LoTekK

With the obviously huge interest in combat photography and videography in the community, I thought I'd go ahead and make a nice, rugged camera to add as a "weapon" of sorts. I'm barely into the whole thing, having only managed to put aside a few minutes here and there yesterday for the modelling, I've knocked up a basic model. Behold, the Nikon D200 with a completely fictional telephoto lens in all its untextured glory: I've got a couple of immediate issues that need looking into, though. As you might be able to tell from the pics, the camera model is actually rotated off vertical and to the right. This was the only way I could see to get the thing to sit "properly" in the player's hands (I'm currently subclassing it as a primary weapon), though it's still far from perfect. Currently it's pointing about 10 degrees to the right, and 15 degrees up. It doesn't look too bad, and since it's not going to be firing bullets, per se, I'm thinking it might be okay to leave it as such. The question is, is there any way to alter the animation/pose of the wielder per weapon? I'd just need to move the player's left (supporting) hand down and to the left a little. Obviously this sucker needs further modelling love, and a texture, but I was wondering what the interest level was like for this? Oh, and how bout a little discussion as to how to make the thing actually usable in a mission? The initial thought was to just make it cosmetic, especially since there doesn't appear to be a built-in screenshot function in OFP. I had some ideas bouncing around in my head, though, but nothing concrete.

Hope this thread is appropriate. I did a search, but the old Combat! thread had been locked, and I couldn't find anything else pertinent. Anyways, yeah. The M977s, all versions (open, covered, MG) disappear when they should switch to a lower LOD. At my current settings of viewdistance 1500, visual quality 8..21, and framerate 20..40, they disappear somewhere around 150-200m from my position. So, I guess, the third or fourth LOD? Is there any fix planned for this? Actually, I guess I should probably be asking if anyone else is also experiencing this, or if I maybe have an addon conflict or display issue.

Not to be a wet blanket or anything, but is it really a good idea to use GR textures? It is IP, after all.

All I have to say is: Hellz, yes. Great job optimising this, and it's looking really sharp. That alternative model you've posted looks hot. You should totally model one of those if you have the time.

Sorry, real life's been a cow, so I haven't had any time to set aside for this. I still need to finish up the ARH Tiger for the ADF mod, which I'll hopefully be able to do by this weekend, after which I can start setting aside more free time to work on this project. It ain't dead, though, that's for sure.

Sorry, after that crazy initial burst of productivity, real life intervened, and I've had a crapload of stuff to tend to, so I've barely had any time to touch the Tiger (or anything else Flashpoint- or game-related, for that matter). I'm hoping to get a bit of time after the weekend's up, but it's Chinese New Year, which means plenty of familial obligations. Hope to have a healthy update next week.

Oh, right, forgot about that completely. Uh, crap. I think it was the second one. I actually can't remember. Fairly sure it was the second one. o_O

Been pretty busy with RL stuff, so haven't really had any time to work on the textures, just little bits here and there that aren't really deserving of a whole new set of shots. However: Can't find a pic of the gunner's console anywhere.

Coming along real nicely. I see some wasted polies here and there, but you've done some nice optimization so far. This oughtta be fun to see.

I was a bit mixed about RvS, but on the whole I found it pretty decent. But... Without the planning, without the lethality of the firearms, without the relatively realistic ammo management, how the hell is this even an R6 game?! I was looking forward to this, even installed the demo, but looks like it's getting the uninstall before it even gets run. Twats.

This is pretty nifty, though Disney did something like this a loooooong time ago, after the release of that horrible Rocketeer movie, whose only saving grace was a fine-lloking Jennifer Connely. Anyways, they had this audiotape that came with a 3D comic depicting the movie, and the audio, with stereo headphones, was a really good approximation of the full 360x360 degrees of sound. Not quite as precise as this one, but the tech was there nonetheless.

Not sure if anyone else is working on converting the old heads, so I figured I might give this a bump. I needed a break from the Tiger, so I spent a bit of time redoing Troska's face. It's not done yet, but this one's taking a bit longer than the others due to the even crappier quality of the .pac.

This is probably going to sound incredibly stupid, but I'm wondering if it's possible to have texture variants defined in config, rather than have separate .p3ds for each texture variant. Right now I've got one kangaroo model with three texture variants representing different species. If I needed different unit types for each species (Red Kangaroo, Eastern Grey Kangaroo, eg), would I need one .p3d for each? Or is there a way to use the same .p3d with different textures in the config?

Case in point: your last update had a lot of tiny, barely-noticeable bevels around the edges of the body. Now, bevels are cool and all, assuming you've got the budget, but the way you've used the bevels is rather wasteful, considering they'll add nothing to the silhouette from anything further than arm's reach, if even that far. tiny bevels like that will be much more efficiently represented with good texturing. A simple example to illustrate: Left or right; which edge is bevelled?

@Blackjack: Typically the tri count is considered the "true" face count, since tris are the lowest primitive available to display, and a quad, for example, is going to get split into two tris once it hits your GPU.

O2 gets a bit finicky about paths, from what I remember of my own teething problems. Try creating a directory for your GAZ within the O2 directory (O2Light\GAZ, for example), and drop all of your assets in there. Textures, 3ds mesh (though this one's not really necessary). Try assigning the texture again, and see if that helps.

O2 imports the UV mappings without a hitch. If it didn't, I wouldn't even have bothered with modelling for Flashpoint. If you mapped your mesh before importing, all you need to do now is to select the appropriate faces per map (if you split up your UV map sensibly this shouldn't be an issue), and hit "E". This will bring up the face properties dialogue, where you can, among other things, assign the texture of your choice.

That pesky law of diminishing returns seems to have started to kick in, as far as time spent vs output. Anyways: Cheers, g'night.

Ooh, nifty. *bookmarks site* Cheers, dude. @SpecOp9: Yeah, if the promises of addon portability materialize with ArmA, I'm pretty certain I'll be getting this project compatible. Heck, it'll give me a good excuse to work with normal maps, too. Anyways, progress on this has been slow to non-existent recently, due to me working like a mad fool on that ARH Tiger for the ADF Mod. But hopefully I'll be done with that one soonish, and I can get back to work on this one.

I do believe that's the first time I've ever had any of my stuff compared to Oprah's tits. I'm not quite sure how to take that. Cheers, dude. Thanks tankie, Rico. Didn't manage to get too much done tonight, just some more detailing and fixing up, so I figured I should at least throw some flat colors on the rest of the bird so it doesn't look quite so naked. Still plenty more to do.

Thanks for confirming the 2048 issue, and thanks much for the comments so far. Tigershark: I'm using Wings 3D, an open source modeller. Haven't found anything in the last few years that I've been using it in which I can work faster than I can with this app. Quickie update, not a huge amount more done, but did a lot of refining and detailing, as well as pounded my head into the keyboard while trying to figure out and fix a whole load of transparency sorting issues. Think I've gotten most of them sussed, with a couple of minor ones remaining that I'll work on sometime later (the most obvious one right now being the muzzle flash).

I may go with a 1024^2 texture, but it'll depend. From what I gather, the issue is with addons using multiple 2048^2 sheets. The Tiger you see above is a single sheet (aside from a 256^2 for the glass, a 128^2 for the optics dome, and a couple of 32x64s and 64^2s for the decals). but if there are issues with 2048^2 sheets in general, there's no problem going down to 1024^2, especially since it looks perfectly serviceable with the 512 sheet, as seen in my previous screenshot.

Okay, so I had some issues getting this rolling, the main one being that I had clean forgotten about the alpha limitations with the engine. The original UV layout included the cockpit and the optics dome, both of which were to require partial alpha transparency, which wouldn't have been a problem except for the fact that I'm only left with 4 bits of color per channel after alpha. Of course, I only found this out after doing a bunch of selections and other O2-specific stuff, so I had to go off and alter the mappings and reimport. The cockpit and optics dome now have their own textures. Anyways, after all that careful UV layout, I end up with wasted texture space since I couldn't be arsed to remap the now-unused space. I think I should be okay, though, seeing as the above shot is using a 512^2 texture (same layout as shown previously, so in actuality it's more like a 512x256 ), since both TexView and PAA Tool take bloody five minutes to convert a 2048^2 TGA file. Final will use the full 2048^2.

Thanks, man, working on the textures at the moment. I'll probably do that for any future vehicles I might get around to working on, but for this one, I'll be damned if I'm gonna redo the unwrap. As is, most of the texture space is just about equally distributed among all the bits, so it should be okay. Interior LOD will be getting higher res textures, and probably a more detailed model as well.

You obviously haven't been keeping abreast of the latest developments in stealth technology. Thanks guys. I've just about finalized everything, including the decal bits, so I'll be starting on the textures. Tomorrow. Since I typically don't do precision art very wel when inebriated.