LoTekK

Holy crap, these are badass! That valkyrie in particular looks awesome.

Less dick waving, more movie making.

Jesus H Christ, is that an in-game cockpit shot?! One's self-propelled and the other is a freefall (with steering)? If I completely missed the point of your question, feel free to reach out and smack me.

[edit] Before I forget: If you have any camera suggestions, please fire away! I'm not all that familiar with the various cameras (especially for the various time periods), so if there are any particular cameras that you know were in use, let me know. If you have reference pictures, please include those as well. [/edit] Earlier I had considered using switchmove for the camera pose, but completely forgot about the inability (at least to my knowledge) to class one of the switchmoves as a combat class anim. That means no optics view, and an inability to fire. If someone can prove me wrong, please do so. My current plan is to have an entirely new "Photographer" class, with all the pertinent animations completely replaced with ones suitable for camerawork. I may have different classes with different animations replaced, though. For example, one class could have the primary weapon anims replaced, but retain the standard pistol anims, in order to be able to carry a sidearm into the field. Another one might have the standard primary weapon anims, but replace the pistol anims with ones suitable for a smaller camera (say, for a blackop/spy/espionage mission where you'd need to infiltrate and photograph documents or something along those lines). I may also add a small camera that will be classed as a binocular weapon (thus using the standard binoc anims). We'll see how this all progresses. I've made decent progress on the photographer model. Cut down a lot of polies in the hands, and added a custom head. I'll see if I can get in touch with Llauma to see if he's okay with me UV mapping the head to match his facetex.pbo textures. If not I'll just map it to use the default BIS faces. Also started to add accessories. So far I've got a baseball cap, helmet, and Oakleys (the helmet needs work, though). Without headgear, the photographer currently stands at just shy of 3000 tris (no LoDs yet). edit: @DBR_ONIX: Just saw your (long! post. For functionality, after a bit of putzing around, I had more or less settled on checking the position of the "bullet" as it was in flight. My preliminary ideas involve having the mission maker set a list of targets, which the camera script would check against. So far it's all primarily in note form, though, so no "real" script has been written yet. Will get around to that once I'm a little further along (artist first, coder second ). For lenses, I've had a couple of ideas that are fighting for prominence. First one involves simple weapon modes (spacebar), while the other involves magazines. The latter would allow me to visually update the model (the M16 mortar, for example), so it's looking the more attractive option at the moment. I'm not thinking about different ammo for each zoom lens, though, since that wouldn't really make sense from a functionality point of view (I'm not going to swap out my film when I change lenses). The fired eventhandler checks for muzzles, as well, so that should suffice. Of course, I could also combine both of the above, for purposes of simplifying the checks for distance and zoom. Flash: Also on the list. Should also be the easiest of all the features to implement. Some of the stuff you're mentioning might fall outside the scope of this project, but it's still pretty nifty. I was actually thinking about how cool it would be to be able to get pictures back into the game. The debriefing you mentioned would be one cool use, and the other would be in a campaign, for example. One mission might require the player to recon a site and get intel photos. The next mission might have somebody else use those photos to plan a strike, or something to that effect. The possibilities are endless. About your last comment. It's funny, because running around with setCaptive true while I set up force-on-force battles was one of the things that led me to start this project up. I'd be running around, watching the battles unfold, and thinking of how much fun it would be to be taking pictures. Dammit, I keep getting that "too many emoticons" error.

There's actually another, more practical reason for not keeping your terrain settings at anything higher than Normal. Basically ground vehicles don't handle the higher-detail terrain all that well. I've found that Normal gives me the best tradeoff between performance and aesthetics (not to mention cover for ground units). I've also found that, to be perfectly honest, Very High gives a rather arbitrary perturbation to the terrain. Looks a bit funny, imho. So yeah, stick with Normal, and crank up your viewdistance (on my paltry laptop, I'm getting decent framerates at Normal and 1500m viewdistance).

As far as I'm aware, this is standard behavior. However, the initial loading is exacerbated if you up the various detail levels, specifically terrain detail, and also the terrain textures. What setting are you using for terrain detail? I typically don't have too much stuttering at normal (a little, though, depends on the island), and almost none at low and very low. Higher than normal, though, it gets pretty bad. The other thing that influences this is your view distance. Obviously with more to see, there's more to load initially. Try to play with those two settings.

Oh my god! That is insane! Do they know what caused the blast?

@BraTTy: See DBR_Onix's posts about his OFPCamera tool, which hooks into Kegetys' FWatch. @Gedis: When I read that, all I could do was imagine a war correspondent hitching a ride on a Slick and taking pictures out the side door. That would be simply awesome. edit: Notice that instead of continuing work on the character model, I went off and made a sig.

couldn't you just set it up to also detect when the thirdperson button was hit? Sure, but without some serious error checking, you wouldn't be able to tell if the player wants to get to third person, or if he was originally in optics view. Basically it doesn't seem like it would work properly, without a built-in way to actually tell if the person is in optics mode. have any more info about what the project will involve? The OFP Combat Photography Project

Though I'll probably have an alternative with just vest and no body armoras well. I'm planning on different types of headgear, don't you worry about that. Also thinking of maybe having a presspass with setobjecttexture. That would require me actually reading up on that, though, to see if it would be at all useful. Anyways, still hammering away, tweaking here, tweaking there, shaving tris where I can. Really really need to cut down on the tri-count on the hands. Good idea. *adds to list* *suddenly gets a crazy idea to replace the pistol-draw animation with one for grabbing the backup camera* And yeah, that's the thingie I was talking about. Thanks for the info. I might just have it as a hidden selection or something. This is certainly turning into a bigger project that initially envisioned. Well hell, that's a proportion rule I never knew about. As for the overall proportions, I really should have a template loaded up for reference, but I just never got around to doing that. Thanks for the heads up on the legs, will get that fixed up. edit:

@Hawkins: That's probably true. If anything, anything distinctly era-specific will probably end up being added as hidden selections or something along those lines. 60's era camera should be fun, as would a WW2 era one. @Gedis: I don't see any problems with MP implementation, as far as the screenshot functionality, since that'll essentially be a local thing. Videos? Um, try fraps. I don't know if there will be any problems with the mission funtionality (ie, go in, take a picture of these scuds) in MP, but again, that bridge will be crossed when I get to it. And an update. I've fixed up the proportions, fixed the topology of the shoulder/armpit area. Also added hands, but those'll need a lot of work, as they're currently a bit poly heavy (each hand is something like 750 tris ). Now for the head, would people suggest going with Llauma's heads, or a custom head that uses the default BIS head mapping? Or should I put up a head when I've done one before asking? edit: Oh, if anyone's wondering why that photographer vest is so bulky, it's because there's body armor underneath (the top of it is visible, but not very apparent because of the lack of textures currently). Also, I'll be dealing with asymmetry later, once the mesh is closer to finalized, so don't worry too much about the mirroring currently.

Quite possibly, yes. I'm hoping to have a range of cameras to suit different eras. 60's and 70's would be an obvious choice, considering the impact war journalists made during the conflict. As for the correspondent, whether earlier era versions end up being retextures of the current one or mesh reworks will depend on whether I can be arsed.

Good to see there's interest in this non-combat-focused project. Been tweaking the photographer model, and got it looking a little better, and am in the process of fixing up the shoulder/armpit area. Will try and get some more progress done before I put up another shot. Got a question for you photographer folks out there. I've seen pictures of journalists and photographers where their cameras have this large chunky thing attached to the bottom. An extension of sorts. What are those for, and how important are they? If they're important I'll probably have at the least an alternative or hidden selection including them. Also, what would be the more essential camera accessories for someone covering, say, a conflict? I've got some ideas for other accessories like GPS, etc, from that war journalist action figure that came out last year (came across it while hunting down reference pics), but still a little clueless when it comes to the actual camera accessories.

CEM. Ha! I'll thank you to not tell me when I should or should not be fearing for my life. The way I've always figured it, if a guy isn't fearful while under heavy fire, and continues to pop out and fire away, more power to him. And the hail of bullets that cut him down. Um. o_O

Odd. I could've sworn I was getting errors using getDamage. Or maybe it was the eventHandler. Of course, it's entirely possible I've been an idiot the whole time.

Eh heh heh. Heh. See, this is what happens when you decide to start something up at three in the morning instead of sleeping. Argh. Well, at least that'll be easy enough to fix.

Thanks for the mirror. Should prove useful. Yeah, the camera lens is completely wonky. I didn't have a decent reference for a telephoto lens, so I just eyeballed it. Eventually I'm hoping to have a range of different cameras (if I have the energy I'll see about cameras from different eras). The big dilemma, though, is that I'm thinking about creating a whole new set of animations for the addon, specifically for the photographer stances, not as static poses, but rather to replace the current combat poses. The obvious problem with that is that the animations won't look right with regular weapons. But, I reckon I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

From what I understand, detecting via the optics keybind would be pretty unreliable, since the thirdperson toggle keybind also cancels out of optics view. As for the dynamic readouts, I would think that dialogues or some form of cutRsc would be the way to go (the project I'm working on at the moment might end up using something like that, depending on whether I can be arsed ). I doubt it would be possible to integrate into the optics .p3d.

Oh my god, they're all with 2 m's. Y'know what I always found funny? The note in the comref for setDamage: And yet none of the others were fixed.

Holy crap! This should be fun.

Didn't have much time after my Bangkok trip to work on this much, but found some free time recently. I'm probably going to end up scrapping the current camera and reworking it from scratch, since the mesh is a bit of a mess. I have gone ahead and slapped on a texture for the time being, though. Hasn't had much love, so seams abound, and there are blank areas. The pose in the screenshots is a static one at the moment, reworked from the DMA NextGen anim pack: Also, spent a couple hours working on a combat correspondent (obviously still WIP). Both are roughly 1740 tris at the moment: As for usability, I'd be interested in taking a look at DBR_Onix's camera utility for the screenshot functionality, but it's not available on ofp.info. Anyone have a mirror? I've got some fairly solid ideas for how to get actual mission functionality for the camera, and I'll be working on that in addition to the art assets.

Woohoo!

Sorry but that's not the way it works. You'll note that I never said a good folio won't help. However, you absolutely cannot downplay the importance of networking. You can have a great portfolio, but the fact is, a lot of companies will hire internally first, with openings showing up to the public a lot later. If you know someone who knows someone who knows someone, you've got a much better chance with a half-decent folio than if you had a great portfolio but no contacts. Like I said, a lot of the guys I've spoken to in the industry will tell you that contacts and networking are absolutely important to getting a job. Oh, another thing that helps is to show your stuff off in online communities. Polycount and CGTalk are both great for this purpose, being that they're both frequented by, well, everyone. If you make a splash there, chances are good that someone relevant will see it, and at the very least take a note of your name and work.

Novalogic busted for pirated software You'd think they'd have the common sense to obtain their software legally. Especially since they develop software themselves. Riiight. One item of software, maybe. Two, three, even. But look at the list of software products! I don't know how the hell they got away with such a paltry fine.

That's a lot of addons! Are you using the -nomap switch?