Goos

I love to see brit stuff appear and I applaud your effort on these units mate. A couple things that really stand out though if you don't mind some advice. Thing that stood out to me the most is how really bright and washed out the colours of the pattern are they could use some more definition and darkened down a bit it's just so blindingly bright in game. Also the texture lacks any real fine details to really flesh it out like dirt, grime and the line of seams etc. Another thing was the direction of the pattern in some places where it flows vertically when it should be flowing horizontally. Most importantly though and I hate to be the one to point it out but that isn't actually British MTP it's American multicam they are very similar patterns but I couldn't help but notice.

Nice job mate they are looking good. I see you finally got an MTP texture your happy with I was contemplating a Brit reskin once beta hit (not happy with the reskins I've seen so far) but now after seeing these I don't really see the point hehe. Are you gonna bother with DPM or desert DPM? (I know we don't use DPM any more but still it's a classic) and as someone mentioned earlier variants with knee pads and gloves would be cool. Keep up the good work mate looking forward to them.

Exactly so. I find it surprising when people ignore normal maps with reskins. And in a lot of cases just clone the exact outfit that the units they are altering are wearing and just change the camo or such. A units appearance could be changed quite a bit by altering the normal map and colour textures alone, not as drastically as an entirely different 3D model of course but enough to make them stand out. I've seen a few cases where people will for example change shirts to UBACS and not really alter the normal map to back it up for extra detail of course it's not essential but personally I think the little details should be backed up with normal maps for that little extra quality. Then again I can be a bit of a perfectionist sometimes :P

Come to think of it actually I'm pretty sure all I did with those normal maps in my pack was remove the badges. You can un-pbo my pack and use the Czech normal maps from it if you want. Might save you a little time and effort unless you prefer to do it yourself of course. The offer is there though if you want them.

Wow been out of touch with things arma for a while now and I come back to find this addon appeared. This addon is much in the way I wanted to take my UK SF pack so made me smile to see someone expand beyond what my old addon was doing. Some nice solid work massi well done. Only thing I would comment on though is your normal maps need some work. I noticed on the Czech units they still have the normal mapping for the old shoulder patches on the odd unit. Nothing game breaking or overly noticeable but maybe worth getting rid of if you can be bothered should you ever update. Again some nice work.

Apologies for the late reply I've been WAY out of touch for months now. First up I'm glad you like the addon as for adding a beret it's impossible I'm afraid. That would require altering the 3D model and that can't be done in this case because I used models from the game and they cannot be altered. My expertise in arma are limited strictly to re-texturing models so I'm afraid my hands are tied there. ON A SIDE NOTE TO EVERYONE I had been intending to update the pack and it never came to be as unfortunatly life got in the way as it likes to do. That said I have been tinkering with the addon on and off over the months and there is a chance of an updated pack. I won't make any promises as I'm very distracted with other things but there is a chance I'll release what I have been doing at some point. If I do the update would feature re-done textures especially a completely re-done MTP camo as well as mixed camo removed completely (I ended up going off the idea of units wearing multiple camo items) The SAS/SBS guys at present come in 3 camo variations DPM, Desert DPM and Multicam. The SFSG guys on the other hand will come in DPM, desert DPM, MTP with desert gear and MTP with woodland gear. The light SAS/SBS guys are currently just in DPM and desert DPM. I may add light units with Multicam or possibly throw in Multicam bits on the light desert units it depends what mood I'm in.

Looking quality mate no use for chechens in any of my mission so far but if I do these will be very useful.

It's actually from the example swatch I linked above ;) I literally painted over the top of it, removed the black/dark brown and white speckles and replaced them with my own. Finishing up with making the edges blend for tiling purposes. I'm working on fixing it right now to see if I can get better results. It does repeat quite a lot on the model but to be honest it's not particularly noticeable. On a side note I removed the light sand/pinky colour entirely and again added it in again myself in key places. *EDIT* Now this rendition is starting to look more like it. Click me. Colours are blending well and no colour seems to be dominating the other anywhere. Possibly a bit light overall but will do some testing and see how well it does in differing environments and adjust accordingly.

The actual process to my MTP was I created a DPM swatch of my own using a reference image then after creating a desert version I took the woodland one and manipulated the layers (i seperated each colour into a seperate layer) obviously using different colours and ended up with this pattern with various overlapping effects. It's been a nightmare to do to be honest. finding a right ballance of colour, tone and making sure there aint too much brown or too much green has been a right cow. If you want mate I can send you my swatches once I have them done and dusted and you can use/edit them for your own purposes I don't mind. it's not that there are no images of MTP the problem is there are no good swatches to work from to get a good pattern. A swatch being an image of a material sample such as.. this the problem is these swatches are small sections of the pattern and not large enough to make something that doesn't look too prepetetive. As for too much green in comparison with that image that is true but the pattern varies with each individual article of clothing no 2 shirts look alike for example. BUT my MTP is a bit heavy on green I admit and this was partially because in game if it didn't look too green it looked too brown it's such a complex pattern it's nigh impossible to recreate accurately but I have been trying. Looking at the flat tiling swatch I made there is actually an even ammount of green and brown the problem is they are clumped too seperatly and not intermingling enough. That said I'd like you all to take a look at this image. *CLICK ME* On the left my MTP in it's current rendition and the right an MTP made from a swatch found on the web (slightly altered) what do you guys think looks better? don't pay too much attention to the colours as the one on the right is screwed up it needs better colour ballance and it's a bit heavy on the green but I can fix that INSTEAD look at the patterns and render judgement I need fresh eyes on this because I've stared so much at MTP I'm going blind to it lol.

And Stalker covers the points I cannot my knowledge of the ArmA engine itself is limited. And a screenie of SAS guys in my newer version MTP which aint massively different but better than it was. Click me

LOD is actually an easy one but I've seen quite a few people have trouble understanding it. "Level Of Detail" or LOD is something that's been used in games for years to optimise performance. Simply put a 3D model in a game in this case lets say a soldier standing right next to him you see him in full detail but if you walk backwards and reach say 10-20 meters away the engine will replace that soldiers 3D model with a less detailed one with less polygons and as you continue to move back another 10-20 meters it replaces it again with an even lesser detailed model. This will happen multiple times the farther away you get from that 3d model. Thats what LOD's are different versions of the same model less and less detailed to be used at varying distances because the less detailed the model the less impact on performance basically allowing you to have a lot more going on in the background. A similar thing happens to textures. they become less detailed the farther away you get. If you look closely at things in games and move away or towards you might notice them change as they switch model it tends to be more noticeable the more things are on screen at once. Hope this clears it up for you. And now back on topic :P I'm probably gonna change the assault SAS guys to use mixed UK and US camos and have the light versions in 2 variations namely pure UK camo versions AND UK/US mix. any thoughts on this would be apreciated.

There are a few factors to take into account when measuring this. Primarily the power of the PC in question especially the graphics card when it comes to visuals like textures or models. Basically big texture files or a LOT of big texture files are the enemy when ballancing performance which is why BIS make a lot of units use similar models or textures so as not to put a strain on the graphics cards memory. This is also why we compress textures. If for example you got a hundred guys each with completely unique textures running around on screen at once it would have a bigger impact than say a hundred guys using only 25 unique textures and the bigger the size of the textures the bigger the hit. An important thing to remember as well is each surface doesn't just have 1 texture these days it has several like the colour texture, a normal map and a specular texture for example. For the increase of filesize in this addon I doubt anyone would see any difference.

Just a heads up on the update for the pack. I won't just be bolting on US camo units as the general feedback about the initial addon was "We don't care about filesize just make em awesome!" so with that in mind I'm actually going over all the units again. Some changes will be small but others will be large enough to notice. Basically I want a lot of variation and I slacked off a bit on the first release. This time however expect units to be more destinguishable (pretty sure I spelled that wrong) from each other. Not so much the sfsg they will remain more generic but sas will clearly be set apart and the use of the MTP camo will be very limited this time! On the subject of the MTP I was never really happy with it and I've been working on a more convincing attempt. It still won't be technically accurate as it seems to be impossible to find a swatch on the web that's worth a damn (all too small and don't show enough of the pattern) but I hope it'll do the job better than the last one. I'll also be adding a desert camo Bergan (don't know why I didn't before). I won't be working on it like mad as I have other things on my mind but it'll come so keep an eye out.

The first few lines of my first post pretty much answered this where I mentioned the first pack and how this one became a whoal other beast. In essence this addon is more of an evolution of my first SAS pack as opposed to an update and the origional was physically branded as SAS only where this I'm exploring different sections of the British Special Forces. Textures are one improvement over the old pack this one also includes the light units without assault gear as well as the woodland backpacks and soon to be updated with some US camos and perhaps some other things. Like flectarn or vegetato? Hmm doubtful I've yet to see a single pic of any UKSF using such camos and betwean the US and UK camo lists they have pretty much every environment covered anyway (which is probably why I've never seen it) it's a thought though. I have so many thoughts and ideas floating about in my head of what I could add to this pack I may throw file size to the wind and end up with one very comprehensive pack but it all comes down to how much work I can be bothered putting into it. For example the US camo units are coming, I'm also exploring thoughts of undercover civilian clothed units, snow environment units and the infamous black clad breach teams. Another thing is I find myself doing personal packs for groups of people and I'm currently embarking on my second one of those so I'm kept busy hehe. Combine that with my personal life and the fact I'm doing this on my own.. well.. we'll see what happens. ;)

I will be updating and US camo is first on my list. To be honest anyone can set them up with any weapons/backpack they choose in the editor anyway. I don't use ACE personally and really don't fancy downloading a monster file just to decide what should go on who. That said I'm contemplating doing an update with an optional config for use with Robert Hammers weapons and I think ACE uses some of his with the same class names (not sure) The force Recon question is a double edged one and something I've considered deeply. They would open up more model variation that much is certain the but however is then that instantly makes the addon only useable by people with combined ops on top of that the link you provided is a config that allows FR units to have backpacks but you cannot see them wear those packs. I can do the same thing in my config file but the FR models are broke up with permanent no backpack on the unit or perminent backpack on the unit and that disrupts the players choice of appearance and starts getting messy for me workflow wise. There is an alternative and I MAY consider it at some point. I make an ArmA 2 (Non OA) addon that can blend with this addon and include an optional config file for use with the OA backpack system. This is true the problem I face is the more variation I add the more complex things get and the more textures required and file size skyrockets. I've been fighting to keep filesize as reasonable as possible but in the end once the US camo units are in and I'm happy with everything I might bite the bullet and go mad with textures. It's something I will definatly keep in mind. Hell criticism is just as useful as suggestions in some cases :D All points you have made I will definatly take on board as well as anyone else who cares to make any suggestions. I'm kinda looking at this first release as a trial run and the comments that will come such as yours will help me mold the addon to something I hope everyone will enjoy. I can't promise I'll please everyone it would be mad to try but I'll try and find some ballance. That said I don't want to spend too much time evolving this addon or I'll go mad but we'll see.