p1nga

No problem, i had troubles figuring it out myself, not even sure i know what i think is correct, my first use of the AS maps was on a building object and i had all sorts of troubles with it going completly black, so i simply went into photoshop, took the Black/White AO texture and messed around with the Levels (Ctrl + L), then applied multiple blur and noise filters, and then placed a Gradient Overlay in the Layer panel to convert the black to the required pink.

The AS texture you have linked has a lot of solid pink, and the super shader is doing exactly what you are telling it to do, having the solid pink color, results in 100% occlusion when it crosses with the rendered shadow volume *too my understanding*. You need to tone down the amount of solid pink, there should be a lot more white, with gradients of mid tones. I have uploaded a sample that is actually of a pistol, but you should get the idea, majority of the faces image is white. I would suggest that you need to mess around with the settings for the AO render, or modify it in Photoshop to tone down the levels until you get something that is similar to your expectations. http://imgur.com/IYZvcPi

[table=width: 500, align: center] [tr] [td][/td] [td][/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][/td] [td][/td] [/tr] [/table] Vortex Spitefire 3x EBR Combat Optic. of course, coming up will be a version that utilizes the mini picatiny rails to mount a micro rds backup sight.....

As said above, the most important thing, is if you have a shadow volume that has > 1000 Verts, you should really ensure that there are lower detail LOD's.......you don't want to be rendering 8k shadows at any sort of distance greater than 100m, even 50m. If you force the shadow to be a shadow-buffer as opposed to the standard stencil shadow, you can get away with having even lower detailed shadows in close.

You have created 3 threads for the exact same thing, multiple threads does not result in more help, in most cases you will find people will not respond because of the fact it seems very pushy. A quick look at the config there, are possibly a few errors, but not going into them, instead of doing a full config and getting trying it, start with a very basic config, like the sample config, and only change one part at a time, i.e. use the sample config and just change the model to your model see it works, then you know the model is fine, then begin adding more pieces to it.

I won't be doing a Trijcon Red Dot with Magnifier myself, but i definatly have plans on modelling a Vortex Strikefire II + 3x Vortex Magnifier in the very near future

You need to play with 'move top' and 'move bottom' to get the alpha layers in the right draw order, much the same as collimator sights

Another quirk is that if you launch with 'world=empty' for faster load times you will need to go into the editor, Virtual Arsenal or similar to load a world before the Configure Addons function will be enabled.

Would be too troublesome....... Could not be done as a 3d optic, would be a pain to create it in a position that fitted a majority of guns.... Why not just eqiuip some nv goggles

has too be

We have had them in our testing versions for the last couple of weeks, so they should be in 1.9

A couple more, Eotech 552 Holo Sight with an older style Eotech L3 Magnifier (3x) on a Larue Tactical mount, the magnifier flips up and down. There is also a stand alone Eotech 552, and a version with Killflash ARD, not to mention all models come in Black, Tan and OD Green. [table=width: 500, align: center] [tr] [td][/td] [td][/td] [/tr] [/table]

There are some images of upcoming gear below......

If you are trying to get the suspension / power / gearbox right, the easiest way is to find the mass of something by bi, SUV for example, make your Geo LOD the same and then copy its config values and then tweak as required......rather than doing all that she spreadsheet calcs you need from scratch

That is correct if you are making a complete player character model, you can remove those proxies and therefore those items will not be visible on the character model. You see this when you go into First Person View and look around, the players head is not present, because that proxy was removed from the View Pilot in the model. In the case of your balaclava, which I believe you want to be an item (Glasses, Headgear) that you can equip. You cannot do anything to make the head invisible when you equip your item. I can't explain this any other way than, the proxy you mention, "A3\characters_f\Heads\bysta.p3d" is the head model, but it contains the head, down to the neck, and you can still see the neck when you have a pilot helmet on, so head is still visible. If you do not want the ears to clip through your balaclava you will have to approach it like BI and community modders have done for all the Vests, Helmets, Glasses, Gasmasks, Backpacks that are already in game or available, model it you suit the ARMA 3 characters proportions. All your statements about layering are correct if you are making a standalone character model for game or rendering, but we are not talking about that, we are talking the intricacies of modding in ARMA, and any modular items are additional layers over the top, no way to get around that unless you are going into making your own character models that have the balaclava as a fixed part of the base model, not a equipable addition.

The heads are not hidden, the character model of the Ghillie is completely different, and the pilot helmet is modeled around the head.......if you modelled it yourself or at least have the source files adjust the shape of the helmet to fit the head, not the other way around

Good thread hijack is good

For the overlapping building's you should be using a roadway LOD which is slightly above the geometry, extends past the geometry and visual lods slightly, and if there is an issue with catching, taper the edges down so when they meet it forms a small V shape

I didn't want to say anything :s but well said indeed.

It can be rather difficult to describe the limits, but a good start is Dx9 has a limit of 32,000 'Smoothing Group Vertices' *per object (difficult to find documentation in regards to these limits). In 3DSMax you can use a tool called 'Gamefomizer' to calculate these and other vertices counts. Of course these limits are per object, which is why splitting into Proxy works as each proxy is a separate object, subjected to a separate flow through the rendering pipeline. This is an old, but good read on the basics of how it all works - http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/provost/byf2.html

I might be wrong about this, but you can also try saving the source image as a JPEG, maximizing compression then open if TexView2 and save as a .paa This should result in smaller .paa files but also the loss of a fair bit of in close detail.

I think you can reverse the faces on export, at least i remember doing that at some point in 3DSMax before we had .fbx supoort in Object Builder. Blender does support FBX doesn't it???

Sure it is not saved as a .tga In general the detail in a texture will define its size, a 2048x2048 texture at 2.66Mb to me sounds about right, if you want to it be smaller you will have to scale/blur otherwise tweak it so there are more pixels of the same color which can be compressed into a smaller .paa You can save a 2048x2048 texture that is completely a single color and it will be extremely small <10kb...start adding more colors and details and watch this size increase.

Australian Commando - Circa 2012 - Australian Multicam Pattern / M4A5 + ELCAN C79 / M72A6

You shouldn't change the paths inside the rvmat, open the models and change the path of the rvmat from ones inside the HAFM pbo's to the ones in default ARMA 3.