SpecOp9

yes, but not in-game. I placed them around the lobby for an accurate size reference.

Hi guys, sorry for the lack of updates this week, I was with someone in the hospital making sure they were okay and keeping them company. Wish I could have brought my computer tower because it was extremely boring doing nothing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To be clear the image of the interior is a Cinema 4d render and is not in game. However, I know that there is a way in Oxygen to have material surfaces "glow" at night, as I recall doing it before in the OFP days, but I can't remember on the top of my head. ArmA 3 does not have, to my knowledge any kind of "Backlight" shader". This is a shader used where you want to have a light inside of an object and appear to illuminate it from within. But there is a trick that may work very well, that is to "bake" the lighting effect from Cinema 4D into a texture, and then set that material property in Oxygen to glow. It will probably look nearly identical to the Cinema 4d render, in theory.. As for lighting interiors at night, I have done some testing with ArmA3's stock objects and lights. There is somewhat of a problem with this, where lights seem to somehow escape the interior and spill into the outside world but I think with such a large object, and small lights, interior lighting is going to work surprisingly well. The downside to this, lack of detail. No good ambient occlusion, no good area lighting with nice shadows - two things that really make interiors look real and detailed. Again, I'm going to attempt to setup all the lighting in Cinema 4d, bake all the shadows, bake all the ambient occlusion into a texture. Throw in some stock default ArmA 3 lights, tinker with the brightness, size and colors - and it will APPEAR as if the game is rendering dynamic lights and shadows - when really it's just a shadow effect painted onto a texture. Very common trick for real-time scenes these days This will mean however the textures will need to be quite large to eliminate artifacts, so make sure your system is ready for that. An alternative would be to touch-up the textures in photoshop. As for the AI being able to navigate the interior, yes eventually this will happen (if that was the question) but it's not something I plan on doing upon initial release, probably in later versions. Trust me, I'd like to see some hostage rescue missions with this thing myself.

Here is a shot of the interior, Front Lobby when you first walk through the doors Can't stress enough how WIP this is. There is still a lot of detail to be added, a lot of furniture, store shops, hallways, and the materials are temporary just so I can get an idea of how things are coming along as I block out the general shapes. I'm going to try and make the interior as photo-real as I can and such. Already have some photos I can use to extract the textures out of reference photos. The lighting is going to be the most important. I'm going attempt to bake as many lights and ambient occlusion into the interior as much as I can. It's one thing OFP / ARMA has always struggled with, good looking interiors. But I think with baked lighting it will look pretty astonishing. ---------------------------- Edit: Well it appears that ArmA 3 still has the collision size limits, which is rather surprising to me. I was hoping that this would have been removed a long time ago, because I'm not entirely sure why there is one. I'm going to have to try making a TON of smaller collision boxes. Either that or I should PM a dev and see what I have to do, because Take on Helicopters seemed to handle large skyscrapers just fine..

yep, it does. There is no gradual fog fading on any objects it seems. Not really a problem with smaller objects, but very noticeable with big.

Well, I'm very happy to say that ArmA 3 can render extremely large objects without much glitching. There are two problems • Sometimes when camera is tilted a certain way, the object will vanish. Luckily this hasn't happened when looking directly at it, just when it's in the corner of the screen somewhere. Another good thing, it happens pretty rarely. • Being too far from the object can cause it to *pop* in and out. Next I am going to setup collision detection and hope to god it works. The video shows the size the object will be, fairly accurately. There are no textures because I'm going to "Bake" lighting, ambient occlusion and other fun things into the texture so that it will look extremely detailed in the game. Still working on the interior, too.

class CfgPatches { class AltisHotel { units[] = {AltisHotel}; weapons[] = {}; requiredVersion = 0.1; requiredAddons[] = {}; }; }; class CfgVehicles { class All {}; class Static: All {}; class Building: Static {}; class NonStrategic: Building {}; class TargetTraining: NonStrategic {}; class TargetGrenade: TargetTraining {}; class AltisHotel { model="\AltisHotel\AltisHotel"; armor=20000; scope=2; displayName="Altis Hotel"; } } ----------------- I'm no programmer at all so correct me if I'm wrong, but when it says class class class class that means it's categorizing and defining where/what the addon is? ---------- Post added at 06:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:58 AM ---------- Well.. I figured it out after peeking at thedog's ARP 2 class CfgPatches { class AltisHotel { units[] = {AltisHotel}; weapons[] = {}; requiredVersion = 0.1; }; }; class CfgVehicles { class All {}; class Static: All {}; class Building: Static {}; class NonStrategic: Building {}; class TargetTraining: NonStrategic {}; class TargetGrenade: TargetTraining {}; class AltisHotel: TargetGrenade { model = "\AltisHotel\AltisHotel.p3d"; armor = 20000; scope = 2; displayName = "AltisHotel"; mapSize = 0.700000; accuracy = 0.200000; }; };

Well, that did something. No entry bin\config.bin/CfgVehicles/AltisHotel.side At least ArmA 3 is starting to realize I got something going on.

This is the immediate dreaded part for me. Getting the 3d model to appear in my editor. Is there a template config that I can use for a static object?

Thanks W0lle

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/BI_Tools_2.5 I'm pretty sure this is where to Download.. but the link isn't working.

The size of the actual Burj Al Arab is over 1000 feet. It's a massive hotel, nearly 6 or more times the size of what's depicted in the photo. I had to increase the size of the model to it's actual real-life size because as I began making the interior, I was running out of space (there was literally no room for a hotel room) and the lobby wasn't looking as grand as it is in the photos. (I am using reference to model the interior) - it won't be an exact replica of the inside, but it will look very similar.

Wet ground effects will really sell the feeling of rain. If it's possible with the engine.

It always upset me that OFP and ArmA never had any unique, large and vibrant buildings to gawk at / go inside of / land helicopters on / see towering in the distance. So I decided I would remake one of my favorite buildings, the Burj Al Arab. Plans are to put it somewhere on Altis, where there is a large coastal city. But because the beta isn't out, I'll still release it once the interior is finished so that you can place it anywhere on the current Alpha island. http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/SpecOp9/AltisHotel2_zps3a123939.jpg (155 kB) http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a361/SpecOp9/AltisHotel3_zps3ea7b734.jpg (126 kB) What's planned: • Enter-able building with a Lobby • An elevator (if arma 3 can do this good) • At least one hotel room • Helipad (it's the circular object extending from the apex) • It will have a bottom platform that you can drive to via a bridge (wont be floating on water) Depending on performance I'll see about adding more rooms, I really want you to be able to enjoy the interior just as much as the exterior. Right now the polygons are at 1,137 triangles, which is pretty good. But that number will shoot up once an interior is added. Also, those window textures are terrible and I plan on changing them. Keep my fingers crossed that the collision detection on large buildings are like ToH and not previous ArmA games where there was a limit (if a BIS developer can verify this, that would be encouraging). If this is so, expect the building to be MUCH larger than as depicted.

I haven't come across a modded server either. But that's not to say there doesn't need to be a way for ArmA to better handle mods. I hope the Steam Workshop for ArmA 3 fixes this.