kot1k

@Bnae , I doubt I'll be able to find everything I need in others work anyway, so if I'll decide to undertake that task (I'm still pondering over it), I will need to do a part of it myself. Yet, I don't see much sense in re-doing everything from scratch, when it's already done by somebody out there. Asking them for borrowing it is much easier :) We don't re-invent the wheel to design a new car these days :)

@.kju , thanks a lot, will try it. @Bnae That may help greatly if you are learning things, like me. What I need atm are some examples close to what I would like to do myself and some ready files I could use for any kind of proof-of-concept work. I don't have any plans to release something any time soon. Any authorship rules hindering studies or progress are of no good, imo.

I've set up some working environment with Blender, Masce's Armarig, FHQ arma toolbox and RTM import mod for Blender , but when I try to import some animations in .rtm files I've got from another mod, it says that binary RTMs are not supported. Is there some workaround here? May be I need to somehow "unpack" them first? Or should I use 3DMax instead? Is there any reason to use such complex hi-end thingy as 3DMax over Blender in case of Arma modding at all, by the way? Update: Seems like the only way is to somehow convert RTMs in binary format to regular RTMs. Can't find how it's done though..

@HorribeGoat Thanks a lot for the tips, that indeed looks like a good start. May be you could personally recommend a couple of youtube tutorials on Blender you think are the best for the task? Same thing regarding skeleton animation - any really good articles you could share? I also have more Arma-related question, so may be a bit too far-reaching for a newbie :) Just trying to get some basic evaluation of what I would need to overcome to implement my idea, and whether it's worth it. I need 2 players (in MP) participating in an interaction governed by the new mechanics I'm planning to add to move simultaneously, in sync, otherwise it will look awkward. I.e. their avatars need to start playing some animations at the same time, and other observers happen to be looking at them should also see them doing it in sync. I think there may be significant issues, as I'm not sure you can ensure enough control over such thing with addon scripting in a distributed network setup, with possibly dozens of players around. Do you think it's possible to implement at all? I don't know how such things are handled by Arma's engine. Can you somehow combat network latency in addon scripts? Seems like you need more low-level access to properly control this.

Can it by any chance be this one http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=27262 ? Seems like it's most advanced melee addon at the moment, but I've heard it has serious issues in MP (animation lagging etc). I also don't agree with approach they chose, adding direct control for melee combat, as I had some thoughts about creating something suitable for hard core scenarios and community, so my idea was about making it a fast-paced decision-based action with some limitations (no free movement and dancing around hitting each other on the battlefield like in bad Hollywood movies, strictly defined rules of combat sequence etc). I thought about asking them whether I can borrow parts of their work, both script-wise and animation-wise. Of course, if I'll be able to overcome the learning curve :)

My question is not about scripting animations in, but about producing animations itself, for Arma specifically. As I know that @smookie did it initially on his own for his animations addon (now part of Arma 3). Any experience somebody could share with a rookie? Specifically, whether it's possible to create some simplistic animations at home, with inexpensive equipment, or perhaps without equipment at all? Let's suppose we don't care much about resulting quality, whether it will look awkward or something; we are fine with some crude, schematic animations, the main criteria is it to be as easy to produce as possible. What needs to be done to receive a final Arma animation file with ".rtm" extension? What is the format of this file, how to produce it? Is it some kind of standard file format to store motion capture data? Is it possible to get motion capture data from some other game, or from some kind of generic motion capture collection library and re-purpose it to use in Arma? How it's done? For example, here are libraries like this http://mocap.cs.cmu.edu/motcat.php or this http://mocapdata.com/ Is it possible to somehow turn those MOCAP files into Arma's animations easily, and how it's done? In particular, none of those files have ".rtm" extension. Will they need to be converted to be compatible with Arma engine? What tool is used for this? How can one make sure those animations will fit Arma's models, and if they don't, how can they be easily modified so they start to fit? Another question is regarding adding new items (as 3D models) to the game and "teaching" default models to hold them in their hands. For example, making a soldier's model to carry a hammer or a knife in the hand and strike with it. I believe atm you can't hold in your arms anything except firearms and military equipment. Is it possible to implement with addons, and how difficult it may be? I suppose you could borrow a free to use model of, say, knife anywhere on the internet and simply import it into your addon, then you could simply add a new animation "striking with a knife", tweak it a bit to fit Arma's soldier model and it's done? Or is it more complex than that?

I guess I'll create a new topic then..

For example, here are libraries like this http://mocap.cs.cmu.edu/motcat.php or this http://mocapdata.com/ Is it possible to somehow turn those MOCAP files into Arma's animations easily, and how it's done? In particular, none of those files have ".rtm" extension. Will they need to be converted to be compatible with Arma engine? What tool is used for this? How can one make sure those animations will fit Arma's models, and if they don't, how can they be easily modified so they start to fit?

Hey, guys. Many thanks to @smookie for his efforts explaining this all. My question is not about scripting animations in, but about producing animations themselve, for Arma specifically. As I know that @smookie did it initially on his own for his addon. Any experience he (or somebody else) could share with us? Specifically, whether it's possible to create some simplistic animations at home, with inexpensive equipment, or perhaps without equipment at all? Let's suppose we don't care much about resulting quality, whether it will look awkward or something; we are fine with some crude, schematic animations, the main criteria is it to be as easy to produce as possible. What needs to be done to receive a final Arma animation file with ".rtm" extension? What is the format of this file, how to produce it? Is it some kind of standard file format to store motion capture data? Is it possible to get motion capture data from some other game, or from some kind of generic motion capture collection library and re-purpose it to use in Arma? How it's done?

I didn't find a report for this one on feedback tracker, so I created one myself: https://feedback.bistudio.com/T124180 To all who also see this as a serious bug in mechanics and immersion-killer - please provide some input in comments there to drag attention of the dev team

Hi. I've been playing around with different stances in VR mode, when I found out that in all stances involving prone positions, while you severely limited in terms of speed when you try to move around, you are not limited AT ALL when you are aiming around or looking around. You are not even limited in terms of available arc of rotation, which is clearly dictated by human physiology. This leads to extremely awkward situation when a prone soldier rotates around with a speed dictated only by his mouse's sensitivity. That looks and feels extremely Battlefield-ish, and decreases immersion significantly. It also defeats the very idea of creating all this variety of stances. The main idea is that when you are in prone positions, you are granted with certain tactical advantages. But it has its own cost - you are severely limited in your movements, you can't quickly aim to some point beyond a very limited arc without moving the rest of your body, you can't look around that easy also. This is a good, reasonable trade-off. What, IMO, needs to be done here: arc within which you can move your crosshair and head (when looking around) must be limited to some realistic angle. In case you move beyond these limits, body animation kicks in and it takes some time before your avatar will change the direction its body is arranged with; as an option, to prevent unintended triggering of this process, you may need to hold stance button at the same time you are moving crosshair to the edge of this arc, to allow this body direction change to happen.

Tonci87, with all due respect, I highly doubt that ALL of this will be implemented. Where is this confidence stems from?

I've already posted this into suggestions topic We need proper animations for covering behind wide variety of obstacles and objects; animations for peeking/firing around the corner and through the windows on different altitudes, both from inside and outside of a building, ability to slightly lower/rise your head/barrel while still staying in prone or sitting position, to look out of cover/into the window, and shoot over some obstacles which you couldn't shoot over from the standart prone/sitting position; animations and features for breaking into the room through windows. Yes, exactly what Smookie had been trying to accomplish with his SMK mod (here is preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vklOq6KFQy4). (Well, even better, what if the game could feature an animation editor, where player could construct his custom set of different stances and transitions between them, of course, limitied by anatomy of human body, then just import them into the game and assign hotkeys). We need easy ways (even if it means scriptable and static, like "press the Ctrl+Shift+F to throw grenade into this window") to toss grenades into the different size's apertures, into the doorways (without stepping into them or staying in front of them) - and all this have to be available while running/walking too (here is a concept which is currently on "to do" list of ACE mod: ). We need ability to breach different obstacles with demolition charges, to blow holes in the walls with c4. We need grenade you've thrown up the staircase to the 2nd flor wouldn't kill you through the concrete ceiling, the same goes for fences; fast and easy weapon management when dealing with narrow doorways and passages (hotkey for lower your weapon and rise it again, or just auto-raising/lowering). We need more buildings that can be entered, in the end.

Max Power, can it be fixed? Will developers intend to contribute some efforts to fixing these issues in ARMA3?

What I'm really being concerned about is that: will adoption of physx technology solve the problem of collisions of objects? I mean, will grenades still be falling through the ceiling, will you still harm yourself with hand grenade explosion just on the other side of massive concrete fence?