rooster3d

As I suspected. Thanks, PuFu; I appreciate the speedy response! 2. It's a bit of a relief; 12k is a little better number. Not sure what you meant by "the upper limit is a bit more for arma," but I checked the samples. The ArmA soldier models seem to be around 8.5k - 9.5k, with gear. The reporter lady with just a mic and a suit is almost 10k tris, 1550 in the head. A3 underwear guy (without gear) is about the same, with 1/3 of that being in the head. I'm still modeling, but so far my model has ~2.5k triangles in the head, ~6k in the body, and ~800 in the helmet. Total is close to 9.5k already. As I write this I have another question: My trooper has a neck gaiter around his face, covering from the nose-down. I may want this to be an inventory removable option, so what's the best way to tackle this? Should I create the head with a mouth and nose and create the gaiter seperate, or should I create two heads (unmasked and masked)?

It's a high chance I'll have a number of questions about characters. I've already discovered the answer to some questions in other threads, so I'll stick to what hasn't been addressed. I usually model vehicles and static objects, so some of these questions might seem foolish to the pros. I finally imported the ArmA3 underwear guy into my model to compare knee joints and such, when it dawned on me that my model might not work with the BIS skeletons due to height. I could shorten my current model enough to fit the rig, but that is only a temporary fix. I will eventually have characters with specific size requirements. They would probably need new skeletons with new proportions, but I am wondering if the animations could still be used? I suppose it's not recommended to simply scale up a skeleton, is it? This may seem ambitious, but I eventually want to give players even more character customization options, like gender, body structure, facial structure, height, broadness, and so on. There's no question here; it just seemed relevant - and open for discussion. I read somewhere that 10,000 triangles is about where a character model should be. Is that with or without all the gear? Is there a specific area the UVs have to be in for the model? In UT3 the textures HAD to be sectioned off with head in a specific location, body in another, boots or gear in another. Is there a skeleton or something available for the mouth animations?

I've given it some exporting/importing experimentation. The best results seem to happen when I select .3ds; I just have to adapt my object naming conventions to the 8-character format. Good news is everything is oriented correctly and smoothing groups are retained. @Abs: I'll be away from the mods this weekend, but if I get any further problems I'll send you this file to look at on Monday.

Doing this, the left/right is still flipped and any smoothing information is trashed. I model with the following orientation: Forward is +Y Right is +X Up is +Z

I don't know what it is with the TUT_wall_NOHQ.paa file, but it won't work. It's an anomaly, because I did all the steps again with a model I already have, and more texture sets, and my _NOHQ files work. The _CO.paa and _CA.paa files are still not showing up in the viewports, but still seem to be doing okay in Buldozer. The _SDMI files seem to be making very little difference. I have a jerrycan on my buggy that is supposed to be shinier than the buggy body, yet it looks dull. I set up my rvmats using the NOHQ+SDMI template, and just pointed to the proper textures. The normal maps are working, at least. WOOT! Last thing with textures is the _CA file. It could be a Buldozer setting, but for grayscale alpha in the _CA files I get a very low opacity - almost invisible, and there seems to be a lot of aliasing. Back to the .3ds vs .obj issue: whenever I save a file in O2 that was imported from .obj, I reopen the file and find all the smoothing groups gone. This is because I have to flip everything on the Z axis in order for everything to look normal. I read somewhere that THIS is the action that makes the model lose its smoothing groups. I wonder if I should try to invert the contents of the .max file before I export it as .obj?

Thanks again all! The original question I had in this thread is more or less answered. It just comes down to understanding the O2 interface, and how to apply different textures and materials to specific groups of faces. However, there's a natural progression of challenges presenting themselves as I go. I've been working through Mondkalb's tut... It's helpful; though it it seems to be pieced together from parts of other tutorials. There are some things going wrong with O2 as I work on it. The first time I loaded a texture in the viewport it worked. The blue one. As I made progress on the texture and then loaded up "TUT_wall_CO.tga" it did its conversion thing, but ti appeared in the viewport as the pink/white checkerboard pattern. Nevertheless, it worked fine in Buldozer, so I pushed forward. I reached nearly the end of the texturing section, and came to a dead stop on the rvmat. More precisely, the texture "TUT_wall_NOHQ.paa" would not load in Buldozer, thus creating a pitch black wall and door. I tried restarting O2, but that failed to fix the prob. Some things weren't fully described in the tuts, so I had to figure it out on my own or wing it. These factors might come into play: Using Photoshop CS6. Saved .tga files no alpha with 32 bit. Copied & pasted the rvmat sections into notepad, then just saved as .rvmat. Indentation was all off, though I checked semicolons and no spaces after them.

Thanks, Abs. Watch out for hip-hop hamsters trying to take it for a joy ride! Two things that bother me - a lot - about .3ds: 1. Sometimes it likes to omit geometry, but usually little ones you don't notice right away. 2. It auto-saves everything in the 8.3 format. Textures, objects... so annoying. On the other hand, something I noticed about the ArmA Toolbox is that it doesn't preserve the smoothing groups quite right. At least .3ds seems to have that right. I'm gonna try a manual .obj export. I'm not sure I can use fewer texture sets. I have many of my models set up to use parts of other models. For example, I have a buggy and a jeep that use the same radio, antenna mount, and antenna, and two tanks that also use that same antenna. The jeep also has a mounting bracket for the radios, a BFT computer and display (tracking computer), etc. All this commo gear is on a separate model set with its own texture, but not everything is used by all vehicles. The same holds true for vehicle tools, certain vehicle weapons, tires, etc. It just seems better to cram all the same type objects' textures into one 2048x2048 file instead of several 1024s and 512s. It loads fewer files, and makes better use of where gaps in the UVWs would otherwise be. . If I have several textures open on a certain vehicle, then it's okay because other vehicles will also be utilizing those same textures in a slightly different way. There may be a flaw in this method; I don't know. I'm just explaining my thought process. I'll have to study up on RVMATs, too - right there with you on that. I understand about making a more detailed interior POV; that was a technique used in the Battlefield 2 editor, as well. I'll check out that tutorials link anyway, because I'm not as familiar with some of the other LODs. ---------- Post added at 14:43 ---------- Previous post was at 14:08 ---------- Thanks, also to meshCarver and da12thMonkey. I was writing/editing/experimenting while y'all sneaked in your posts! That's good to know about the suffix thing. By my own practices or perhaps as a carry-over from using other game engines, I had been saving everything separately (ie: buggyBody_a, buggyBody_b.tga, buggyBody_c.tga, buggyBody_s.tga for alpha, bump, color, and specular, respectively). I've just tried to export with .obj. After experimenting with settings, I got it in. I had to export with the flip YZ axis checked. Then I imported and negated the scale, and finally rotated it 180° on Y axis. I'm not sure if it's in the correct orientation after all that. The faces are facing the right way out, and it's all in the same starting orientation as it is when I export with ArmA Toolbox. Most importantly, all smoothing groups and faces are in tact, and the objects are not abbreviated. This may be something to do with not setting up RVMATs, but once I have ctrl+dbl clicked on the material and then hit E, I can apply one texture to those faces. I click on create selection and then the material is renamed as the directory path of the texture.

Hmmm... Textures aren't importing, so it seems I have to manually apply them. I figured out how to apply them selecting faces and/or elements, and I didn't need to "element" the interior... Is there another step I need to take after applying textures? I get a feeling it's not a permanent solution. I'll look for the faces naming thing; it sounds handy. Also wondering how to apply specular levels, normal maps, and alpha. I assume I can use alpha channels in diffuse for opacity, and in the normal map for specular levels, but how can I apply both of these textures? Could it have something to do with using Soul Assassin's ArmA Toolbox to export from Max? I haven't seen any dialog/rollout pertaining to exporting the materials/textures.

I'm thinking this has got to be possible, considering how well detailed the interiors of some vehicles are. Because of modding for other games prior, I've learned to make separate texture sets for vehicles. Besides the outside/inside, I also modularize textures for tires or other parts that can be added/removed/interchanged (eg: turrets, cupolas, weapons, gerrycans, commo gear, tools). I just haven't found a straight-forward way to make it happen. Thinking about the very limited experience I've had with O2, it seems I could make the interior an attached object to achieve the effect. Is that the best way? ---------- Post added at 09:01 ---------- Previous post was at 08:17 ---------- So far the only way I've been able to do it is to select each object or individual face and apply the other texture. The process is a bit micro. Looking for a "select by material ID" kind of thing...

Thanks for your replies! I only ask about weird jumping because I have noticed some things like that with some of the vanilla vehicles. Driving a tank into a tree or a vehicle spawning in your vehicle's exact location can launch you high into the air.

That's good news. So, on to even more suspension questions! :o Will the engine support non-traditional suspension orientation? I've got a buggy which utilizes the old Beetle-style suspension arms, which at first glance look like their pivot is oriented parallel to the chassis, instead of the traditional perpendicular method. On the front suspension, there is a pair of arms per wheel traveling parallel to one another. Is it tricky to rig this for the game, or is it kind of straight forward like IK? I remember in UE 2.5 we had to script one arm to acquire the angle of the other arm and constantly rotate itself on that information. The motion of the rear suspension is a little wonky. It's hard to tell by looking at any photos for reference, but the pivot for a Beetle rear suspension arm seems offset (like by 3° or 4°). At rest, the wheels would be parallel to the body, but otherwise they would be askew. If the engine supports this unusual set up, then my secondary concern here is: would an out-of-line wheel in mid-damper cause the vehicle to do something crazy like jump 350m into the air?

That's cool. I hear ya Gnat. I've tried to import a heli into O2 with .3ds and .obj. I must be doing something wrong. The .3ds file was lacking smoothing groups, and the .obj file had misnamed all the parts. It was weird, because when I selected a part in O2, it would highlight the correct part but only select all the verts of another part! I have a technical question about cars. When considering the wheels and suspension on a car, should we model them fully extended, as if the car is off the ground? ...Or should we model the whole car as if it were in its normal rest position on ground, with the suspension slightly compressed? Forgive me if it's a noob question.

Hello all! I think I get where the OP is coming from in his op. It seems he is a seasoned modeller, but new to the ArmA way. For anyone new to ArmA editing who may be reading the progression of this thread, like me, the second post might already be where we get lost. How did pastor399 even get his model into the game, or even in to Oxygen 2 for that matter. For those of you unfamiliar with the tool set, Oxygen 2 is the BIS module that is kind of like their own 3dsMax, Maya, etc, where you can import your models and define all the LODs and textures. pastor399's posts are great, but I'm not sure I'm there yet. Looking online for tutorials is helping somewhat, but most of them reference ArmA 2 editing which in turn references even older ArmA editing. It can be a bit of a headache trying to put all the pieces of the pieces together, especially for modelers - right-brained folk. I've created fully-rigged models that have worked in other engines (Unreal Engine 2.5, Unreal Engine 3, Refractor 2, CryEngine 2, and CryEngine 3), but am looking for that secret handshake that gets my new models into the Real Virtuality 4 Engine. I bring this up because it seems in this engine there is a bigger gap to be bridged between creating and importing. I hope this post helps others like me who may still be like :confused:. Thanks to all of those who have posted so far - great thread!!