M14 EBR

[Messiah 2]

- how many separate textures is the EBR using at this point? If it's > 3, it's too many! If it's < 3, ignore this.

Quote[/b] ]PS: that model is all one texture. The scope will probably be on a second along with a silencer.

for a weapon it should be only one texture really, maybe an extra for scopes - seeing as that's what you're doing, it seems everything's on track

[Panda-PL- 0]

-Highest res lod (but, also not the 'eye'/vizor view, as there you might want to have smoother recticles etc...but can compensate that by deleting other non visual parts).

I was also considering it. Problem is that some animations will allow you to see the other side of the rifle in 1pp view.

No, you can't delete faces on right side of weapon.

And yes, the rifle model is very nice .

[DaSquade 0]

Quote[/b] ]I was also considering it. Problem is that some animations will allow you to see the other side of the rifle in 1pp view.

True, ArmA made it use harder to make use of this old feature (but there are always parts that might come as candidate i think, just way less then in OFP days).

[Yossarian 0]

WOW! Thanks for all the tips guys. Extremely usefull! Let my try and respond to everything.

@Neph & xnodunitx: That helps a lot guys. I played around with the smoothing groups on the upper reciever and it looks a bit better now. Although, that rail is gonna be hell. The normal maps don't help that much with this... I tried it in-game. Snowfella from gr.net makes amazling looking rails using the texture method, I'll ask him to he does it. I'm only using max 7, so I'm probably missing a lot of those tools...

@DaSquade: That model is very good. Where I gave-up polys was obviously in the holes (booleaned&optimized, not hand-made) and also on the cylinders, especially at the back. But otherwise, I'm not that displeased with the 4181 poly count -- especially considering all those booleans. I went through and optimized them as much as I knew how. I'll post some wires, tell me if you can see placed where I could weld more. It was a choice I made.

@CameronMcDonald: Thanks! and yes, it's all one texture. I'm already working with RobertHammer. (he's exporting it from O2 for me, and he wrote the congif). But if he doesn't have time to do LODs, then I'll ask Skaven. His stuff is top-notch.

@Zadoff1880: ty for the pics. I say those, and I'll probably use 'em as a guide for the Sniper version.

I made a quick scope and silencer for the EBR and the poly damage came out at ~5100, unoptimized.

And here are some uglyass wires. I know guys, the boolean is ugly as hell, but I optimized it as much as I could, and I like having the holes. Have a look:

[DaSquade 0]

Ah, ok ic. You meant face count instead poly count or at least i thought the model wasn't converted to tris. In that case, your face count is very good compaired to what your modeled.

If compaired with mine, my facecount was poly count and makes it a wooping 6330 in triscount .

So, good job, no further comments here.

Well one, after looking to the wires, it looks as flawless as i can see (bit hard in tris shape). The one place where you can save some is the tube above the grip where the bars of the stock goes through. I mean the outerside of the tube, there you can leave out the edge (edge that was used for the connection part to ris. But that is like a 18 tris gain from first look.

'Holes' are indeed a killer in poly count, but i like them aswell...but like in my model i decided to make them in alpha's....this requires a more high res texture if you want smooth holes though. But model decision...but that would be a good part to leave out in one of the next lods .

[Zadoff1880 0]

Zadoff1880

Are you sure this is M14 based? Just wondering, as i once made contact with a guy on MP.net who had a 'long' barrel EBR kit, but it turned out to be a M21 converted to EBR...

Err... no it's not a m21 conversion, I am 95% sure that it's not. This one has a long barrel and CQC optics:

http://www.airsoftextreme.com/images/thebr/ebr-07b.jpg

Also, people often confuse m14 EBR and M14 sopmod:

http://www.6millimeter.de/bilder/1114678901aprm14sopmod.jpg

Similar, but not the same thing

The 6th Sence weapon mod has a lot of those things, they are for SF guys mostly, regular GI use M14 EBRs

A simple vidoe of a "short-barreled" EBR:

(nothing special though)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXMN9C9IoWQ

[Yossarian 0]

@DaSquade: Thanks man! ya, the holes would be the first thing to go in the lods.

Although, before you praise the model too much, I've gotta admit I've got no idea weather I'm counting tris or polys (those pics are just out of their viewport with "edged faces" turned on). I've just been using the "polygon counter" in 3dsm? Should i convert it to editable patch or poly or whatever? How do I get a proper Poly count?

You're absolutely right about the grip. That was one of the first things I noticed on your wires. I wish I'd done mine that neatly. Next time I won't use 10 sided cylinders on the but-stock rails either Don't know what I was thinking.

Zadoff, That video on Youtube with the silenced m14 is sweet. Those would make pretty good weapon sounds. Could I use Audacity to rip sounds out of a video?

[Zadoff1880 0]

I always wondered why many elite Russian units still use AKMs even though they have plenty of modern riflez...

It's becasue AKMs are 7.62, and the new Ak-74Ms are 5.54 - not good for penetration. Russians still haven't adopted 7.62 Ak100s (but you can find them in the RHS weapon pack v2), so they use old AKMs.

[Messiah 2]

very sweet wire - good work indeed

must ask though, what made you not model the RIS but instead model the holes/indents? My first choice would have been the other way around, leaving the indents to normal maps and the like.

each to their own of course - not saying you've done anything wrong

[Yossarian 0]

Small update: smoothing issues sorted out (mostly). RobertHammer helped with this too. And I've added an ammo crate for the ebr.

@Messiah: The holes were a nice detail, it was just a choice. I'd seen some really, really good rails done with like 10 polys and a great texture+normals. (by Snowfella and others). Maybe I'll do them like BIS in the future (ie: two rows of "bumps" on either side of the rail, using textures for individual notches). Mostly though, I made 'em because I just wanted to try them out. But you're right they aren't the most practical use of polys.

[xnodunitx 0]

@DaSquade: Thanks man! ya, the holes would be the first thing to go in the lods.

Although, before you praise the model too much, I've gotta admit I've got no idea weather I'm counting tris or polys (those pics are just out of their viewport with "edged faces" turned on). I've just been using the "polygon counter" in 3dsm? Should i convert it to editable patch or poly or whatever? How do I get a proper Poly count?

Depends on the mode, if you are using editable mesh then max will count your quads as tri's regardless. However the count appears to lower in editable poly which would imo suggest it counts what surfaces can be or are, as quads vs what is a tri.

[Yossarian 0]

@DaSquade: Thanks man! ya, the holes would be the first thing to go in the lods.

Although, before you praise the model too much, I've gotta admit I've got no idea weather I'm counting tris or polys (those pics are just out of their viewport with "edged faces" turned on). I've just been using the "polygon counter" in 3dsm? Should i convert it to editable patch or poly or whatever? How do I get a proper Poly count?

Depends on the mode, if you are using editable mesh then max will count your quads as tri's regardless. However the count appears to lower in editable poly which would imo suggest it counts what surfaces can be or are, as quads vs what is a tri.

WOOHOOO!! my poly count was just cut in half!

2230 is the number of polygons on my model

4181 is the number of triangles on my model

...before I was confusing quoting tri count as a poly count. my bad.

[Stewy 1]

All good news mate - really looking forward to this one! Thanks for making a crate!

[Yossarian 0]

Ok, I've got a question for experianced weap modders:

What's the proper way to make a scope in ArmA? both sniper and aimpoint style. Bellow is a picture of a (very, very rough) WIP of the scope. As it is now, the middle is filled in (ie, can't see through it). Do I leave it like that? Or is it supposed to be clear and have the ret textured onto the model?

[Messiah 2]

for a sniper scope, no

it only needs to be clear on things such as Aimpoints, Eotech where there is no zoom, and you want the 3d ironsight view

with a sniper scope, your eventual view is going to be the black screen with a hole in it and the graduation marks/crosshairs, so you can do without the fancy see through stuff

[roberthammer 582]

Nice WIP scope

I vote for sniper ver yes,becuase i need that version

[Yossarian 0]

Thanks Messiah, that's exactly what I needed to know.

This scope is 1x-4x variable magnification. Here's what I'd like to do:

At 1x zoom it is like the aimpoint in ArmA. You just look through the model. But at 4x zoom, the edges of the screen black out and the view is similar to the ACOG/sniper scopes.

Can it be done?

don't worry RH, the sniper version will come.

[Messiah 2]

not that I know of - you'd have to make two seperate versions for now

[Yossarian 0]

ok. Hmmm. The reason I chose this scope was because of the variable zoom. It was suited to the EBR and ArmA.

Would it be possible to give a large magnification with the aimpoint style zoom? In the config, just boost the "zoom" value but you're still looking through the model, your eye is just much closer?

About the reticule: where does it go in the scope? near end or far end or middle? Is illumination (a la Aimpoint) done with texture or is the dot actually modeled?

sorry guys, lots of questions. I know, I just wanna get it right.

[Inkompetent 0]

Nice stuff! And with that low poly count it means we can get a modeled RIS rail too, right?

[wipman 1]

Hi, im not sure on what you've asked (yes, my english is that bad)

but in the OFP the order of the 3D layers required for a retoiluminated

sight were (from bottom to up/front/closer):

1: Muzzle Flash texture.

2: Reticle Circle.

3: Aiming Cross*.

The aiming cross, was made shiny (by night) in the texture properties,

setting it to: Shine.

I don't know how it works now in the ArmA... i should try to find a

way of open/edit the AK74-1PSO optic.p3d to find it out.

If im not wrong... with the NVG's on, the red dot of the M68

turns white, so it could be a solid (not 2D) object on top of

all the other (2D) objects/layers; the muzzle flash... reticle.. etc.

But i can't confirm this; as i've said... the question is inside the

AK74-1PSO optic.pd3. I hope that all this unreadable crap serves

to you man. Let's C ya

[Yossarian 0]

Nice stuff! And with that low poly count it means we can get a modeled RIS rail too, right?

can't blame a guy for tryin'

Here's what I'm thining for Short-Dot scope. It's not perfect, I know. It's variable zoom 1.1x-4x (ie: perfect for most things in ArmA)

at 1.1x (with the "true view" mod) it'd look like this:

at 4x it'd look like this:

The ret is photoshoped on for now. I know it's ugly at 4x, but because of perspective, you can't get rid of the front sight in that view.

OR: I could try and get 6thSense to write a config like he did with his m14s. (ie: press "f" (default) to get a different zoom mode, his had backup irons, mine could have sniper zoom)??

[Inkompetent 0]

Talk to 6th Sense, please, because that would be awesome! Would be really nice to start getting stuff like that standardized so that ACOGs could be used in CQB too, so please.. take a step into the future of ArmA before the rest of us!

[Zadoff1880 0]

For that partucular scope I think it would be better to use traditional OFP sniper optics style - black screen etc.

For CQC optics u could always use stuff from other mods - there are already plenty of Eotechs and ACOGs.

[Yossarian 0]

The problem is that I want it to do both. In RL it is a CQB scope as well as a mid-range scope.

Because there is no way in ArmA to model the way the glass works in the scope to magnify things, I think I'm going to cheat a bit and make the size diameter of the main tube bigger so as to give more viewable area. (in practice, looking down the scope, you would not see a big boarder around the magnified image in the scope, the image would fill the entire area of the eye-piece.)

Anyway, school is taking priority this week so I won't get much done.

If people want, I could release a beta. Only one gun, with new sound still usking Skaven's m14 mags (the mod required his mod to use, and I'd also have to get his permission). But I could release a preview