arma3_model

[remote abyss]

I tried again

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/830567214791786497/967457706522841128/unknown.png?width=1038&height=671

still have it

.

[civic stratus]

but try smooth edges and verts

you also may have overlapping faces

[remote abyss]

It's even worse 😭

[remote abyss]

nope :(

Anyone else has an idea ?

[civic stratus]

did you check for double faces?

[remote abyss]

i did

[stuck oyster]

likely bad mesh

show wireframe for it

[remote abyss]

how ?

[stuck oyster]

:L turn on wireframe mode

and perhaps disable texture mode

cleaner look

[remote abyss]

ah okay

got it

[halcyon bluff]

when exporting from blender, is it allowed to have one LOD consist of multiple meshes? or do i need to merge the meshes somehow? The Export to p3d works fine, but during packing using pbo project the packing fails and i get a error "Trench_straight_1.p3d Generic error or premature EOF"

also i applied two different textures using two materials.

[stuck oyster]

multiple textures/materials is fine. most models bigger than a bucket are like that.
latest p3d exporter merges lod objects of same level

for the error, export 1 lod at a time and test if that works

[halcyon bluff]

right now i only have one LOD because im blocking out some shapes

[halcyon bluff]

so that means i can just group them in a collection and that gets merged into one LOD?

[stuck oyster]

each obejct you want to export must have arma properties enabled (toolbox addon toolpanel) and then a lod level selected

objects with same lod level that you export (all or just selected ones) will be combined into single lod of that level/type on export

[halcyon bluff]

ok got it

[halcyon bluff]

so this doesnt seem to have worked. i updated the toolbox and the export looks fine (to my amateur eyes) when opened in objectbuilder.

[stuck oyster]

perhaps it is something else?

could try triangulating it

[civic stratus]

When I try to export multiple selected objects with lod 0 assigned in blender, it will duplicate the lod in objectbuilder, instead of combining the meshes to a single lod

[stuck oyster]

You don't have latest toolbox mayhaps.

There should be export option to combine same lod types

[bleak heart]

RHS grip animation does not work, how can I fix it? https://imgyukle.com/f/2022/04/24/RL6OqS.jpg

[stuck oyster]

Probably config error

[bleak heart]

how is fix?

[stuck oyster]

Find error and fix it. Maybe you have used wrong animation in the weapons config.

[odd garden]

Hello everyone, for my helicopter model I would like to put a beam, the animation works in object builder, may spas in the game. Below is an extract of my model.cfg file:
class PedalR
{
animPeriod=1;
type = "rotation";
source="pedals";
selection="pedalR";
axis="pedalR_axis";
minValue=0.0;
maxValue=2;
angle0=0;
angle1=rad -15
} ;
class PedalL: pedalR
{
source="pedals";
selection="pedalL";
axis="pedalL_axis";
angle0=0;
angle1=rad -15;

thank's

[charred bolt]

"pedals" are not a valid animation source for helicopters.
source = "rudderRTD"; will work, but only for Advanced Flight Model.
You should use maxValue = 1;.

[odd garden]

Thank’s Apollo, but where are you find a advanced flight model ?

[stuck oyster]

it has to be enabled in game settings

[odd garden]

In the Option’s game ?

[charred bolt]

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Helicopters

[stuck oyster]

Im fairly sure you dont want to dive into that deep dark hole of advanced flight model configuring

and also most people dont use it so most people would not be able to the animations done for it.

[odd garden]

Ok thank u very much

[charred bolt]

Pilot controls animation sources available:
cyclicAside cyclicForward and collective
collectiveRTD, rudderRTD

[arctic moat]

Had a modeller in my team ask this question, told him I'd bring it here:

Can you increase the base Arma guys height by using slightly raised boots? Or is that impossible?

[mental jungle]

random question, but does anyone know where get the template for the pilot helmet so someone could do custom helmets?

[junior saddle]

can anyone refresh me why this happens? On scene load my airplane hops up once and then drags backwards, nose-down on the ground. It main gear are a few meters up, and it looks like there's still dust being created from them.

[stuck oyster]

Not possible. No high heels for miller

[stuck oyster]

Can't. Custom helmets are done from scratch.

[halcyon bluff]

What do i have to do for a surface to be walkable? Not by AI, but by players. Is it only a geometry LOD with a shallow enough angle? Or is there something else that needs to be defined?

i thougt this would be enough, but i have a very shallow angle and should be able to walk on, but cant

[stuck oyster]

needs roadway lod

all character walking is done on a roadway lod

refer to sample house in arma 3 samples

[bold flare]

Here have example of stair with roadway
(Its built for a modular thing, thats why the roadway does that weird stuff at the edges, its so it overlaps to neighboars and you can't fall through ground)

[halcyon bluff]

thank you

[unkempt lodge]

niarms v14 and free world armoury have identically named .pbo for sig sg510 but its different version/size, results in mod conflict. neither mod maker responds to my cries. what would you do

[terse sail]

is this arma definition of barrel? or is the extended extruded barrel at the end named a seperate object?;
https://imgur.com/2FqsKPh
https://imgur.com/kzH4Fu4

[stuck oyster]

dont use one one of them. Niarms is the original one if I remember right and the weapons have been released so that they can be incorporated into other mods too. but that comes with this price of non compatibility if it is done incorrectly.

[stuck oyster]

models look has nothing to do with it. barrel is whatever you make it to be

Arma only defines the memorypoints where shots come from and at what direction they fly towards

look of the model does not affect it

[terse sail]

the reason i ask, is because in game, the Katiba and Katiba Carbine, have a slightly different Barrel length, is that due to model design, or code?

[unkempt lodge]

that specific sig sg510 was donated to niarms by the free world armoury

[stuck oyster]

probably calculated from the memorypoints.

[unkempt lodge]

https://i.imgur.com/f7R2q3m.png

[terse sail]

oh, so can be adjusted via game code

[unkempt lodge]

he fixed something in @fwa but the dev of @niarms didnt

[stuck oyster]

either way, they have to fix it

[stuck oyster]

no

memorypoints are in the model

you would have to go look and see where the barrel length is caluclated from to be sure

[terse sail]

ok, will leave this as a seperate vertex for now then, thanks again bro

also, when it comes to weapon rigging; does the engine need the name correct for an armature, or an object, or vertex, or all, or?

[stuck oyster]

eh?

[terse sail]

    "trigger",        "", /// not in this model, but good to use
            "bolt",            "",
            "bolt_catch",    "",
            "magazine",        "",
            "safety",        "",
            "muzzleFlash",    "",
            "OP",            "",
            "ForeSight",    "",
            "BackSight",    ""

do these names need to be on the armatures only? (Blender)

[stuck oyster]

no of course they need to be on the model

and weapon parts are animated in model.cfg

so you dont really use armature for them

the weapon animations are not rtm

[terse sail]

aye

[polar fiber]

Are you running ACE? Vanilla game doesn't have a barrel length stat

[terse sail]

the handanim is though, so how does that connect with the 'handanim' exactly?

[stuck oyster]

it does not

[terse sail]

no, dont use ace, just from visual inspection in game

[polar fiber]

Then it's because they have two different .p3d models

[terse sail]

ok, thats good to hear then

thanks bro

[terse sail]

but still need to use armature to get the hand to attach to magazine while animating though right?
meaning magazine object (and/or vertex?) name needs to be the same, for the game to accurately pick up the movement?

[stuck oyster]

no hand animation does not pick up the magazine

its all done in model.cfg

as you may have noticed arma vanilla weapons have very simple magazine movement and then its hidden

mods and dlcs have deviced more elaborate animations but that requires quite skilled animator

[unkempt lodge]

hmmm seems like the person who made niarms works for sog p.f now

so they probably dont care about unpaid dirty peasant modders now

[stuck oyster]

judging from the years put into NiArms for free thats a bit poor evaluation of their character..

as far as I know NiArms is still worked on. just things take time to solve. you cant expect modders to fix things instantly

even game companies dont do that for games you pay for

[unkempt lodge]

that discord log i posted was from june 2021, so 11 months ago

🤷

[stuck oyster]

and?

modders are just people

[mental jungle]

So I can’t take a blank PBO model and get its template and make changes to it and reup load it? Mod or base Arma?

[stuck oyster]

no

at least if I understand what you mean

[halcyon bluff]

When exporting from Blender, my roadway LOD is rotated ( 90 degrees i would guess) around one axis. Thats weird

😄

ok the positioning doesnt seem to line quite either.

[stuck oyster]

you have rotated and moved the lod object in object mode instead of edit mode

you need to apply those transforms

a lod ojbect is exported from its local space coordinates, not from the global space coordinates

so each lod objects origin (yellow dot) must be in same place if they are to overlap

[halcyon bluff]

yes, i figured that out by trial and error. But the transform thing was new to me. Thank you

[stuck oyster]

👍

[halcyon bluff]

thats odd. ok. so every verticie position is relative to the objects origin. So ideally just put all the origin in the center and be done with it right?

[stuck oyster]

yes

assuming the objects are otherwise aligning

you can for example set 3d cursor to 0,0,0 and use set Origin to cursor on all selected objects

[civic stratus]

is the armarig missing the gizmo for spine 3? There doesn't seem to be one between spine 2 and neck

[stuck oyster]

yes its not exactly a mandatory element for animations.

it can be added in though pretty easily

[civic stratus]

can you screenshot this option?

[civic stratus]

Is that in the n panel or the export window?

I'm running version 3.0.4

I'm not sure where to find the options drop down menu

[stuck oyster]

its not

youll have to update to latest dev version or merge them manually

[civic stratus]

where can I find that version on AlwarrenSidh's github page?

[stuck oyster]

honestly Im not sure if its there. I got mine elsewhere from the source 😅

@shrewd jay is the toolbox git master up to date?

[civic stratus]

this is all I'm seeing https://github.com/AlwarrenSidh/ArmAToolbox/releases

[shrewd jay]

@civic stratusYou can download the latest commit directly

[stuck oyster]

oh

[shrewd jay]

The archive contains an ArmaToolbox-master, you need to unpack that and re-zip the folder "ArmaToolbox" inside

Then you can install that archive in Blender's Preferences

[civic stratus]

okay

I'm also curious to know how the hidden selection maker works. It seems like every time I click a different object, it retains the last value. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?

[stuck oyster]

hidden selection is essentially just a vertex group

[civic stratus]

that makes sense. Shouldn't entering a value into that box make a vertex group of that name then?

As far as I can tell its non-functional

[stuck oyster]

never used it.

[civic stratus]

I know how to make my own vertex groups and assign them, I just thought it would be easy to use that feature to setup hidden selection textures from the materials window

@shrewd jay how to use hidden selections maker?

[shrewd jay]

The hidden selection maker doesn't work yet

[civic stratus]

Okay thank you

[lusty ginkgo]

How do you vertex snap in Object Builder?

[stuck oyster]

you dont 😄

OB has bit limited feature range

well you can always use the cursor and scale to it etc

buut Id recommend doing modeling in more modern programs

[lusty ginkgo]

I am just trying to move one vertex to another

I know it's possible somehow but I don't remember the exact obscure way to do it. Scaling to the pin is one way I guess

[stuck oyster]

well there is merge and merge near but those also move them

so results may not be desireable

[civic stratus]

I just tried making a shadowlod and my binlog is spitting this out: shadow(1000), vertex: 1807, sum of weights is 80, should be 100

is this a weight paint issue?

[stuck oyster]

yes

[civic stratus]

Is the issue because I have verticies with 0 weight in my vertex groups (spine 1, spine2, spine3) ?

[stuck oyster]

no

just that the selections that have weighting dont add up to 100

0 weight selections are not affecting the movement

[civic stratus]

can I share images with you in DM?

my errors say my vertex weights are greater > 100 now

[civic stratus]

I found a potential bug in ObjectBuilder. If you delete isolated points, you can no longer click between the weighted selections and see the viewport update appropriately

[civic stratus]

I discovered the "weights" menu that you can adjust when right clicking the named selections window, but making them = 100 didn't fix the errors

I can't get the weights window to open consistantly either

[stuck oyster]

Weights are better to fix in the source model.

[polar fiber]

You use the pin tool for snapping as well. Select your vert and r-click drag it to the target vert while you have the pin cursor. Selected one should highlight with a blue square when it’s under the influence of pin. You can use the viewport axis X, Y Z toolbar to limit the movement to one axis for vertical or horizontal alignment of selected objects. Multiple selected verts will maintain their spacing when you drag the blue vert to the target, so you can snap an object to a vert without fear of it collapsing to a single point

[stuck oyster]

Uuh!

[runic flare]

Any magic way to make geometry LOD? I want to make some cliffs but geometry LOD is pain in ass

[stuck oyster]

https://tenor.com/view/magical-magic-gif-13543499

@runic flare no, not really though.

I've discovered its easier to make the geometry first

then make the visual model fit that

and then make roadway out of the visual model

but it is very much all just manual work

needs some gittening of guttening

[runic flare]

ok thanks

[lusty ginkgo]

All that does is move the pin

[polar fiber]

Are you r-clicking or l-clicking?

[desert notch]

hey guys. I have a p3d question. does the bisurf do anything in the view geometry LOD?

@bold flare well you know why I have to ask! 😅

according to this page, in order to make surfaces partially transparent to the AI you can use "materials"
does it mean .rvmat or .bisurf?
https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3:_Vegetation_P3D

I'm gonna guess rvmat because iirc there's nothing in bisurf that could affect it

looks like it's bisurf
nvm

I found the following property:

"transparency",0.01

I'm gonna guess that's it

the wiki says it's obsolete tho
https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3:_CfgSurfaces_Config_Reference#transparency

there's also:

["Density",4]

looks like transparency it is

I'll correct the wiki

thanks everyone for the help 🤣

[pastel heath]

You are Welcome 😆

[harsh pivot]

Working on a red arrows mod for arma 3 anyone wanna help

Just very much looking how I would want it to look ie Liberia

Livery’s

[civic stratus]

I can't identify the issue

[stuck oyster]

you have some weights that are like 30 on one bone and 50 on one bone so they sum up to 80 instead of 100 that it should be

or bone1 10 bone2 40 and bone3 30 and they sum up to 80 instead of 100

[civic stratus]

so I triangulated it and tesselated non-quads and it binarized successfully

[stuck oyster]

👍

[rapid tree]

can someone help me out, i wanted to have a top gunner like the quinlin (minigun) have, the turret rotates as it should but the body of the gunner dont move with it resulting in having the hands in an painfull position.

[bitter kite]

Make sure that the proxy is connected to the rotating part that was the issue i had when i had that problem

[unreal jolt]

where can a fella find the config for base arma 3 body model I have modeled a custom head and now am looking to do a custom body

[stuck oyster]

Arma 3 samples on steam

[broken glade]

Hey, I have a question. Shadow LODs are now not required anymore for A3? Just saw the hint at the wiki LOD article

[stuck oyster]

Depend what you are making and what you want it to look like.

Sbsource visualex can be used to draw shadows from res lods

[quick terrace]

generally speaking, i would say SVLods are still 100% mandatory

[broken glade]

So SVLods are better for the performance?

[leaden sun]

again it depends, sbsource generates a shadow from a defined reslod and doesn't require the strict rules that a svlod does (all faces must be sharp, triangulated, and closed)

however it has its limits too, for example it only works with 'external' views, if you were to define a vehicle as having sbsource then it would work just fine externally but if you go into an internal lod (pilot, gunner, cargo) it will not render the shadow.

[stuck oyster]

Visualex is said to have better performance, mut it is indeed not as sharp

It's mostly used on large/terrain objects

[fierce snow]

this might not be the right place but, are there anyone willing to teach me how to make a tree and get it into arma? i know how to model, art in general is a hobby of mine since childhood.. im just not sure about the arma workflow, all i get is a white model with a almost transparent texture on the leafs.. same in buldozer.. i just want to learn the process of getting content into arma... none of the tuts/guides i find on youtube / google gets me anywhere closer.. if anyone have done this and know the hows and why's i would pay you or gift you a game on steam or whatever 🙂
if this is the wrong place or please correct me.

[stuck oyster]

its the place to ask. There are no specific tutorials for trees though. The basic setup is same for all models though and you seeing white textures (as in no textures) likely indicates you have not got the P drive development environment set up right or you are missing something in OB settings (or something else)

[fierce snow]

hmm interesting, ok i found out, i got P: setup now, and the texture is converted to paa.. ill try again 😛

[fierce snow]

ok now atleast the branches are showing, but no leaves, not even the white cards

[fierce snow]

yay, got it working, thanks alot

[stuck oyster]

👌 👍

[fierce snow]

i first tried png, didnt work, it just gave me a kinda transparent leaf with no color.. then i tried tga, didnt work, well it kinda did, but it had black background around the leaf.. then i tried different settings in text viewer.. same stuff.. so i went back to photoshop, and made a clipping mask behind the leaf.. saved as tga and hoped buldozer would convert it for me, it did, but gave me white background.. so i did it again, but this time with a png and same drill.. then it worked 🙂

[stuck oyster]

textures need correct suffixes to convert correctly to .paa

#arma3_texture got wiki page for that pinned if I remember right

[rapid tree]

Got it solved thank you :)

[rapid tree]

For your future work, make sure that all textures that are tranparent have _ca.paa

[fierce snow]

hmm i got it working using _co.. what is the difference actually?

[rapid tree]

Co is for solid color

[fierce snow]

Thanks for the info 👌🏻

[rapid tree]

Ca is for transparent things like windows, decals

[fierce snow]

Ok cool, in my case i needed it for a leaf

[stuck oyster]

_CO holds only 1bit alpha so its either on or off. _CA can have smooth alpha gradient

[prisma bobcat]

https://youtu.be/qH-oZ8wM-_s?t=727 Anybody know of a blender plugin that does the same function as curviloft in sketchup. Vid related.

[shell jolt]

no

[signal path]

I have a question for you guys cause I can’t find a good way of finding an answer for what I need.
I’m trying to use the arma 3 samples in blender but after downloading the samples I’m still having issues implementing them into blender. Any of you guys have an answer or video to this? Thank you !

[civic stratus]

What's the hard cap for verticies in a shadowvolume lod? I was able to successfully binarize my p3d with a shadowvolume of 7480 verticies and 14,700 faces but the shadow isn't visible

[white jay]

I’m gonna act like I understand you 😐

[rough idol]

afaik there is no such limit. As long as its closed, triangulated and with sharp edges then it should work

alternatively check .rpt

shadows generated from visual lod had such llimit (before visualEx was introduced)

[stuck oyster]

Arma toolbox addon can import the sample p3ds

[stuck oyster]

That is quite a lot of tris. How big thing is it?

[balmy glen]

hello , on object builder , what is the function to convert from 3d model to HITPOINTS for the hitpoint lod ? , thanks 🇫🇷 😎

dont find the solution on web ....

[fierce snow]

all i did, was install the samples from steam, then open blender, install the toolbox addon. Then (file > import > Arma 3 P3D) , then import the head bust or whatever from C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Arma 3 Samples\ or whatever it is on your end. what is the issue you are experiencing exactly?

[fierce snow]

im totally new on this but, i think it would be "Fire Geometry" or "Hit Points", not sure tho.

[balmy glen]

yes but , i want hitpoints on my model but not faces

just points

a solution 🙂 ?

fire geometry there are faces i think ?

[fierce snow]

well im not sure so im kinda "dont want him to do wrong" hehe 😛 but you could try duplicate it, then "points > merge near" and make it a lower version of it. then set preferences to Fire Geometry or Hit Points? i kinda started this yesterday, i just managed to build a tree and make it work ingame with lods and my texture 😛 so i cant really give you the answer, sorry.

[balmy glen]

merge near hooooo thanks , if it the solution .... 🙂

okay i see

[fierce snow]

maybe you could remove the faces and keep the points, idk, ill let u know if i test something in that area

[stuck oyster]

D to delete faces. But you probably want to use the program you normally model with to make the hitpoint clouds. It it usually a lot easier than trying to figure out OBs mysteries

[balmy glen]

okay thanks

hitpoints clouds on blender with toolsbox ?

[stuck oyster]

For example

[balmy glen]

okay but

hitpoint clouds on objectbuilder ?

[stuck oyster]

No automation for that unless you can find a o2 script for it

[balmy glen]

script ?

[stuck oyster]

Object builder can run scripting functions made by what's called O2script

The default install come with few but don't think it had anything for hitpoints

[fierce snow]

in blender x>only faces

[stuck oyster]

Can work

[fierce snow]

not 100% sure what he is trying to do tho

[balmy glen]

thanks , to get this script ?

[stuck oyster]

I don't know if there is any

So likely not possible

Unless you learn to write it yourself

[balmy glen]

okay

[fierce snow]

in blender tho it will remove faces and keep the vertices and edges

[balmy glen]

yes have toolbox blender but , whene i imort P3D , there is error on objetcbuilder

[stuck oyster]

You can't edit binarized p3ds

[balmy glen]

ho

[stuck oyster]

Or you mean when you export p3d from blender?

And open in OB

[fierce snow]

i never do that, i export as fbx then let OB save as p3d

[stuck oyster]

... Why

[balmy glen]

whene with blender i creat p3d to import on objevt builder

[fierce snow]

i dont know, bad habit

i come from zbrush and other tools, only reason im in blender is because of arma 😄 its just idk i guess you are forever in school haha

[stuck oyster]

You have to set objects as Arma objects by ticking the Arma properties box so exporter can export it

[balmy glen]

okay 🤔

[stuck oyster]

There is blender to Arma thread in BI forums. I recommend checking it out

[balmy glen]

yes thanks !!

and to hitpoints solutions , thanks !!

🇫🇷 👌

[fierce snow]

so what are you making for arma? 😄

[balmy glen]

crotale NG

[fierce snow]

ooh

[balmy glen]

with exemple

the SAM

of otan vanilla

[fierce snow]

ye i know

[balmy glen]

hehe

i dont know if my projet of FRENCH crotale lead

[fierce snow]

you have the radar rotating?

animation i mean

[balmy glen]

no but WIP

[fierce snow]

k

[balmy glen]

animation , i know that there is youtube for this hehe 🤣

[fierce snow]

i think u can do that pretty fast in blender

ye ofc there is

[balmy glen]

yes !

i want to export my crotale NG in game and next the animations

in game and fonctionel sorry

[fierce snow]

just do as HorribleGoat said and check out BI forums aswell, there is alot of good content there. even some of the very old stuff. also, sometimes reverse engineering some mod works.

helps alot

like seeing how other ppls mods work

[balmy glen]

yes i say

IN EXEMPLE

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/LOD

to lods

[fierce snow]

?

[balmy glen]

oups sorry

hehe other lien , it's AD

🤣

[fierce snow]

ye hehe

[fierce snow]

lodNoShadow = 1, should this be added to every LOD ? i mean will it stop it from casting shadows when on long distance?

[civic stratus]

It's a vest model with a lot of components/accessories on it. I set it up to work with hidden selections. I decimated as much topology as I could, using convex shapes as much as possible

I triangulated the faces and made edges hard in Blender. I made edges sharp with u again in object builder and there's no open topology

I did some merge near operations and got it down to 7400

[stuck oyster]

You don't really need shadow for every tiny bit and Bob.

They will nearly never be in angle to cast a shadow

@balmy glen you can study the sample models for learning. The BI wiki also contains a lot of information on things like how animations work in model.cfg

[balmy glen]

yes i say

thanks !! there are ARMAsamples

thene

[stuck oyster]

@civic stratus also make sure you don't have textures or hiddenselections on your shadow mesh

[stuck oyster]

On steam yes

[civic stratus]

I unmapped the UVs as well

Shadow is working after merging points down to 7400 polys

[stuck oyster]

Sounds about right I think

[civic stratus]

I don't think this was the reason, but it was set to 1000 resolution before I set it to 0

[stuck oyster]

1000 would be wrong too yeah

[civic stratus]

so for shadow volumes, does the resolution = the distance seen at?

[stuck oyster]

No

But 1000 is different type

[civic stratus]

Do you know where I can read some documentation for this?

[stuck oyster]

Wiki maybe.

[civic stratus]

I was really hoping you weren't just going to say wiki XD

[stuck oyster]

There is no absolute distance setting for lod change

It's about scene complexity and frames and the balance engine tries to handle

[civic stratus]

I was more so wanting more detail on 1000 being of different type

[stuck oyster]

No it's less

0 is the default stencil shadow

[civic stratus]

I just set my shadow volumes to be 1, 10 and 100, and now it won't binarize

[stuck oyster]

Put the 0,1, 2

The number won't affect distance

[civic stratus]

Okay. I was trying to reflect what the example does

Character example has 0 and 10

[stuck oyster]

Was there any error reported in packing?

Start by having just 1 shadow lod perhaps

[civic stratus]

I've been getting that sum of weights error for a while, it has packed successfully regardless though, so I'm betting the failure isn't due to that

[stuck oyster]

For additional reference you can open a3 p3d statistics with mikeros eliteness

[stuck oyster]

No that does not prevent it. But naturally should be fixed.

[civic stratus]

I've repainted it blender numerous times, just can't figure it out

there is a "weights" menu where the % can be redistributed though, I don't know if I should mess with that or not

[stuck oyster]

There are tools to normalize weighting too.

[civic stratus]

okay so, it successfully packed after disabling those additional shadowvolumes

I just made 'em edit lods

[stuck oyster]

👌

[civic stratus]

So, why would having additional shadowvolumes be preventing me from binarizing?

Oh, hold up

[stuck oyster]

Something broken in the model that binarize can't handle

[civic stratus]

my last shadowvolume ended up with non-closed topology some how

I noticed the stencilshadow option in the ArmaTools blender package, but have never seen it in object builder, what is it?

[stuck oyster]

Shadow lod0

Blender shadow volume lod is P3d shadow 1000

[civic stratus]

I made edges sharp and triangulated again and now all 3 lods will pack so, I guess I can't trust blender to do that

[stuck oyster]

Have not had such problems myself.

[civic stratus]

maybe after merging points the edges are no longer sharp/some faces become quads?

[stuck oyster]

A little unlikely. Perhaps you had something untriangulated

[unkempt token]

Heyo! I’m working on a shoot house in object builder. I’m having an issue with collisions: everything is working correctly except the floor is not solid to players or AI, yet a rag doll does react to the floor with appropriate collisions. What might cause this? I’ve tried so many ways to configure the component for the floor in obj builder.

[stuck oyster]

Do you have roadway lod surface that is little bit higher than geometry lod block?

[unkempt token]

Oh! Let me mess with that. I’m flying by the seat of my pants here and have the floor as a component in the regular geometry LOD. I’ll add a roadway and try that when I get back to my pc in a few.

[stuck oyster]

Is your geometry lod made out of convex blocks? Are all parts named component xx? And all have mass?

[unkempt token]

Yes to all. I’ll try the roadway lod

[stuck oyster]

👍

[unkempt token]

Huge thanks, the RoadWay LOD was exactly the fix!!

[stuck oyster]

👍 👌

[signal path]

I installed the tool and samples separately so when I went to pull the samples they weren’t popping up as an add on to install

[rapid tree]

Is there an easy way to create geometry models ?

[cedar garden]

Quick question for you guys, I have a model I've been working on, whenever it's inside a building, it will go (basically) completely black, so you can't see any of the details on the helmet. How can I prevent this from happening?

[rapid tree]

Thank you for more in depth info about _ca,_co

[quick terrace]

pastebin your rvmat

[civic stratus]

Do shadows NEED to be convex to not cause artifacts?

[tulip beacon]

afaik no, only closed, not sure though

[teal cargo]

Hello, I’m having a problem that is probably a easy fix. I made a few airport lights and the lights work fine being placed in editor but after placing them in Terrain Builder it doesn’t work anymore

[quick terrace]

hard edge, closed and triangulated

[halcyon bluff]

Is there a difference between a meter in Blender vs a meter in arma? Because when i model things according to this https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3:_Infantry_Metrics its way too big ingame

It seems t be about twice as big ingame.

[fierce snow]

is there anything else i need to do to make normals show correctly other than changing to NO or NOHQ on file names? also should it show in buldozer or just ingame?

ive added it in the rvmat

[fierce snow]

im not sure about this either.. but i tried and failed alot, so in the end i ended up with using a 1.4m cube's height as reference for a soldiers height, then inside object builder i used "scale in 2d" and did 0.01 once. then it kinda fitted ingame, i ended up making alot of cubes for different stuff.. like a bottle.. a gun.. etc, just basic references..

what you can do is import one of the weapon samples, and use the grip or mag as reference for stuff.. or even the head bust.. idk, i end up having to rescale 0.01 on whatever i do. you could try export as P3D

[fierce snow]

try setting unit scale in blender to 0.01 instead of 1, scene properties > units > unit scale .. its 1 by default

[stuck oyster]

No but if you scale objects in object mode in blender that messes up the scale

[stuck oyster]

No. Don't do thid

Also to keep things simple, use the Arma toolbox to export p3d directly and you have a lot less to worry about.

[halcyon bluff]

So what tipps can you givehow to get things to the proper size? Just trial and error.

?

[stuck oyster]

1 blender unit is 1 meter in Arma

Sample character can be used as reference

but real life measurements mostly work

and dont scale stuff in blender in OBJECT mode. do all editing in EDIT mode

[halcyon bluff]

ok

how do i make selections in blender? this seems like a basic thing but i couldnt find anything about it online.

[stuck oyster]

look for vertex groups

for this kind of stuff good google-fu and self studying is a must

[halcyon bluff]

thats the keyword i needed

thanks

[round bloom]

Bit of a random question, but with a uniform, is it possible to add particle effects to one? Like to add fire on to it, but without it ever damaging the player

[stuck oyster]

With scripting you can put particles anywhere. However such effects should be used sparingly as there are limits on how many particles can be on screen at the same time.

So those effects might not always show. Or they might cancel out some other effects.

[rapid tree]

Can someone help me ? I tried to do a 3d scope and with using the sample reticle it works but when i change the reticle to a red dot its not working anymore , Am i missing something

[stuck oyster]

what does "does not work" mean exactly?

did you pack it succesfully into pbo?

(with pboproject and without errors)

[rapid tree]

There is no reticle anymore when i change it

I dont use MikerosTools

[stuck oyster]

you should.

😛

saves a lot of hairpulling

what you experience sounds like bad path somewhere

[rapid tree]

The reticle shows up correctly in bulldozer

[stuck oyster]

bad path somewhere.

[rapid tree]

Checked it i cant find a bad path

[stuck oyster]

Thats all I got.

Im fairly certain if you ran pboProject it would catch something

[rapid tree]

Hm okay i mean the odd thing is it works with the Example Reticle from the Scope sample.

[stuck oyster]

im still gonna say bad path

or project structure

and it just doesnt get packed in

[rapid tree]

But the Optic is in the game

Is a Rvmat neccesarry for Optic Reticles ?

[stuck oyster]

if you want the parallax effect, yes

[rapid tree]

But not for the crosshair to show up ?

[stuck oyster]

probably not

[fierce snow]

@white jay you still around? i just noticed you have done what i am trying to do 😄

[fierce snow]

if i wanted to break any object into parts. like a box, or whatever.. and i modelled the parts and the model as a whole, could it be possible to assign bones to each part, then name out those bones in a cfg and give them physics? so it would not move unless shot at or damage. say, i shot the corner of an object, it would hit the hitpoints and that bone and connected part would fly off. or if i threw a nade on it, all the parts would fly off with their own weights etc. i would think it could get performance heavy for arma, or should i just learn particles and get something of an immersion instead.

[stuck oyster]

possible I think yes. not very commonly done though. very complicated, not documented stuff

spawning separate parts is more common method

[fierce snow]

im pretty sure, whatever idea i get its been thought off and probably failed upon a million times hehe.. thanks for the answer tho.

i really wanted a way of breaking stuff, but whatever mod ive tried it gets messy once you go from shooting objects and things start blowing up.. just those ballistic immersion mods where headgear gets destroyed.. once there are several units and they are supposed to spawn at the same time it just eats performance.

i guess its a reason they made the windows in buildings as they did

[stuck oyster]

indeed

[fierce snow]

is there a way of filtering damage sources? like a bullet might make it spawn, but an explosion damage wont? and instead maybe just spawn another wreck model/ broken bottle / object whatever

or is damage just damage

[stuck oyster]

you can check what damage eventhandlers do

but if they dont offer such division then I dont think its possible

[fierce snow]

for me it just looks like math, like the amount of damage, not type..

hmm

then i guess you could make it look for ammo type, like.. if nade was used then dont break and spawn shard1, shard2, shard3 etc, but instead spawn broken_object1.. and if fired at, break, delete normal_object1 and then spawn shard1 blabla ?

meh this is way out of my league

[rapid tree]

I got a new issue, after i finally make my scope work how it should without binarizing, when i binarize it the reticle turns black... And yes i moved the Face to Top

[stuck oyster]

bad path.

pls just do proper P drive setup and use pboProject and youll see what the problem is

(the free version of mikeros tools works just fine in case that is an issue)

[rapid tree]

My P Drive is correctly setup. And the Path to the Reticle is to Arma 3.

I use the Vanilla A3 Reticle

[amber laurel]

is there a simple car mod making tutorial video out there? without cutting and kids in background?

[rapid tree]

Look at the Sample Files its how i learned to do cars

[civic stratus]

Hidden Selections are appearing in the shadow after being set as transparent texture. Do only Hide animations stop this from happening?

[stuck oyster]

Car making is not exactly simple. There are lot of things required. Unfortunately youtube tutorials are often missing things.

[stuck oyster]

Yes, can't hide things with hiddenselections. Also shadowlod should not have hiddenselections. It breaks bad

[karmic blade]

Question, I have alicorn in blender. I set it to arma object, extract it into p3d and for some reason it fucks up, any idea what I did wrong? Here are pictures: https://imgur.com/a/Ylny9jv

[stuck oyster]

Not all of the parts are set as Arma objects?

You not running latest version so it does not have option to combine objects?

[karmic blade]

I am not sure, I am very new to this. You mean combine objects in blender?

[stuck oyster]

Yes latest toolbox has object export option to combine all same level lod objects into one. Otherwise you need to do it yourself

[karmic blade]

I just ctrl+j and everything seems to be combined now

I am exporting now

Gimme a sec on result

Okay weird, it combined almost everything except the back part

[stuck oyster]

Maybe didn't have that selected

[marble ravine]

Trying to get my models to binarize without any warnings but when I use basegame RVMAT's like
a3\data_f\default_flash_2pass_notiwrite.rvmat and a3\data_f\clan_sign.rvmat also a3\data_f\default.rvmat
Binarize will spit out heaps of: PATHTOP3D:LODNAME Stage 1 has no texture to retrieve format from (while generating ST coordinates)

My custom RVMAT's are all Super shaders and have no issues. (If I replace the base games ones with any of my own, the warnings will disappear)
am I missing something somewhere?

[stuck oyster]

Probs some surface ha no material or texture assigned

When you replace, it gets filled

[marble ravine]

I use OB face properties to specifically only swap out the RVMAT on select faces for testing. I leave the textures the same. so I don't think its that.

Ow darn, just swapped everything over to clan_sign.rvmat to see if you're right and that also removed the warnings.

Time to check every face

[marble ravine]

I have 7 warnings in a certain lod. And also 7 combinations of Textures and Materials. Is that how it works? Still don't know what I am changing when I swap the RVMAT's that fixing things

[stuck oyster]

7 combinations of textures and materials?

what does that mean

[marble ravine]

say the face texture is bla.paa with material omega.rvmat and a different combinations are bla.paa- delta.rvmat and rick.paa-delta.rvmat

[stuck oyster]

why?

[marble ravine]

some share a texture and some share a material and some are unique. Its the only thing that matches with the amount of warnings and what I can find in the model

[stuck oyster]

it may be it does not like how you have set it up 🤔

usually its texture+material, texture2+material2

[marble ravine]

its a ported arma 2 p3d

[stuck oyster]

as in texture and materials supporting textures compliment each other

like normalmaps AO smdi etc

[marble ravine]

I can see what you mean.

[stuck oyster]

they dont work on other textures/uvmapping

[stuck oyster]

this does not really answer the question 😅 Arma 2 models dont have that kind of texture/material setup im fairly sure

[marble ravine]

Thats what I wanted to know. I think I might have tried to "Fix" an issue with textures and changed it. I also realise that something with a mirror.rvmat doesn't want a texture. Yeah, I am going to clean it up.

[marble ravine]

Ah ok. I am completely wrong.
default.rvmat and mirror.rvmat work just fine. its only clan_sign.rvmat and default_flash_2pass_notiwrite.rvmat are giving me issues.
So I assume now that I am simple using the RVMAT's wrong. I'll go back to the basics on them and figure it out from there.

[stuck oyster]

so typically you have 1 texture and a corresponding material that contains the shader textures in it

and they all are made for same uvmapping

like so

the ext there also has _CO texture variants that can be swapped via config

and they match for that particular mesh uvmapping

then some special parts might have their own rvmats like the mirrors

[marble ravine]

Yup that is exactly how I have my super shaders configured. UV maps and how everything fits together is know to me. I think i am missing information on how the non-super shader without stages can and should be used tbh.
Shaders for car lights like default_flash_2pass_notiwrite.rvmat are porbably use wrong by me. If that RVMAT is even applicable for car lights.

[stuck oyster]

do you have anything that would need to use it on your model?

all rvmats should be used the same way really

[marble ravine]

clan_sign.rvmat should just work. That is the one I am most frustrated by.

[stuck oyster]

why do you have clan_sign rvmat?

and have you assigned a texture on that surface too?

[marble ravine]

Its what was on the Arma 2 and I suppose also Arma 3 clan selection surface

yep, bis_klan.paa as a placeholder both from a3\data_f

[stuck oyster]

alright.

shat should be ok

[marble ravine]

Should be yes. But it refuses

[stuck oyster]

do you happen to have more than 1 uvset on the model?

[marble ravine]

No that has already been removed. Got added after a miss click in blender

OB lists only one UV set so I assume it is properly removed atleast

[stuck oyster]

if you make a working assinging and then assign the original setup on top does it still break?

[stuck oyster]

yes but also if you had more than one in the source model they may not be combined

since this is A2 model it should be fine unless you have done edits that add more uvsets

[marble ravine]

No Just confirmed it, 1 sole uv set

[stuck oyster]

are all the parts uvmapped

do you have a spot of "single" looking vertex at the left bottom corner of uv map?

thats where all the non unwrapped mesh goes hiding

[marble ravine]

No, I do not. I also already tried just forcefully unwrapping the whole meh again just before.

[stuck oyster]

what are you packing the pbo with?

[marble ravine]

pboProject. The warnings are from the binlogs

Paid, Most recent version.

[stuck oyster]

can you pastebin the binlog?

[marble ravine]

Yes

https://pastebin.com/fDBauPbB

That is sole the part about the p3d I am working on now, there are 2 others in the same pbo but that is of no effect now, right?

[stuck oyster]

hmm the warnings should not prevent the packing

it seems to push through those

the cannot read registry is also a "non error" pboProject handles that on its own

there is no error here to give a clue what happens actually. 🤔

what does the console say?

[marble ravine]

They do not prevent packing no, the model gets binerized and is fine. I just dislike releasing a model that spits out this many warnings to others.
Also jsut start a paper trail about the error for others, instead of just ignoring it.

Here is the console https://pastebin.com/s52dm5Ze

The whole thing is on github, should you want the files. https://github.com/Walthzer/WFAR/tree/scrapyard-wars

[polar fiber]

Textures and .rvmat materials you are using from the base game still need to be unpacked to your P: drive if you're referencing them. Especially if they're _ca/alpha textures since the model needs to check whether the texture is alpha or not and apply appropriate render flags to that face during binarisation

[rapid tree]

That means i have to copy the rvmat and the .paa to my addon folder ?

[polar fiber]

No

It means you need the .paa files you are using from the game, in their exact location from the gama data, on your P:\ drive

example if you were using the AMS scope reticle. You'd need it unpacked to P:\a3\weapons_f_mark\Acc\Data\reticle_acco_ams_CA.paa

and do the same with the .rvmat, plus all the files that the .rvmat references - pathed to their exact location in the game data

[stuck oyster]

simplest way is to set up P drive with nearly fully unpacked A3 data set. it can however require some disk space

there are alternatives too but I dont quite know how they work

[round bloom]

Is there a way to stop a vehicle from hiding player gloves in drivers seat or would it require a new proxy?

[rapid tree]

I actually have pathed it like that

Update it works when binarized. Thank you so much i was struggling for nearly 2 days with that 🙏

[stuck oyster]

how are the gloves on the character?

[round bloom]

It's a glove that is using the NVG slot, trying to use them to hide player hands in combination with a player uni, but when they get in most vehicles they are hidden

[stuck oyster]

then no

nvg slot is not meant for that

[round bloom]

It's being used as a workaround for cosmetic purposes to have NVG but not goggles

[stuck oyster]

I know

but its not meant for that

dont think theres much you can do about that

Arma is not mean to have that kind of dressup features unofortunately

[round bloom]

is it not a driver proxy thing though? Its main use is with a custom vehicle so I could modify that proxy, just not sure if that can be done for NVG?

[stuck oyster]

its not related to crew proxies

its either animation config thing or vehicle config thing. dont remember which

[fierce snow]

OB model structures, do i need distance lods for everything? like a coffecup or a notepad or whatever.. or is it just for trees and such? also the geometry lod, is it ok to just keep a Component01 with weight and nothing more? or do i need to close convex hull etc on every lod, even the fire geometry? as i understand, geometry just makes it so i cant walk trough? the phys is for cars, and the phys old is for older arma vehicles. fire is for gunshots etc?

[stuck oyster]

distance lods help the engine to cope with complex scenes

very very simple and small things may not need very many lods, maybe none at all

simple single part geometry lod is ok if it fits your needs

all geometry lods default to the basic geometry lod if they are not separately defined

sometimes it works fine

sometimes you want to define collision goemetry, fire geometry and view geometry separately

[fierce snow]

"all geometry lods default to the basic geometry lod if they are not separately defined"

what do you mean by this?

[stuck oyster]

if you dont make firegeometry lod the geometry lod is used for it

[fierce snow]

like.. just to test, take the bottle i did a couple days ago.. i just have 0.000, geometry, landcontact and fire geometry

aah ye

understand

on the tree i did, i had like 5 lods wich i merged near for distance, what i dont understand tho, is how far is it.. like between 2 lods, i noticed when testing on a small item that i just had to walk a little from it to show the worse model..

feel kinda lost and useless haha

anyhow, they show up ingame with the right textures and stuff so i guess im doing something right, even the collision and able to shoot at them

[stuck oyster]

there is no exact distance between lods

[fierce snow]

feels like 20-50m tho, kinda random

idk

[stuck oyster]

engine tries to show best it can while keeping fps high

[fierce snow]

ah

[stuck oyster]

it is random yes

depends whats on screen

if done right fps can stay steady even on complex scenes

if done badly you might have a car 2km away that has single 100k face lod

[fierce snow]

ouch 😛

dont want that

[stuck oyster]

and engine tries to draw it all

[fierce snow]

ye would get ugly pretty quick

no im trying to keep if fairly simple now for learning.. i dont make complex models for this atm, i do however work on models with millions and even tho its gonna be projected onto something simpler it would still not be usable for arma sadly. i dont know what it is with arma, but its just so addictive, the ingame editor alone is like an unlimited game maker to kill time. then these tools alone, so challenging and annoying, just cant stop hehe

[stuck oyster]

there is definitely something in the possibilities and challenge of making stuff

[fierce snow]

its weird aint it, the thing that draws you in, is the simple things, then you want to change it.. hehe

i noticed that whatever object i make when shot at, it bursts some kind of rocks/dirt from the impact..and i read up on it and its because its taking a default material "surf" penetration something.. so i tried change that, and just marked the whole fire geometry lod, hit E and set the url to another one, like the glass one in a3/data blabla.. but it still shows the same impact

even tried set it in the rvmat

but still

am i comepletely off here or what?

[stuck oyster]

you need to assign it a penetration material

so rvmat

in fire geometry lod yes if you want to specify it separately

it can also be done just in geometry lod

[fierce snow]

well, its just one model part itself so

but wont that overwrite the super rvmat?

[stuck oyster]

eh?

[fierce snow]

nvm i think i know what you mean

[stuck oyster]

geometry lod should not otherwise need any rvmat

view/resolution lods are what you see

they have their own textures/rvmats

[fierce snow]

yeah i know, sorry for my english:P

im gonna try

[stuck oyster]

the folder with penetration rvmats also has their corresponding bisurf files. make sure to use the rvmat

[fierce snow]

so i dont need to convex hull the geometry lod?

[stuck oyster]

yes

well no if its already convex

all geometry components need to be convex

[fierce snow]

hmm, im gonna do this all over to be safe

[stuck oyster]

its good practice

[fierce snow]

yay worked

glass breaking sound 😛 even tho im prob gonna make that myself aswell with time, good to know how it works

thanks man

[stuck oyster]

enjoy the happy moments of success inbetween the forever feeling headscratching of wy u no worky!!!

[fierce snow]

haha! so true

[fierce snow]

lets say i made a can of beans, how would i make the fire geometry to make it fall over? i mean, isnt it enough to set the weight of the lod?

objects fly and fall and stuff, but only if i use a grenade or explosives

it clearly shows that its registering beeing hit, as it shows bulletholes (or the arma black dot) and plays the surf info, sound and even send shards against the screen.. but the object just sits there

[stuck oyster]

has the geometry lod mass ?

[fierce snow]

yes

or i think so atleast

i right click it, and set the mass from 100% to 10%

tried with 100% aswell, same thing

[stuck oyster]

🤔

[fierce snow]

hmm would i need to do it to all components?

[stuck oyster]

right click it where?

geometry mass is a Arma specific feature

nothing to do with vertex weighting

[fierce snow]

is there a hotkey for it?

[stuck oyster]

in where? 😅

[fierce snow]

oh my god im stupid

😄

never mind, i havent slept

its been in the bottom corner the whole time

haha

i need a break from the pc lol

thanks tho

[stuck oyster]

we generally advice sleeping well before modding.

makes things a wee bit easier 😅

[fierce snow]

ye i know, i usually use bedtime to read and learn, but its just so addicting.. and im doing several different things, not only arma.. so my brain sometimes feels like its going to implode hehe.. but its a good thing to take a break and start with a fresh mind.

[placid ermine]

Do weapons in arma have to be made of one object or they can be split into several different pieces like stock, upper and lower receiver and barrel?

[fierce snow]

its like with hangovers.. you still drink beer again after.. and even tho i know work goes slower and learning gets harder without sleep, i still do it.

[stuck oyster]

the final weapon object is 1 model

at modeling stage you can do whatever you like

[placid ermine]

ok, thanks. I can merge them to one object, but they don't have to be physically one mesh, right?

[stuck oyster]

correct

if you use Blender you can use Arma toolbox addon to export directly to p3d

[placid ermine]

I have to make uv and texture it first

[stuck oyster]

and its latest version can also combne same lod level parts into single lod on export

[fierce snow]

remember to flip normals on the parts that wont show before merging into one

[placid ermine]

https://imgur.com/aNzc02c it looks like this now

[fierce snow]

beautiful

[placid ermine]

I think I'll be able to easily make stock, body and that little folding thing one mesh, but with other I'll have to just ctrl+j merge it

What about the moving parts? They should be separate things, am I right?

[fierce snow]

for animation i think yes, but

[stuck oyster]

as long as you dont merge verticles together they are separate mesh parts inside single object

[fierce snow]

nvm me actually, ive come to peace with that arma is something on its own. HorribleGoat is a living lexicon

[placid ermine]

I see, I'll merge everything then as soon as I UV map all of it

[stuck oyster]

if you use the latest arma toolbox you dont have to merge the objects if you dont want to. Either way works though.
For animated parts you will need to assign the parts you want to move to vertex groups

those are then used to connect animation configs to the model

[stuck oyster]

I've done this for a while now. One picks up a few things in time

[fierce snow]

arent the vertex groups in blender like the list inside OB's with the Components when using the arma toolbox?

[stuck oyster]

yes vertex groups in blender are same as named selections in OB

[fierce snow]

i know, its just amazing how fast you remember everything and has answers.. i guess its all basics for you so its understandable hehe

we should actually switch discord names

what is a high mass?

i tried 10 and it doesnt move

i will try 1

nade knocks them over tho

i clicked alt+M, the mass bar shows in bottom corner, i changed mass to 10.. but it does nothing ingame, in oB it changes to 10 and gives a blue point in the middle of object.

[stuck oyster]

knocking over likely means it gets destroyed

thet is default destruction type effect

10 is pretty much minimum

[fierce snow]

hmm, but it does not move when shot at

[stuck oyster]

you can try somewhat larger amount too

[fierce snow]

i tried with 50

[stuck oyster]

then its not configured as physix simulation object

[fierce snow]

no luck, same as 100 and 10

[stuck oyster]

does it fall if you place it high up in editor

[fierce snow]

but the phys and phys old is for vehicles right?

[stuck oyster]

physX lod had nothing to do with it

but all things in arma are "vehicles"

they just have different simulation types

[fierce snow]

oh

[stuck oyster]

some more static than others

[fierce snow]

so i basicly just set a class like Land_CanOpener_F in the config to make it inherit from or? where do i make it a physics simulation object if not in OB

[stuck oyster]

config

you can yes inherit from a similar object

[fierce snow]

simulation = "ThingX"; ?

[stuck oyster]

yes

inheriting from similar objects class usually can skip the basic properties you would have same anyway

[fierce snow]

ok it now falls down when put in the air, but does not fall over, also when shot just stand still

maybe use something else than thingX

[stuck oyster]

compare behavior to other thingX objects in eden

[fierce snow]

if i search the a3 folder i find the config of the A3_structures_F holding the data for all the food items allready in the game.. think i could use that.. ill try atleast

[stuck oyster]

do the food items behave the way you want in game?

[fierce snow]

its mostly small items, even under vehicle class "Small_items" so ill check atleast

[fierce snow]

woohoo, it just works

[fierce snow]

thanks again 🙂

[stuck oyster]

[fierce snow]

i didnt use the configs from A3, i just did as you mentioned before, dont know why it worked the second time

class CfgVehicles {
class ThingX;
class Bottle: ThingX {

only changes i did

it wobbles around a little , if i go full auto it tips over. Im planning to make it destrType something with a cost= something and make it spawn a somewhat randomized particles or thingX whatever route this takes me, and just leave a broken bottle bottom, delete the original bottle object etc. but this is good for other stuff aswell and what i wanted to achieve so ill take it as a win 🙂

[stuck oyster]

👍

[fierce snow]

is it possible to add weight/mass in the config? like, if this was a pencil it would look weird hehe.. but for a bowling peg it would be immersion enough

to tweak the force i mean on impact

since 10 is as low as it gets in OB

think i figured it out, you just select faces and different Components and mass them individually, instead of having all mass at bottom etc, killing the whole wobble effect.

like if i wanted a popup wackamole type head, id just put all the mass in the jaw, and it would fall and instantly pop up again.. if i wanted a rolling motion after walling, id eaqually distribute same amount of mass in bottom, and top and mid.. or if id just want the bowling peg look id keep it all centered. this is nice.

also you can have under 10 in mass

just tested, unchecked "do not change total mass" and set 0.500 for bottom of bottle component, then on cork i did the same. saved and tried ingame, now it flies off with just a pistol shot.

makes it roll nicely over the floor aswell

[stuck oyster]

Small mass can sometimes be unreliable. But if it works on your object all good!

[fierce snow]

well atm its just flasks and bottles, cans and such

[karmic blade]

Hey, I have a textured ship and I would like to make it walkable (currently it has no collision), how do I go about it? I heard I need some sort of LODs?

[fierce snow]

pros and cons with using billboard or spaceobject

performance wise i mean

[fierce snow]

i think roadwalk something

[karmic blade]

What are geometry lods for than?

[stuck oyster]

you need both

[fierce snow]

never actually tried, i am kinda new. but as far as ive read i think bouyancy for floating in water, and roadway for walking.. make sure your model topology is closed (In OB: Structure > Topology > Find Non-Closed) and made up of convex hulls (In OB: Structure > Convexity > Find Non-Convexities). Also, check mass, Ctrl + A, Alt+M and set mass. if it doesnt work try split convex.. no idea, never made a boat / ship hehe.. interesting project tho.

[stuck oyster]

but there is also size limith how big objects you can make and have them walkable

[fierce snow]

50m or something?

or 200

[stuck oyster]

50x50 meters is safe

[fierce snow]

i wish there was no limits 😛

[stuck oyster]

so do we all

[fierce snow]

cant wait for the new engine

not that i think there wont be limits, just bigger ideas to realise

hopefully an easier flow

[karmic blade]

What if the object is bigger?

[fierce snow]

i think you can make it out of two models.. not sure

[karmic blade]

Or is this limitation for seperate lods?

[stuck oyster]

you will fall though it

[karmic blade]

hmmm

[stuck oyster]

the aircraft carrier is made out of parts

[karmic blade]

This is also an aircraft carrier

[stuck oyster]

if you want big objects like that you will need to make it out of parts

[karmic blade]

made out of 2 parts current;y

[stuck oyster]

I really dont recommend that big a project for a beginner..

it is very difficult to learn stuff like that

[karmic blade]

well its already made, as in model and textures are done and its already ingame. It just currently has no collision

[stuck oyster]

when you "need to know everything" to succeed

its not made

[fierce snow]

try split it, and add everything separately

[stuck oyster]

not even half

since its missing the splitting and all technical lods

currently its made wrong

[karmic blade]

It only needs a flat runway, thats about it, a flat long geometry, a cude

cube

[stuck oyster]

fine you dont have to believe me

[karmic blade]

I do

Orrr I could make a bunch of invisible objects

that will be under the runway

and other parts, like a bunch of invisible aircraft carrier shaped onjects

[fierce snow]

what is your end goal?

[karmic blade]

make a thing I can walk on thats it

[stuck oyster]

its not ripped model is it?

[fierce snow]

i doubt you will be able to drive it, so it would have to be static anyways?

ah ok

check out the carrier allready in the game, try to see how they did it

[karmic blade]

You can make it driveable by attaching it to an SDV

[karmic blade]

I am pretty sure I posted pictures, u tell me

[fierce snow]

cant see any

but i believe you 😛

are you sure both parts are convex?

try with two rectangles

[karmic blade]

I will do that, but tomorrow, its midnight soon

I will make a very basic shape of it in blender. I will make a runway (rectangle) + 2 rectangles on bothsides so players wouldnt fall off, and a tube shape as base. And will see how it will work

[fierce snow]

sounds good, Geo lod, Res lod, roadway lod.. if ladders i think u need to make a building class and attachTo carrier..

proxies for cannons

[karmic blade]

Geo is collision, road is for walking (so character wouldnt do that floating animation thingy right) what is res lod for?

[fierce snow]

i cant find the pictures u posted

[karmic blade]

No cannons, I will just attach VLs if I will want to and other jets dlc stuff

[fierce snow]

res is just a rename.. its like the model you see close right? LOD just means level of detail..

resolution lods

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/LOD

[karmic blade]

It was a link, because I was asking for help, and I couldnt post links in creative editing, so I uploaded it onto website and posted a link here somewhere, on this discord I think

ye so res lod is resolution at distance?

[fierce snow]

i make a palm tree, the first 0.000 i just rename to res1, then i copy it and make 3 more, using merge near to make em lower res, and call em res 2, res 3, res 4 etc.. then i make a geo lod for collision, one for fire, and whatever.

as i said im new, like 2 days old hehe.. i cant say anything for sure, jsut what has worked for me

[karmic blade]

Okay I will have a lot of youtube videos to watch

[fierce snow]

doesnt hurt

even watched some in languages i dont understand

even dayz mod ones, nothing hurts

[karmic blade]

I spent 5 hours today to figure out how to do stuff that now takes me 5 minutes max

[fierce snow]

circle of life 😄

[karmic blade]

anyway its late for me I will try that stuff tomorrow, or well I will make my ship out of the most basic shapes, and will see from there

[fierce snow]

allright, good night 🙂 thanks for the insight and good luck, ill probably still be here.. but you should suck up anything HorribleGoat says in these channels, he saved me from brain imploding several times allready.

maybe your roadway lod overlaps the geo lod or the components are far away from the center.. anyways i think its a try and fail until success with anything going out of limits 😛

[blissful spire]

ok folks, ive returned

so, i have this tube im wanting to use for corridors that ive modeled out. i have a LOD1, Geo, LandContact, Roadway, Paths, View Geo and Fire Geo lods setup. Pathing inside the corridor works (Ie if they are already inside, they can pathfind out of it), however enemy AI will still shoot through the walls. any idea on why?

[civic stratus]

Does buldozer not recognize a proxy as being a shadow lod? I'm not sure how to explain what I mean. My shadow lod's proxy is showing a resolution lod. Also, the proxy isn't visible in game. Do I need to include the proxy model name in the modelcfg?

[stuck oyster]

yes proxies dont load the respective lod

proxies dont need to be in model.cfg

[civic stratus]

any ideas why it would show in buldozer, but not in-game?

[stuck oyster]

what kind of proxy is it?

[civic stratus]

combination of res and shadow lods

[stuck oyster]

is it used as and independent object or is it just adding stuff ot this particular model?

(there isnt really much any reason to use proxies to add more mesh as the p3d can handle the vertex/tris count in normal situations)

and proxy parts cant be animated etc separately

it helps to be specific on what you try to do

[stuck oyster]

are there holes in the view geometery? AI can see through very narrow gaps too

[blissful spire]

negative

faces are the right way, the model has mass and a fire geo rvmat for penetration values

[stuck oyster]

is it very large tube?

[blissful spire]

effectively yeah. hexagonal tube

2m x 2m x 2m size

[stuck oyster]

aa so not very large

large would be 50 meters 😄

[blissful spire]

fair

lol

[stuck oyster]

but 2 meter thing should not be a problem

are you placing it on ground or in air?

[blissful spire]

straight on the ground

using VR map for testing

[stuck oyster]

how thick view geometry parts do you have?

[blissful spire]

uhh wait one

[stuck oyster]

approximately is enough

[blissful spire]

would a picture help?

[stuck oyster]

1 meter? less/more

sure

[blissful spire]

it is possible its not thick enough

https://imgur.com/a/w9nKwve

[stuck oyster]

if its same as the wall it is pretty thin

Id try thicker view geometry first

you could even test making it just single solid hexagonal block

just to see if there is difference

[blissful spire]

view geo is the same as the image without the smaller tubes

the size of it now is just enough to get the arma man to fit without being glitchy. woudnt increasing the thickness of the view geo just overwrite lod1?

[stuck oyster]

no?

geometry lods do not affect the resolution lods

[blissful spire]

ViewGeometry
The visible geometry of the model.

As an example: If you have an object with this LOD properly configured, you will not be able to spot other units through the model. AI will not be able to spot other units through the model. If this LOD is not present the Geometry LOD will be used instead.

from the wiki?

unless im understanding it wrong

[stuck oyster]

wrong yes

its just used for view calculation

for AI

[blissful spire]

ahh

[stuck oyster]

it does not make the model invisible

[blissful spire]

ill increase the thickness tomarrow and see what happens

im just happy the AI can path inside lol

[stuck oyster]

👍

[civic stratus]

it is used as an independent object, yes

I just wanted to avoid copy/pasting the same geometry over and over

I'm working on a vest and a belt, and I wanted to make a version combining the two by using the belt as a proxy in the vest p3d

[stuck oyster]

That won't work. It won't animate right

[fierce snow]

how!? im going insane over here 😄

[fierce snow]

is the roadway overlapping the geo lod? and are the faces ok? ai can just see view geo lod i think

this @white jay guy is hopefully alive and can put me out of my misery

i fell asleep infront of the pc last night, woke up like 5 in the morning, had to take a beer to wake up lol

i got the thingX to work on my model, and i think both destructbuilding and destructman worked, because the model kinda tilted a little when shot with pistol. wich is a sign that its destroyed right? destructbuilding didnt show any signs of death tho wich i think is because it needs a ruin. my config didnt like the deleteVehicle in it for some reason and wouldnt pack, also i am on a wild goose chase trying other ppls codes in my config just mixing and testing, no luck even getting a single particle to show ingame.

[stuck oyster]

😅

[white jay]

Just got back I've been out traveling

I'll see if I can post the config but basically I made custom particle effects, gave the bottle a hit points lod then used the same hide/unhide animation bit the house windows use

Most of it is pretty hard to explain and I'm not sure what makes my custom particles to work but I got a lucky guess and they just do... sort of

If you import them into terrain builder it breaks but editor placed seems fine

[white jay]

Basically I have an intact model, when it's shot it hides and the broken model unhides and a shards particle system plays on an effects memory point

I have like 3-4 shard models that are referenced and spawned once each with a velocity that's randomized but biased to z+

[blissful spire]

negative. roadway is 0.1m above the geo, they can walk just fine on it. faces are flipped properly.

[unkempt token]

Welp- I've hit the limit of "winging it" so far haha. I get as far as creating the door model, giving it the component name of Door_1 in view and a collision component named Door_1, then I add two vertices as door_1_axis and a point on the handle for door_1_trigger, and I've pulled I think the essential parts for it to work from the model and config files from the Arma 3 sample house... so I get the action showing in the right spot in game, but upon doing the action, nothing happens, no sound is played either. No errors pop up.
The door with action visible: https://i.imgur.com/NGddGs0.jpeg
The model and config files: https://pastebin.com/wtb0XnFj

Also please advise if I should bring this to config_makers. Thanks!

[blissful spire]

okay, increased view geo thickness and it didnt help any. although i may just need to increase it more

[stuck oyster]

it might not be just that. could be the AI are aware of the targets inside and know they can penetrate the wall and just blast away

[blissful spire]

possible. i do have it set to concrete_plate for the fire geo rvmat

[stuck oyster]

could also try thicker firegeometry and something that they cant shoot through as material

try one of the very thick armor plates

[blissful spire]

could stick the armor_plate_250 on it lol

[fierce snow]

nice!

[stuck oyster]

yeh worth a try

[blissful spire]

just shove the biggest plate on and call it good

[stuck oyster]

yeah for starters at least

just to see if there is difference in behavior

I think AI should be aware of materials they are shooting at

[woeful viper]

?? no way... not in the way of "i could shoot through it, so i will"

[blissful spire]

is it supposed to be a3\data_f\Penetration\armour_plate_250mm.rvmat
or
P:\a3\data_f\Penetration\armour_plate_250mm.rvmat

pretty sure its the top one

[blissful spire]

okay tried it. and now im thinking im doing something wrong in my fire geo. cause MX rounds just pen through the sides into the ground

[stuck oyster]

if its very thin simulation step might bypass it

[blissful spire]

i could just increase the thickness again

[stuck oyster]

or component naming is not connecting or shapes are not convex

[blissful spire]

its saying my corner connections arnt convex

but nothing is open

convex hull just makes it 1 solid shape

[stuck oyster]

ah

then you got merged corners

[blissful spire]

same for component convex hull

[stuck oyster]

and its all 1 part

not separated

[blissful spire]

correct

is not not supposed to?

[stuck oyster]

no

each part needs to be separate

this would explain why the view geometry fails too

[blissful spire]

so theres an inner and outer layer?

[stuck oyster]

its not correct and does not exist

no

each wall segement eneds to be its own part

[blissful spire]

so, left side, right side etc?

[stuck oyster]

,

[blissful spire]

huh. okay

[stuck oyster]

you can refer to sample house for more elaborate example

how walls around windows are split and so on

[blissful spire]

so rather then 1 solid tube, itd be eight pieces in a octagonal shape

[stuck oyster]

yes

solid tube is not convex shape

[blissful spire]

okay, that makes sense

[stuck oyster]

fix that and it will likely work just fine as it were in the beginning

though in low fps situations, thin firegeometries can be bypassed

[blissful spire]

now i need to go actually make them closed

[stuck oyster]

component convex hull can sort out most non closed blobs of connected mesh into convex shapes

[blissful spire]

now i get to remake all my tube variants lmao

okay yeah, its showing everything is convex now

ty @stuck oyster. everything works now

[stuck oyster]

👍

[fierce snow]

i tried that earlier with `eden=0;
animate[]=
{

            {
                "bottle_hide",
                0
            },
            
            {
                "bottle_unhide",
                0
            },
            
        };
        hide[]={};
        verticalOffset=0;`

and added convexComponent="Bottle_hide"; but no luck, also im no scripter/coder so i dont know how to fix the pack errors i get

im gonna try make hitpoints all over again

@white jay i sent you a dm, holla back when you got time

[white jay]

I'm at work rn but I might be free to dig through my config later

[bright echo]

Getting a lot of spam binarizing a model in the bin.log

SubSkeletonIndex: 265

as the line suggests it seems related to the skeleton

however I'm unsure what limit i'm running into

I'm using pboProject to binarise the model so it's using the
-targetBonesInterval=56 parameter but it's definitely a lot more than 56 bones in most of the models I bin and they don't spam this error

[rough idol]

targetBonesInterval defines amount of bones in single section. Shadow lods can often confuse binarize since they are usually without materials and pretty much everything ends in single section

that changes ofc when you have proxies, which influence sections

I had that error quite often after deleting proxies from characters shadow LODs and honestly I'm not exactly sure how I managed to get sections correct after that. I've remember copy pasting elements of SL from different p3d, sorting and all kind of weird things but I didn't figured out which was the crucial thing in the end

in any case, that error can also happen in visual LOD. I remember someone from CUP had that issue with one of the buildings which had like 60 windows or something like that

[bright echo]

'amount of bones in a single section'
could that mean like, camo sections too?

Im really confused because the errors go away when I remove a pintle machinegun on the commander turrets bones but its like 11 bones in total

wait I'm confusing sections with selections maybe

most likely the shadowlod is causing it if its jamming everything into a single section

[rough idol]

in resource window you can preview sections

[bright echo]

oh true I forgot all about that

It's definitely the shadowlod sadly but the shadowlod has a whole lot more than 56 selections in it that would end up in the same section

yet if I delete the 6 or so bones that the MG has in it, the error goes away

[rough idol]

56 bones or selections?

[bright echo]

the shadow lod has 83 selections

and I'm pretty sure each one of them is a bone

[rough idol]

thats a lot

[bright echo]

tank has a lot of complex parts that can be hidden..

whats really strange though is it all seems linked to this MG, yet if I delete the same amount of selections as the MG has the error remains

I deleted the magazine and feedtray selections for the MG, and now the error is gone. why those in particular. so strange

[rough idol]

how it looks in sections menu?

try to sort thing up/down - it should change section to which that part belongs

keep in mind object builder doesn't refresh that until you switch between LODs...

[bright echo]

it just has a single one

https://i.imgur.com/sX1T4Cm.png

[rough idol]

and you don't have any selections which are listed in sections[] array in model.cfg?

[bright echo]

nothign in the shadowlod

just camo selections, muzzleflashes etc

I tried adding the camo selection to the shadowlod just to see if that might force it to another section but that didnt work

[warm trench]

Speaking of shadowlods....
I'm working on an update to one of my weapon mods and have ended up with quite a few options available. I've got as far as starting to make the shadowlods.
What I'm trying to work out is the most efficient way of putting together the final models for each different config and the shadowlods might complicate things.
An example would be something like a solid triangular shaped SOPMOD stock or a Magpul CTR which is kind of an open triangle. Ideally, they would have different shadow lods to reflect this.
I was hoping to manage stock options just by using hiddenSelections but can't see a way I could switch parts of a shadowlod on/off to match.
Is this possible?

An example of something along these lines that is done nicely is RHS's M249. There's clearly different shadowlod geometries for the para stock and their standard stocks.
The only way I can think of to do this is to have 2 completely different models which have there own unique shadowlods but is there a trick I'm missing here?

[bright echo]

@rough idol how are proxies handled in this regard? makes me wonder if the easiest way to solve this would be to move the pintle MG to its own proxy

I managed to get some sanity out of it and it is indeed just too many selections/bones in the shadowlod

[rough idol]

they are separate entities so you can get around it this way

[bright echo]

cool will keep that in mind if I can't find a better way to cut back the selection count

think there's at least a few parts that don't need the shadow animated

[stuck oyster]

Variants are supposed to be separated models. Hiddenselections don't work for shadow.

Making parts hidden with hiddenselections is not the intended use of that feature and can actually have negative impact on performance

[warm trench]

Carrying more selections than necessary?

[stuck oyster]

The mesh is still there and you create huge amount of transparency to render

[warm trench]

Very useful to know

[stuck oyster]

There may be visual issues too.

[warm trench]

Just mindful that each model is not that small (although binarised sizes are always way smaller than the .p3ds we work with)

[stuck oyster]

Nothing in vanilla does this so idk where the idea comes from. People try it again and again. 😅

[stuck oyster]

You know how vanilla doesn't have million variants

It's design choice

[warm trench]

So far, I've only used it with fixed foregrip variations to allow the underbarrel proxy to be used for a bipod

[stuck oyster]

Yes well. That stuff is way way excessive imo. 😝

I know it can appeal to players so they can choose their favourite grip position.

But design wise its not the greatest approach

At least not in this engine where there is no native weapon customisation feature

[warm trench]

This info is arriving at perfect timing as I've not yet started to build each of the configurations.
I was planning on using the ACE3 Extended Arsenal to manage a lot of the options...

[stuck oyster]

You can definitely do all options you want if that's what you want. My view is just alternative opinion

If you want variants and that makes you happy, you make all of them

[warm trench]

Sure but the management of them for good performance is important to me too so this info is really helpful