View Pilot lod - weapon problem

[sakura_chan 9]

I am porting a personal m249 over to Arma2 from Arma1, but the weapon is messed up when you are in first person view. It 'blurs' like the weapon optics do when you turn and also it is drawn BEHIND the soldier's model, so the hands are visible through the weapon. I downloaded all the arma2 weapon addons released so far, but I can't see anything different in what I've done. Is it a shader, some special named selection that I am missing or what?

This is the way the optic pointers work, so I must be missing something simple.

[scubaman3D 0]

My guesses are that this either has something to do with binarization, or it has to do with your alpha sorting (i.e. select the model, go to faces->sort).

Otherwise, I'm not sure - I haven't had this problem with A1 weapon models in A2.

Edited July 23, 2009 by scubaman3D

[sakura_chan 9]

I thought A2 couldn't load binerized models. I tried messing with the alpha layers, it only uses one alpha though. I'll give it a try.

edit***

I got it fixed. apparently you can't use alpha textures in the pilot view lod? I removed all the alphas (a custom muzzleflash) and replaced it with a muzzleflash proxy, and it worked just fine. Adding an alpha texture, either on top of or below the main model's alpha layer made it go all wierd. How did BIS then make the optics on the weapons?

Edited July 24, 2009 by Sakura_Chan

[DaSquade 0]

Just wondering...Afaik, BIS changed something in the paa that is why we need TD's decompression tool to open BIS stock textures. I haven't found any info on what is changed and if all textures (alpha and non alpha) are compressed. I suppose guys like TD know more...

So far i have been too busy making contence that i didn't really had the change to check his tool out on ingame textures. The topic of TD's de and compress tool didn't had much info and afaik one could still use the old uncompressed format. Maybe for some reason view pilot needs to have that kind of compression (make no direct sense though). Good luck testing that out.

*On the models (sights, muzzles, etc...) itself nothing has changed afaik.

On the other hand it might be what Scuba says. Maybe one should wait for the tools.

[t_d 47]

The A2 paa's are pretty the same as the old ones. The only difference is the compression. Engine intern the textur data does not differ.

BIS btw also use proxies for muzzleflashs.

[scubaman3D 0]

I got it fixed. apparently you can't use alpha textures in the pilot view lod?

There must have been something else going on. BIS uses alpha textures on their optics like the eotech and aimpoint. you can see they're named xxx_ca in the pbo.

[gms 0]

Sakura_Chan, Try to use DXT1 with alpha channel textures instead of DXT5.

Edited July 27, 2009 by gms

[rocket 9]

Also, make sure that you use a proxy object for the muzzle flash. Don't have the muzzle flash itself in with the rest of the LOD. I have found that has assisted for many alpha problems.

[sakura_chan 9]

Okay I've figured it all out now. Don't use DXT5 textures, but rather dxt3 or argb8888 textures. It all works like the bis guns now!

[Jackal326 1179]

Would also work fine by following what Rocket posted (i.e. making the muzzle flash a proxy) - at least, thats what worked for me when I had this exact same problem.

[sakura_chan 9]

No I'm referring to the glass on optics. Simply name the textures with _4444 instead of _ca and it all works.

[scruffy 21]

I have got the same problem, but can't get rid of it for what I want to do.

Normal textures with alpha work fine if I use _4444 as described. But I want to do this and when using a proper alpha texture with RGB 1,1,1 in the alpha channel I still get this bug.

Any ideas? And please describe it as if speaking to someone who has no idea what he is doing :D