1st MLOD from ARMA ODOL v40 - M16A4.P3D

[MehMan 0]

Or you can try a different browser.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Perhaps just my overwhelming modelling ignorance, but tell me, when a point (vertex) is blue in Oxygen, rather than red, what does this mean? And secondly, how do I make points that I select turn blue?

Just curious because I'm naming selections on a new vest model, and I don't want it all to FUBAR when I get it ingame.

[Synide 0]

the 'blueness' is to highlight the fact that the 'selection' that the vert(s)/face(s) belong to has 'weighting'...

eg. select a 'selection'... all the vert(s)/face(s) pertaining to that 'selection' are selected in the viewport.

now right-click the 'selection' in the list of selections.

a little context menu appears... near the bottom is a menu item called 'Weights' - click it.

a little modal dialog box appears...

it will show you how many 'selections' the vert(s)/face(s) that make up this 'selection' also make reference to 1 or more vert(s)/face(s) in this selection.

it allows you to alter the weighting given to each of these 'selections', which is used by the engine when it is animating the mesh of the model so that it deforms the mesh properly... and by proxy the texture/material that is applied to the mesh...

as clear as mud? do some googling for 'weight maps', 'amination', etc. etc.

note:- this has been an excercise in how many times i can mention 'selection' in a post... 'cause i'm at home today, bored.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Thanks for the little explanation, mate - very useful. However, I think you missed what I was getting at.

Why are these points blue instead of red? I need to find a way to make my own points blue as well, so as to perfectly emulate the BIS selections.

Here's a pic:

The points only turn blue when a certain selection they are a part of is selected from the menu.

[Synide 0]

no, i didn't miss your point... they are blue because of the weightings... try it... all those verts you have selected in your picture, they belong to various 'selections'...

find just one of the 'selections' that those verts belong to in the list and left-click it... then right-click the selection name and select 'weights' from the context menu...

you'll notice in the 'weights' dialog that various 'selections' listed have differing percentages... you can go through and alter the the percentages as you desire... they directly affect the models mesh deformation in game when animating.

this is what affects the 'blueness' of the verts you are looking at... get it?

there's probably guides around that talk about weight mapping for models, but you'll probably have to trial and error it by loading an rtm and viewing in Buldozer while it animates...

of course to get that to work you have to go through the p3dm with a hex editor and rename ALL the selections to match the case of the selections in the rtm file...

[schroeder 0]

Synide, thanks for this wonderfull job. How did you manage to convert these models to mlod format, this is just incredible (and most appreciated)  

[rstratton 0]

I am a new employee in BIS from now, and all informations about ODOL v40 are secret and I can't share it. sorry. from same reason I must stop gatebuilder developing.

good luck in your research.

traitor

[TabloMaxos 0]

I am a new employee in BIS from now, and all informations about ODOL v40 are secret and I can't share it. sorry. from same reason I must stop gatebuilder developing.

good luck in your research.

traitor

Very smart from you! You quote something that has been sayed three months ago. This is at least spam. Perhaps you could add him on payroll so he can work for the community and not for BIS.

On topic now:

Synide can you upload it somewhere else? The FTP does not work.

[oyman 0]

I am a new employee in BIS from now, and all informations about ODOL v40 are secret and I can't share it. sorry. from same reason I must stop gatebuilder developing.

good luck in your research.

traitor

Very smart from you! You quote something that has been sayed three months ago. This is at least spam. Perhaps you could add him on payroll so he can work for the community and not for BIS.

On topic now:

Synide can you upload it somewhere else? The FTP does not work.

This is atleast spam.

Fix all those unwanted faces from that model in your sig .

[NonWonderDog 0]

What's left to do before these are fully functional? I tried to open up the Abrams model to fix the gunnerview position and the ~1/2 mil misalignment of the gun, but the model doesn't rotate its turrets in game. In addition, the tank bounces crazily when driving offroad and recoils violently when the main gun is fired, as if it had too little mass.

Or is there something I'm missing?

[Jackal326 1158]

Vert weight defines (which are screwed up as has been discussed these past 5 pages or so), and a correct cfgmodels (and/or model.cfg) file for the model. Without the model.cfg the model has no chance of working correctly (same as OFP's cfgmodel section of a config.cpp).

[CameronMcDonald 146]

OK, exactly what causes this The Thing-like deformation here? Is it incorrect weighting, incorrect selections, or both?

Damn this is frustrating... I could have sworn I had the selections down pat. It seems even Synide's MLODs do the same thing when placed ingame... does this mean, like vehicles, that the character P3Ds are incomplete at this time? I could have sworn I saw some custom unit models back somewhere...

[Shadow NX 1]

When we tried to use the ripped models of the soldiers we didnt get them to work right ingame, they were just stuck in the ground... there were thousands of texture paths and stuff.

Or is there a solution we just dont know of?

[CameronMcDonald 146]

- I've found one thing that may help.

Synide's MLOD models have selections, most of which are incorrect. They are named correctly, but the problem is that since the selection names are case sensitive. All of Synide's MLODs have selections in lower case, whereas the correct BIS ones seem to require capitals in certain places... eg. LeftArmRoll instead of simply leftarmroll or Leftarmroll.

Hope this helps some people. I've got my DAPs working correctly now, and am working on other parts.

EDIT - Beware, there are some exceptions, namely _injury and facial selections.

[Synide 0]

i'm sure this stuff has been mentioned in this thread b4... ages back...

here is the skinny... once and for all...

the selection names in these p3dm mlods are as per the selection names in the odol model file... the BIS binarize tool makes them lowercase when it odol's the model file.

binarize does a lot of stuff to the model to get it in an optimal state for use with the engine & directx.

--------------------------

Textures - textures and materials are correctly mapped to faces.

face orientation - has just recently been corrected - in the last 3-4-5 days (can't remember...) - thanks to durg78.

UV's - present and working. (2nd set if it exists is currently not being dealt with - most models don't have more than 1 anyway)

Selection Weight Mapping - present and working. - very important for animating character models...

Face Properties - still a few things to tidy up, like UserValue etc.

Sharp Edges - haven't got round to them...

Selection Names - present, but not correct case, so they don't match the rtm files - a work around (till these are sorted out) is for you to manually edit the p3dm in a hex editor and match the selection cases in trigger.rtm (for instance) - very important for animating character models... this was mentioned way back...

Model Offset - working/done. - very important for animating character models...

Animations - in the case of non-character models, which have anims - the accompanying .rpt file is presently being modified to list out the anims as you'd create them in a model.cfg file. - this won't be perfect but it will be sufficient for you to copy & paste over into a model.cfg that you make.

- very important for animating non-character models...

Skeleton - the skeleton name & bones is listed in the accompanying .rpt file... again the bone names have been made lowercase by Binarize and this will be addressed shortly.

-very important for animating anything...

Vert Properties - some present, but a few more to deal with - not significant.

Centre Of Gravity or Centre Of Mass - not currently available. the Total Model mass is present in the Geometry LOD, but instead of the mass being distributed around the model as it should be, all the verts. have been apportioned the same 'weight' as a percentage of the total. this of course means that the CoG of these models is not what the BIS odol version is. However, as a stop gap measure an extra Point has been added to the Geometry LOD that has been given a selection name called 'CentreOfMass' - this point is where the BIS odol version's true Centre of Gravity should be... so you have to manually adjust the vert. weight distrubution in the Geom LOD till the BLUE-X matches up with this point. - very important for animating and general handling of the model in-game... especially non-character units, like aircraft for instance.

a major bit of work for you to do is create a working model.cfg file for a model - you'd have to do this no matter what model you were using anyway.

there's probably other stuff that's been forgotten too mention just now... not perfect. this is of course if you are trying to re-use these in-game - if you're just looking at them as an educational excerise to see how a working good quality model should be produced for the ArmA game - then they are a good start in the right direction for you.

That is, one should be creating several resolution LOD's and several special-type LOD's for each of you're models. If you want to produce good, robust addons that work well in an MP environment.

As well as using specific materials in certain situations for producing maximum performance & effect.

Another example is when and where to use 2-pass materials.

Selections naming conventions, when/how to use certain anims... many more useful and insightful questions and answers can be gleaned.

the file format being written out is mlod - principally p3dm - other formats will not be produced 'cause this then means you have to open the output in O2PE and the reason's why should be transparent.

the tool is WIP, and it would have been provided to the community long ago except for 1 thing... there is an 'unknown blob' that requires manual intervention to bypass when processing.

sidenotes...

the count of hours spent on this stuff has been lost sight of - too long - as, there is a huge desire to stop mucking around with this and start getting back into content creation.

it's always been an opinion that for community content to be good requires in-depth knowledge - was never about to sit around waiting for that knowledge to trickle down... hence.

been wondering lately whether arma modding is worth the amount of time spent to create... a bit of digressing... lol, of course it is !

although, when that german company releases there effort... some time will be spent evaluating it's modding potential...

oh, and one last thing... regarding availability of links... not 24/7...

edit: PS... not all examples at the link have had the latest "face orientation' & 'offset' modifications applied to them... principally  only the characters, air & weapons (i think...)

[MehMan 0]

Thanks Synide! We all really do owe you a lot.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Agreed. I salute you, Synide - you make this all possible.

On an aside - one very simple and very quick question. I want to join two parts of a model together. For example, let's say I'm joining an arm to a shoulder. How sexactly do I do this in O2? What's the magic button/method?

EDIT - Cancel that, answered my own question. Four vertices and F6 is your man.

[schroeder 0]

Many many thanks, Synide, for your work and explanations  

@Cameron: I don't understand your answer to your own question. Can U please explain it a bit, I have the same problem (joining an arm to a shoulder for instance).

Thank you all  

[CameronMcDonald 146]

All you need to do is to select 4 vertices (points) and then push F6. O2 will then make a face between the 4 corners (thus joining the points). It's important, of course, to not forget to texture the new faces, of course.

[Maddmatt 1]

Hey Synide,

Could you please decrypt "nabojnice.p3d" and "nabojnice_small.p3d" in weapons.pbo? Kinda unusual request and I know it seems like a simple model, but it will be useful to me.

[mechastalin 0]

Can anybody here or has anybody here extracted the unused SPG-9 recoiless rifle model from ArmA? If you haven't could someone? I'd greatly appreciate it as me and a few other people are starting up a small deployable recoiless rifle project.

Files should be in weapons.pbo.

[CRIONYK 0]

sorry to spam again, but i tried each day of this week to access mlods on synide ftp but i never see anything. (i used IE 7.0 and firefox 2.0) i have 550 permission denied each time

can anyone help me ? or can anyone send me a compressed file with all latest versions of mlods ? ou direct link to mlod :'(

very big thanks  

[roguewar85 0]

sorry to spam again, but i tried each day of this week to access mlods on synide ftp (203.97.251.53) but i never see anything. (i used IE 7.0 and firefox 2.0) i have 550 permission denied each time

can anyone help me ? or can anyone send me a compressed file with all latest versions of mlods ? ou direct link to mlod :'(

very big thanks  

Check your pm's box

[Jackal326 1158]

Its not just the day you try, its also the time as well. I doubt Synide is online for 24hrs on a monday, then not online until thursday for example. Its just a case of catching him at the right time.

[mechastalin 0]

Thanks a ton for the SPG-9 model.