Col. Faulkner

Or, if you just want to make the occasional screenshot and don't want to bother with "fraps", you could also just hit the "Print Screen" key on your keyboard, Alt-Tab out of ArmA, open a graphics application (eg. Paintshop) and do "paste" into it. There isn't any built-in mechanism in ArmA for capturing screenshots.

You could try reshaping the SSh60 worn by the SLA infantrymen.

Excellent to see some of the stuff started by "MehMan" being finished. I know you said earlier that his infantry and small arms were not complete. Are you actually working on them, or have they been shelved indefinitely? I was rather looking forward to them.

Do you just want a model of an M1 steel helmet?

That's good. The BIS rifle was badly in need of some improved textures. You should do this for the standard one with the M3 (?) telescope too. I'm sure it'd be a popular addon.

AFAIK (and I did search for a solution for a good while for my own projects), a weapon-based selective animation like that cannot be done. You can, however, create a script that when called swaps the entire rifle model in the man's hands, but that has the side effect of always completely reloading the rifle each time you do it (ie. deploy bipod = complete reload...retract bipod = complete reload), and it has to be part of the soldier's config, not the rifle's. Frankly, I wouldn't bother. Especially not for this comical combination of ACOG and M24 SWS. Snipering with that combo' in the real world would be like trying to use chopsticks while wearing boxing gloves. ;)

Do they even still do that nowadays? Don't they use special IRR camouflage nets instead? Cut bushes and leaves on a tank is so "wehrmacht".

That looks great! :bounce3: (I won't quibble about the authenticity of them.) Won't you get only rather small battles, though? I always wanted to create a game that would recreate ancient warfare properly (those "Total War" games just don't cut it).

Still needs to be a bit more long and unkempt looking, I think. Think Alice Cooper, rather than Moe Howard. ;) These are certainly very different ideas from the usual addons you see. What are you planning to do with these figures? Are you actually going to get them working in the game?

I tried, but so far couldn't manage to make the SMG barrel look any better. Either the transitions are still far too noticeable or the effect just doesn't look like a thick pierced steel tube at all. At least it's still a good ArmA representation of the real SMG in the sight picture, sounds and kick. Some of the 1980s-era Spearhead stuff is now almost finished. I long ago had to readjust my expectations about quality but it still looks OK enough to play an ArmA-style wargame with. Certainly not the best, but not the worst either. I've now created properly textured (and LOD modelled) soft headress for all the infantry regiments I intended to have, and also added some paras (which I hadn't originally intended to do): [clickable thumbnails] The Gordon wears by far the coolest-looking capbadge in the British Army, adapted from the Marquis of Huntly's clan chieftain crest, worn over a patch of govt. No.3 (Gordon) tartan. On some occasions the stag's head badge was removed leaving just the patch. The "Tam O' Shanter" Highland soldier's bonnet is worn in one of a multitude of personal styles. The Blankshire Regiment is a fictional regiment (although the name has been used as a placeholder in real British Army documents and ex. briefings for many years). I made up the "Britannia" capbadge worn here (adapted from the real-life WW1-era Norfolk Regiment badge). For any eventual public release, however, I'll probably swap this out for a Scots Guards capstar. The beret is already shrunken and shaped in a typical guardsman style. The para from the year 1980 (obviously of 1 PARA, from his red drop zone flash) is wearing his new G.R.P. ("Glass Reinforced Plastic") helmet, cammed up with the issue DPM cloth cover, a scrim face veil and the black rubber top of an old NBC welly. These new plastic lids were first issued to the parachute infantry battalions in about 1978. The beret is worn in the sloppy, "Lancastrian flat hat" style favoured by some paratroopers in the 1970s and 1980s. The 1977 pattern airborne troops' zip-up smock is worn with jungle DPM trousers and normal ankle boots and puttees (British paratroopers were never issued special "jump boots"). Webbing is personalised, and the 1944 waterbottle and carrier, much favoured at that time by paras, marines and S.A.S. (and pretty much anybody on jungle deployments), replaces the 1958 waterbottle and pouch. I'm pleased that I managed to get the variety of DPM colour schemes looking reasonably authentic. The para smock is differently coloured than the normal combat jackets and the jungle trousers are different again. I wish I could get the pockets and buttons looking better though. Bandoliers carry 7.62mm rifle rounds in stripper clips; 50 to 75 rounds (or more) per bandolier, for recharging SLR and LMG mags during halts. The GPMG numbers have their own special GPMG link bandoliers. I'm not making festoons of belted link on the GPMG gunner figures. Not saying that it was never done, but it was frowned upon to have anything except the currently loaded belt hanging off you. Link was supposed to be carried in bandoliers or pouches.

Or you can just put the line attendant = 1 in the soldier's config.

The LOD concept is fundamental. It means Levels Of Detail and requires that you need to make simpler models for the game engine to draw at farther distances. Open one of your models in Oxygen and look at the list of LODs (hit Alt-L to toggle the list on and off). You will need to make your changes to all of the models in the "LOD resolutions" (there will be about six "LOD resolutions", labelled 1.000 to 6.000, on a BIS model soldier, plus a shadow LOD or two). The symptoms you report suggest that you have changed only the 1.000 LOD. Further correspondence on this should really be moved into the editing forum.

Is that a neolithic buzz-cut, he's got? ;)

OK, I know Arma doesn't lend itself very well to that sort of thing. It would be interesting if you could get it to work in some way, though. The M/26 LMG/Automatic rifle looks interesting. I presume it'll be a bit like "firing" an American B.A.R. in the game. How did the Finns actually use it? The small capacity magazines would have made it rather awkward to use as a squad machine gun.

Excuse me if you already know, but they have a website for their project. Maybe you'll get more up-to-date information there: www.cazadoresdemonte.com.ar/malvinas

Can your soldiers actually use the bayonet or is it just there to complete the rifle model?

I really like how the trenches look.

I agree. Thanks for putting in the extra effort to accommodate us.

:confused: Ah, I drew all my camouflage texture tile things by hand. Maybe that made it all much harder than it should have been. Your image seems to have done the trick anyway. They look like pretty old G3s too. That page you link to shows them with (what appear to be) Galil assault rifles as well. I also seem to recall an ArmA addon of the Ksp 58 (Swedish GPMG) - buggered if I can remember exactly where, though. Maybe someone else reading this will know. It'd be good to have the unique sight picture with the tunnel foresight.

The scale and colours of the Estonian camouflage suit look to be pretty much spot-on there! I know from experience that it can be tricky getting it to look just right when rendered in the game. Is the G3 their standard service rifle - even today?

Ok, thanks for that info. I'll do some more experimenting.

There is a normal map on it. That's what generates the highlights around the "holes". The barrel jacket is just a plain cylinder in the model. The normal maps are made by running monochrome drawings through the Photoshop plug in. I don't have the tools to make them any more sophisticated than that. Or do you mean I should use a normal map as well as transparent textures? I always get a horrible jagged white line around the holes whenever I try to make the holes transparent. I'm not sure what causes it. Maybe because the transparent areas are too small on the texture?

Ye gods, who would ever do that to a rifle!? :eek: I'm looking forward more to the digital scheme you mentioned. Will it be temperate digital? snow? desert? urban?

And some very W.I.P. shots of the men. As said, the clothing is getting a drastic re-vamp so these images are just a basic idea of the current state of play. [clickable thumbnails] A Royal Marines booty in his Royal Navy skid-lid. Circa 1980. A booty in the '59 pattern "desert" Denison smock they used to wear before the late 1970s. I'm really disappointed with how this has turned out so far, though :(: The late pattern Denisons are interesting because you can see in them an obvious ancestor of the DPM pattern of the late 1960s. I wonder if the same artists designed the patterns for both. An infantryman from the mid 1980s with customized webbing, brand-spanking new Mk6 helmet (with '84 patt DPM cover), faded old '68 patt smock and '74 patt jungle trousers (far too saturated in that shot, as it happens, and I need to correct the pocket flaps, but the basic colours are right). Also worn are Northern Ireland (aka 'derry) urban patrol boots (in lieu of the horrible issue high-leg combat boots of the time). A trio of squaddies from a line infantry regiment trying to look warry for the camera, circa 1975 - 1980

Yes, those photoshop brushes are amazing. I just recently worked out how to use them to do stitching and that wrinkly effect on seams. Heretofore I'd been doing it with an ordinary paint brush (probably why it was such a mess). The clothing seams and pocket flaps are getting a major overhaul in the light of this. In the meantime I've been working on unwrapping and "texturing" the models. Here are arty screenshots of some of the small arms: SLRs in various flavours circa 1970 to 1997 (SLRs were finally declared obsolete and withdrawn from service in November 1997): [clickable thumbnails] 7.62mm Light Machine Gun (aka "Bren"). This is the version from the late 1950s - early 1960s. The "7.62mm" warning label in enamel paint was to prevent stupid squaddies trying to stuff .303" rounds up it or trying to force .303" mags into the magazine way (which wouldn't fit as the 7.62mm mags were much narrower - a determined squaddy could break, bend or force anything though). The later issues tended to omit the label, as .303" had been consigned to history by then. My later variant is the L4A9 with the sight bracket on the receiver. There's actually a tiny error in this model that only anoraks will likely spot - this is what I get for using the 1959 parts catalogue as reference. It shouldn't be too hard to fix, though. I've configured it so it's nice and comfy to fire and is pretty accurate (like the real thing). As in real life, the mag sticking up obscures your view and the mag changes are a royal pain. This is my second-favourite weapon in ArmA now (after the SLR, of course). 9mm SMG (aka "Smudge", aka "Sterling"). The pierced barrel jacket looks only "adequate" but it's the best I can do without making a model with an astronomical poly count or using transparent textures (which always looked rubbish when I tried it and tend to give that "gun made out of paper" look). It's cool to blat away with it in the game, although it's every bit as bloody useless on the ArmA battlefield as it was in real life - strictly for tankies, WRACs and other B-ech bods. Nevertheless, I'm giving it to my medical orderlies and the Charlie G gunners (I'm not planning to make platoon signallers - only the 1980s section commanders are getting a Clansman 349 set on their model). I'm still working on the texturing of these. Getting that "well-used but looked after" metallic look is difficult.