related issue? And also, can someone explain the best way of making the specular maps?

[xnodunitx 0]

As far as I know, I tested it with several Arma original units and they were all dark in bulldozer but not ingame.

I can't say if its the best way but my suggestion when starting with the specular map would be to finish the diffuse texture, since the specular is mostly a derived from it.

Set the texture to greyscale, reason I recommend greyscale (I'm pretty sure Arma doesn't suppose specular color either), is because its easier to work with black-white, the color can be changed later.

The easiest way to understand the specular properties is that black refracts no light and white, when lined up with the sun or light source, will refract pretty much pure white, great for nonpainted metal.

Anything in between varies. In Arma's case, once your finished (if you have photoshop, gimp or paint shop pro) make a new layer and then mess with the settings, overlay or soft light will probably be the best, maybe two soft lights..I cannot remember specificly but I know that by doing that you will get the pink hue you need.

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_2/the_corridor/corridor_11.asp

Although this doesn't exactly explain how to make them, this tutorial does rather nicely in showing you the impact specular maps can have.

[itim_tuko 0]

The delivery of US aid trucks for the RACS Infantry is closing in:

More pics of the CZM Version with hood can be seen here in the CZM topic

[ProwlerWolf 0]

Introducing...

Kandahar Afghanistan (Beta)

Some Buldozer snaps.

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I started this about two months ago and it is close to being completed.

[ProwlerWolf 0]

Here are some more in-game pictures.

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[PTV-Jobo 820]

Oh crap! That's nuts!

[Stewy 1]

Looking great PW - good luck with the project, Sir!

[HamishUK 0]

Since Armed Assault has a mix of Marines and Army units there is a lack of Marine AFV's.

Is anyone doing the Bradley or LAV?

[max power 21]

Since Armed Assault has a mix of Marines and Army units there is a lack of Marine AFV's.

Is anyone doing the Bradley or LAV?

Don't think so.... well, someone is doing a bradley... Try the Addon Request thread or the search engine. This thread is not the place for this.

[thesun 14]

Vilas+Topas are/were working on a bradley for their Project 85

[xnodunitx 0]

Oh there was one thing I forgot USSRsniper, and this may interest anyone who isn't exactly sure how to make specular maps quick and easy.

It's not the best method but works for a quick and easy result. First make your diffuse, complete it..entirerly..

Then (if you have photoshop, but I believe all paint programs would have it, gimp, psp, etc.) set it to greyscale mode, after its color information is lost set it back to RGB.

Now we have our base, press Ctrl+L (photoshop levels shortcut, not sure what the others would be..it would probably be in image adjustments of some sort for others) Now bring the black slider down enough to make the texture dark grey, the pull the white slider up just alittle...press enter.

Keep repeating this a few times, using more white the further you go. When you feel happy with it, create a layer above it with nothing in it, use the bucket tool to paint it a pure pink, then set the layer to screen. You should now have a specular map that Arma can 'understand'.

(working on examples)

Example

normal BIS M134 diffuse- http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/3237/m134coyw0.jpg

M134 greyscaled- http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/9576/m134cogxf5.jpg

M134 tweak1- http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/3241/m134colt1de2.jpg

Not really different right now, just darker..

M134 tweak2- http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/738/m134colt2jp5.jpg

starting to see the grey become more pronounced

M134 tweak3- http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/8680/m134colt3dy6.jpg

starting to see more white...

M134 tweak4- http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/7914/m134colt4bz3.jpg

Alright, now we have our white for our scratched off paint and lesser for..lesser marks.

One step further and we have our greyscale..(a very dark and nonereflective which probably isn't accurate but will suffice for this)

Thanks to a shortcut from da12thMonkey

"All good up to this point, however, the easiest thing to do now is just go to the channels window, select red, ctrl+a & ctrl+x to cut everything out, then go to the blue channel and do the same, then the alpha channel (if there is one) and do it one last time, but leave green the way it is.

Switch back to RGB channels and you'll see everything's a nice shade of Magenta."

It is important you do this, otherwise Arma will not read the specular map correctly and texture tools will most likely convert it into a red image, which again is bad.

[da12thMonkey 1943]

Oh there was one thing I forgot USSRsniper, and this may interest anyone who isn't exactly sure how to make specular maps quick and easy.

It may not necessarily be the best method but if you want a quick result, make your diffuse texture, save it.

Then (if you have photoshop, but I believe all paint programs would have it, gimp, psp, etc.) set it to greyscale mode, after its color information is lost set it back to RGB.

Now we have our base, press Ctrl+L (photoshop levels shortcut, not sure what the others would be..it would probably be in image adjustments of some sort for others) Now bring the black slider down enough to make the texture dark grey, the pull the white slider up just alittle...press enter.

Keep repeating this a few times, using more white the further you go. When you feel happy with it, create a layer above it with nothing in it, use the bucket tool to paint it a pure pink, then set the layer to screen. You should now have a specular map that Arma can 'understand'.

(working on examples)

Example

normal BIS M134 diffuse- http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/3237/m134coyw0.jpg

M134 greyscaled- http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/9576/m134cogxf5.jpg

M134 tweak1- http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/3241/m134colt1de2.jpg

Not really different right now, just darker..

M134 tweak2- http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/738/m134colt2jp5.jpg

starting to see the grey become more pronounced

M134 tweak3- http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/8680/m134colt3dy6.jpg

starting to see more white...

M134 tweak4- http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/7914/m134colt4bz3.jpg

Alright, now we have our white for our scratched off paint and lesser for..lesser marks.

One step further and we have our greyscale..(a very dark and nonereflective which probably isn't accurate but will suffice for this)

All good up to this point, however, the easiest thing to do now is just go to the channels window, select red, ctrl+a & ctrl+x to cut everything out, then go to the blue channel and do the same, then the alpha channel (if there is one) and do it one last time, but leave green the way it is.

Switch back to RGB channels and you'll see everything's a nice shade of Magenta.

[xnodunitx 0]

Thanks for the suggestion, I hadn't thought of messing with the channels

[icecold2510 0]

Vilas+Topas are/were working on a bradley for their Project 85

It'd be nice if there would be a standalone. I don't want to use the mod everytime to just use the Bradley.

Unless I'm misunderstanding that I can still use it in regular ArmA...

[maza94 0]

Is anyone doing the Bradley or LAV?

Vilas was made a Bradley.

[Kristian 47]

Is anyone doing the Bradley or LAV?

Vilas was made a Bradley.

just put "by" instead of "a"

"Vilas was made by bradley"

Sry for the offtopic. About the afganistan island on last page:

is the ground texture meant to be like that? from air it looks just like gigantic pixels

Sry Vilas if my "joke" insulted u. if it did, didnt mean it.

Just chagning some words?

[ProwlerWolf 0]

I have no high res sat images of kandahar so I had to use what was available to me. If I am up to the challenge I might build a higher res sat image from scratch before I release it, but I doupt that will happen.

[max power 21]

Thanks for the suggestion, I hadn't thought of messing with the channels

How ArmA interprets these maps is by accessing the scalar information on a channel per channel basis. The reason why they don't have rgb spec maps is because that's 3 times the information you really need. All they need to tell the engine in the case of specular is how much, and all they need there is a scale, so they only need one channel. The aren't meant to be viewed in RGB mode.

These maps are specular inverse diffuse maps. One arbitrarily chosen channel is used for the specularity channel, and, if my assumption is correct, another defines how much to invert the colour shown on the diffuse map in order to get white highlights instead of super saturated ones to avoid the 'CG look'. All of your editing of these maps should be in the appropriate colour channels once you figure out which channels do what.

[USSRsniper 0]

Oh there was one thing I forgot USSRsniper, and this may interest anyone who isn't exactly sure how to make specular maps quick and easy.

It may not necessarily be the best method but if you want a quick result, make your diffuse texture, save it.

Then (if you have photoshop, but I believe all paint programs would have it, gimp, psp, etc.) set it to greyscale mode, after its color information is lost set it back to RGB.

Now we have our base, press Ctrl+L (photoshop levels shortcut, not sure what the others would be..it would probably be in image adjustments of some sort for others)  Now bring the black slider down enough to make the texture dark grey, the pull the white slider up just alittle...press enter.

Keep repeating this a few times, using more white the further you go.  When you feel happy with it, create a layer above it with nothing in it, use the bucket tool to paint it a pure pink, then set the layer to screen.  You should now have a specular map that Arma can 'understand'.

(working on examples)

Example

normal BIS M134 diffuse- http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/3237/m134coyw0.jpg

M134 greyscaled- http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/9576/m134cogxf5.jpg

M134 tweak1- http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/3241/m134colt1de2.jpg

Not really different right now,  just darker..

M134 tweak2- http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/738/m134colt2jp5.jpg

starting to see the grey become more pronounced

M134 tweak3- http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/8680/m134colt3dy6.jpg

starting to see more white...

M134 tweak4- http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/7914/m134colt4bz3.jpg

Alright, now we have our white for our scratched off paint and lesser for..lesser marks.

One step further and we have our greyscale..(a very dark and nonereflective which probably isn't accurate but will suffice for this)

All good up to this point, however, the easiest thing to do now is just go to the channels window, select red, ctrl+a & ctrl+x to cut everything out, then go to the blue channel and do the same, then the alpha channel (if there is one) and do it one last time, but leave green the way it is.

Switch back to RGB channels and you'll see everything's a nice shade of Magenta.

This makes no sense, without two channels image will have nice green shade... not magenta... It becomes magenta when green is removed and only blue and red left

xnodunitx

Thanks. What i'm getting right now specualr map basicallly defines how shiny is the part of the texture, white beign the most shiny. So the darker i make they greyscale image, the less shiny surface i get on model? Except for white/lightgray parts.

[da12thMonkey 1943]

This makes no sense, without two channels image will have nice green shade... not magenta... It becomes magenta when green is removed and only blue and red left

xnodunitx

Thanks. What i'm getting right now specualr map basicallly defines how shiny is the part of the texture, white beign the most shiny. So the darker i make they greyscale image, the less shiny surface i get on model? Except for white/lightgray parts.

Cutting the red and blue channels fills them completely white within the channel window, i.e full blue and red. Only the green channel remains in shades of gray and black, creating the different shades of from white to magenta in the RGB channel that govern the specular properties.

[xnodunitx 0]

@USSRsniper

Yes that is correct, a specular map is very similar to a heightmap only in a different perspective, anything that is not black (or in this case pure pink) will have shine, it will just have less unless its closer to the whiter scale.

Of course making the specular map is just part of it, the Rvmat determines how it will look ingame. http://community.bistudio.com/wikidat....ngs.jpg (In this case specular intensity)

Although not Armed Assault, I'll show you similar result in 3dmax from one of my bored ideas, we'll be using the very last greyscaled specular image I showed above.

http://img382.imageshack.us/img382/8421/bh1mdf7.jpg The main focus here is the M134, we can see that set to 40 which would be around.. maybe power 0.2? It's not so noticeable..

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/6736/bh2moy4.jpg But hey at 0 (0.0) we can see there is no specular at all, we can see the scratched metal but its not reflecting at all.

Bump it up to 100 (0.4?) http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/7480/bh3mjj7.jpg And we can see the nonpainted metal shining as it should in the sun...okay so now that we got that covered, lets mess with the specular a bit more.

Here is a different view of the default gun with its 'default' specular map..not too shabby but lets mess around a bit..

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/3963/m134cospec2yo4.jpg mwhehehe..(actually I kicked myself in the rear for this one later because I skipped a VERY VERY important part..whenever you make scratches and such, make it as a seperate layer, same for paint smudging and such..as generally you will want this to reflect on the diffuse and if its not layered..well..you're going to have on hell of a time.)

Anyway, our looks? http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/4022/bhgun2lc0.jpg Okay I had a bit too much fun there, now the whole thing is too refractive..so time to do a level tweak and use the burn and doge tools a bit.. http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/9976/m134cospec23wj0.jpg

And our results? (Well I went crazy with the specular map for one)

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/2576/bhgun3qi5.jpg I'v got my scratches and smudges paint and the whole thing isn't shiny except where I want it to be. Huzzah. And once more from a different angle, our last greyscale and our newest.

http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/3696/bhgun4vt7.jpg

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/5443/bhgun5fx0.jpg

Truth be told its no doubt shinier then it should be, but the point of this was just to get the floor down.

[i0n0s 0]

Bigger version

One step forward, two step back

Hope to release it this week.

Modified version of ArmA RTE. Added ability to rotate and change high of objects. Objects can get exported by copy( & paste). But you can only create objects, no more units.