LukeofAppalachia

Alright, the glass seems to be working fine, thank you for the help Baraka. Here is a few screenshots of the gun in 3rd and 1st person (plus a new retexture of my robes! :) ). But...there seems to be something wrong with the gun's flash...it is always present...I copied the method (using a proxy and naming it "zasleh") used from the p3d weapon models I found in the Sample Arma 2 weapons & vehicles folder I downloaded, but when used with my gun, it keeps the flash on constantly. I think everything is named properly in each LOD, but still...do you know the problem Baraka? Here is the picture: Haha, or I could take the easy way out and make it silenced! ;)

Thanks for that. I'll give it a try and then post the results here.

Okay...but where do I obtain the files glass-pass2.rvmat and reflect_co.paa? Do I need to unbin some of the files in the Arma 2 .pbo's? Or are they automatically put into the p: drive upon getting BIS TOOLS?

Hmm, thanks for the files...I tried them, but it gave me this error. Must have something to do with the path in the config file. Where is it supposed to be pulling those files from?

Hello again! Having been pretty satisfied with my robed troops I thought I'd make them some Lambert Carbines (from Battlefield 2142). All was going well until it was time to make the optics for the gun...I am quite unfamiliar with making a glass-like transparent optic for the gun. I tried to put one in, but this is the in-game result. The user should just through the sight, but it should all be blue, not this whitish-gray color that I'm getting. I have NO rvmat, mainly because I'm still not sure how they work. Hmm...I have multiple panes of glass between the "eye" and the end of the gun...could that be it? Any help is appreciated. If I can get the optic working, this one will be nearly finished as well! Images:

I'm pretty sure there's one out there and even a tutorial to go along with it...I'd have to look it up though. Update: Okay, I think this is it: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?82188-ArmA2-Modding-Toolbox-for-3ds-max-V1-1

Yeah, haha, I guess the specular map needs more work. Anyways, if I may take the liberty to ask, can you point me in the right direction for working on wound textures? I wanted to just use the ones associated with the "soldier.pbo" that I have been modifying to begin with, but they don't seem to appear right. The head and hand wound work alright because those were based on proxies, but the one that should appear on the body don't work. I have applied the image in blender and they appear in the right place there, but they don't show up in-game. I believe the rvmaps and the config file are set up correctly...it shouldn't have anything to do with my UVmap being different from the original right? It shows up fine in blender, so that shouldn't be the case...hmmm....I'm not sure. I'm just so close...haha, I'm trying not to get impatient with it, but I want to get it fully functional as soon as I can.

Well I'm not done, but I'm pretty happy with them. It will take awhile until I can find just the right texture I want, but for now...I'm pretty happy with my Robed Soldiers...here they are y'all; thanks again for the help. Once it's nice and polished and I get some "wound" images and rvmaps I may just see about putting it up for download.

Heh....yeah PuFu, the UV layout was a major problem...I went back into Blender and just selected the faces of each component of the outfit and did a "Smart Unwrap" for each, giving me a much cleaner and logical Layout. Now it's much easier to work with the model, not to mention it seems to have solved my "gray lines" issue, because I now can just flood each section with a color without it being close to the other sections. Oh, and Max Power, I have been using a combination of Blender's Image Editor and GIMP. Blender is an absolute joy for me as it allows me to do pretty much everything before I have to dive into the abysmal Oxygen program. I'll post some more pics once I get the UV image how I want it, as it's a bit too simple at the moment, though I do believe I can bid farewell to my "gray line" issue. Thank you all so much for the help, I am still new to modding, but I can finally see myself completing a full-fledged, "armaholic-worthy" addon in the future now.

Thanks for the replies guys...okay, so here is a picture of my UV map (UV Lines excluded...I'll see if I can put a pic up with them also). I know it looks like a bit of a mess, but I made it using Blender's "Smart UV Unwrap" tool and then did most of the texturing in the 3D model window, so the slight disorganization was not an issue...until maybe now. My map does have a gray background, and I could see this as being a big part of the problem...but what do I do? Just paint and paint until the whole UV image is covered in non-gray color? I could do that...but it might be time consuming and frustrating...is there a more practical option? UV Image: UV Image w/ Lines: Oh, and I haven't made the rvmap yet...:eek: I figured I would make that once I finished with the texturing. Could a lack of an .rvmap be the issue?

So I have been making alot of ground with my Robed Unit so far, but just as soon as I thought I had a masterpiece, I found these ugly gray lines on my model, that only showed up to a minor extent in Blender... does anyone have any advice for filling in the gaps with my color? I looked at the UV map and it seems like I've filled in all the needed places, so I'm not sure what to do...any input is welcome. Thanks.

Hate to reply to my own post, but I did it! I got it all working at least for now...fixed the jutting face problem by just using the provided proxy for the head (gives nice variety anyways), learned all about blender model importing, and UV mapping. And this is the result, at least for now...it's a start... I guess I'll close this lonely thread since I've answered my own problem.

Thank you so much for your reply Jakerod, you are the first to comment on one of my posts, anyways, I had already checked and rechecked the paths within visitor3, but to no avail. Then I decided that if Buldozer was not going to convert my files, I would manually put every .png into TexView and convert them myself!...but because through the visitor tutorial, I had moved the location of my BIS TOOLS2, I could not open TexView. I decided to uninstall my BI TOOLS 2 and then reinstall them into my alternate work drive I had created (not the P: drive, the other one...not sure what it's proper name is). Turns out this worked, not only to fix Texview, but also the paths Buldozer needed; I'm still not sure why this worked, has to be something with Buldozer's search paths, regardless, now I can view my map in buldozer just fine. Thanks again for the reply, now I just need some help with my character model (http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?141131-Editing-models-(soldier)-while-retaining-vertex-selections) and I should be good to go with making some addons. Cheers!

So I've been following the "Arma 2 Terrain Tutorial" and have followed all the instructions to the best of my ability, but I have hit a snag...Buldozer refuses to convert my .png files to .paa, and I am not sure why. When it tries to convert the files, it only shows - - - - - -- --- - -- - - and then blender informs me that it cannot find the .paa file (obviously Buldozer, you didn't convert it!). I am pretty sure the paths are correct, if there is a place to put a path for Buldozer to find the textures it needs to convert, I have yet to find it, and I have made sure the texture size is 40.0m x 40.0m...ugh...I am starting to feel ill...I really want to make mods and addons, but man, there's tons of snags it seems. Any advice is appreciated, I'm gonna take a break from the computer now.

Alright, I'm pretty new to addon making, but I've been practicing my O2 & Blender skills and I would like to try my hand at modifying soldier models (Binkowski's US Soldier model to be exact). The difficulty I foresee, however, is editing the models, while still keeping the vertex selections where they are ("left hand," "right finger 1," etc...). I think I would need to make all the models look nearly the same, so without painstakingly going through and remaking all of the vertex selections, is there a way I can edit one model and duplicate it into the other models (Shadow, Fire Geometry, etc) while each model still keeps its respective vertex selections? Hope my question makes sense, I just really can't imagine remaking all those selections by hand... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Update: It's a bit fanciful, I know, but I am trying to make a robed unit; I made some minor adjustments to start with, then attempted to see how it looked in-game and found a glaring problem. It seems there is a vertex or something jutting out of my character's face. The only thing is, I didn't change any of the vertexes on the face, so I'm not sure how the problem came about. Does anyone know what the culprit might be?