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wika_woo

Beginners oh beginners tutorials

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Please may i request some beginner tutorials, as i am interested in making addons for arma.

Or pages that may guide me, i've downloaded 02 & installed it.

I understand it takes alot of patience.

Mostly interested in the vehicle addon making, basic civi cars.

Thanks.

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I don't have any info for you on where the tuts are, but I think that basic civilian cars are an excellent place to start! I was impressed by your choice, and I thought that I would let you know. You're on the right track in terms of controlling the learning curve.

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Maybe it's just me, but I always try to pick things apart when I need/want to learn them. A good way of doing that is learning what each phrase means. i.e: What is a face? What is a vertice? What is a selection? What is a proxy? What is a LOD? How do I create multiple LODs? etc.

It would be great to have a basic tutorial that explains all the modelling lingo(O2 specific maybe?), before proceeding with the basics of actual modelling. All in time I guess.

smile_o.gif

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A face, usually a triangle, is a 3d "plane" made out of vertices. Imagine a box, the side of the box can be made out of two triangles. The corner points of the box can be called vertices. Vertices connect together with a plane to form a face. As with the real box, one corner point is a point for more than one triangle or side of the box.

A selection is what the name says, in O2 it's a group of faces that you have given a name in the selection list and when you click on the name in the selection box you get all the faces selected that belong to that selection.

A proxy is to my understanding a place where a gun or other weapon will be. Proxies are used because they are interchangeable on the fly, don't require seperate models, yada yada, it's a simple face that ingame draws whatever you named it in O2. I think BrBSEB has this covered better.

LOD or level of detail is what the name says. The more you have them, the better the preformance should be, taking in account that you optimize the model in each LOD to have a lower polycount.

But there are other LODs besides model LODs. GeometryLOD that tells the game how heavy the object is, where's the CoG, etc. It's also the LOD that actually interacts with other game objects. Keep it simple so that calculations are fast and simple.

ShadowLOD is the LOD that casts shadows, or holds the model which will cast shadows. Simple again.

Then there are a few LODs I haven't touched.

Then the ViewLODs which are selfexplainitory if you've followed me through.

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Thanks mehmeh & plaintiff1..

I guess i have to learn the theory 1st, then do the practical stuff lol..

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This is for OFP, but it works just as well with ArmA; BRSSEB's tutorials

Very good tutorial when you get it translated with babelfish; extenssive tutorial

When it comes to modelling and stuff releated to it, there is no better way (in end) to learn that look and try, and if you cant grasp something, from here you find many helpful modellers wink_o.gif

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That's Cool man, those tuts look really good.

smile_o.gif

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the tutorials are lame and very vague...the one is for ofp..(iam playing Arma) gigidi gigadi goooo!!However being skeptical i tried it anyways and ofcourse it didnt work..(as I expected) followed EXACT instructions and it says the viewer is unable to load...

also i translated the french tut and the grammar was so horrible to me that it was no better  ;(

could someone give an INDEPTH tut from the very start...seems that some more intelligent people in this area assume you already know certain things???

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Texas, I feel your pain... I'm running into some issues as well. However, the first tutorial for OFP with the crate does work in arma. Arma seems to be a bit more difficult than modding for ofp.

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Quote[/b] ]Texas, I feel your pain... I'm running into some issues as well. However, the first tutorial for OFP with the crate does work in arma. Arma seems to be a bit more difficult than modding for ofp.

the crate tut is great!! if i could get that far lOOl...iam trying to set o2 up properly with the viewer working...

regards

Ice

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Problem on OFP tutorials to arma is that some part are different and some things are not valid. Especially when it comes in configs, modelling itself is pretty much on same basis with some additions.

Viewer is basicly very easy to setup, you just have to put correct arma.exe path in oxygen config/options. Its standing for External Viewer in options, you should also add some extenssions to it (you should include at least: -buldozer -window -noland).

This picture should explain it very well how to config your oxygen

1_1_config_o2-2-c288a.jpg

From courtesy of Chris Young

If this doesn't fix the problem you have to specify your problem a bit.

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Quote[/b] ]Problem on OFP tutorials to arma is that some part are different and some things are not valid.

yea..and this is what iam talking about...things regaurdless of how big or small ARE diffrent...iam playing arma not ofp...like i said...i guess the diffrences are so small people ASSUME that i or any other noob would know whats diff about them and correct it..this isnt the case..

yea...oookkkk....leux\arma\arma.exe -window -buldozer -noland -profiles=C:\leux\arma.exe

wtf is this...so his arma directory is the above?? my directory for the exe is C:programfiles\atari\arma.exe ....this is confusing me...and why the directory at the end??  =C:\leux\arma huh.gif if my arma directory is the one i mentioned above then how should i set this bs up??...leux?? must be his profile name??or...or..or..i dont know??And wouldnt his directory be relativley the same as mine??atleast with bohemia or atari somewhere in the directory??so his game is made by arma and called arma??and is installed in his documents and settings in his profile folder??  sorry for being dumb but like i said the tut is VAUGE..

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Quote[/b] ]yea..and this is what iam talking about...things regaurdless of how big or small ARE diffrent...iam playing arma not ofp...like i said...i guess the diffrences are so small people ASSUME that i or any other noob would know whats diff about them and correct it..this isnt the case..

Well the problem would be that there aint all too many tutorials for ArmA out there. Most modellers who would have enough experience to write comprehensive tutorial are too busy with mods they're working on.

Neverless the fact remains that you have to look on this issue by yourself, because none of us can come there and show how to do it. You really need to take a look on BIS MLOD release and other addon makers releases, read this part of forum very closely and you need to try out new stuff in Oxygen. Chris Youngs tutorial is very good, ok its in french, but babelfish makes it understandable and parts that aint translated you have to figure out (or bluntly guess).

Quote[/b] ]yea...oookkkk....leux\arma\arma.exe -window -buldozer -noland -profiles=C:\leux\arma.exe

Here Chris gave his own path to ArmA as example (Jeux means game or games, if I aint completely off my linguistical skills), its where his ArmA is located and I am pretty sure that it aint same as yours is. Again this is something that variates on almost every single person. Its fairly same as OFP Oxygens paths, just simply leading to .exe. Your path would be following:

c:\program files\atari\arma\arma.exe

As simply it is, its where your arma.exe and other ArmA files are located in, or more exactly root of your ArmA folder. Now last part extenssions, you defianently should have; -buldozer, -window and -noland in there. Making your Buldozer path following:

c:\program files\atari\arma\arma.exe -buldozer -window -noland

Last what Chris has is irrelevant, he just wants to use mouse as external in buldozer, avoids him hitting Alt+Tab every time he wants to return to Oxygen from Buldozer.

Few explanations here on those extenssions, they always starts with -, it tells ArmA to run with defined parameters, list of effect on those parameters are:

-buldozer = tells ArmA to run in work enviroment called Buldozer, reduces usage of memory and gives full bloom of normals (now thats something for you to deal later).

-window = as name states tells ArmA to run in window mode, which should be 800x640 on size as default. You can define size seperately too, but different parameters.

-noland = runs arma without default land, making half background of buldozer window brown and other light blue (ground and air), meant for memory saving purposes (at least in Buldozer, before somebody jumps on my throat about this one). It also makes viewing model and working on it much clearer.

I hope that opened it up a bit, you need to go with common sense on these kind of things and try them out, otherwise you run up on walls in every corner. Good luck and don't forget you find help always in these forums wink_o.gif

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