How to make Arma III objects (basic) 

ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME THIS IS GENIUS!!!!!!

Well thank you!

Man I haven't evne opened the new blender. I gotta get back on it!

no sweat mang, was harder to make than I thought it would be.

Feel free to download mine from the description to compare. The cpp file can get pretty complex depending on your sources.

Sadly the interiors are just the modelled interiors of the objects, which means detailed interior = more cpu/gpu load. I know Bohemia recently created a different interiors system for the armors vehicles and helis, but that was never in my scope of understanding. Looking at their APCs will be the best way to understand vehicle interiors that aren't just part of the object model. I go over buildings in a latter video, and that demonstrates how the "interior" is simply the inside of the model with floor and wall lods.

Gattington so the interior of objects are basically a whole new object? I’m sorry I’ve never even done 3D modeling before.

@@TheRunaway115 No problemo. Only in some cases are the interiors different from the exteriors. And thats a new feature I have no experience with. MOST interiors are just part of the same object model. That's for buildings and vehicles.

De nada amigo.

Sounds like you might be missing the Icon file or the icon file is not properly formatted.

Welp, gotta say I'm pretty impressed this held up for 6 years. Sadly I haven't developed in Arma 3 since the introduction of Reforger, so this tutorial really only applies to the older toolset. However, I see what you are saying about the Blender to P3D tool giving up a 404. It appears there is a new set of tools for this particular step in blender, located here: community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_Reforger:Enfusion_Blender_Tools#Installation I will update the link, It looks like this new tool works mostly the same with a slightly different export button location. I hope this helps!😁

Make sure you have the object highlighted when you export selection only. That is the most common reason that the p3d exported is 0kb. If the object is not selected, or a camera or something is selected, you will get that 0kb. I hope this helps.

My next attempt is a wrecker truck to illustrate vehicles, and then yes, I wanted to get into uniforms.

Geometry defines where the model will collide with other geometry lodded models. Geometry Phys defines where the object will collide with PhysX objects. Geometry, as long as it is a thick enough structure (>1 scale inch) should be the one that stops players. There is a caveat. You must assign a mass to the geometry LOD objects, or they will not interact with anything. Geometry phys, is usually the same shapes as the geometry LOD , but does not contain Mass information and references it from the Geometry LOD. This is to say, Geometry is the basic static physical shapes that will collide. Geometry Phys can go deeper into physX interactions such as breaking parts off, broken wheels, separation points. It gets pretty complex and personally I never got into destructible objects beyond just replacing the model with a "crashed" or "damaged" model once it takes enough damage. Check that there is a mass assigned to the geometry LODS, and check out my video on LODS where we go over the vending machines. It may help. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-SugHtwElX3s.html

The gas can is a .blend file and should just open in blender. Blender to P3d is copied into the plugins directory of the Blender folders. Then you go into plugins and make sure it is active and it should let you export your parts to p3d via the file menu.

that is the tutorial I am working on now. I will go over roadway lods, and how to attach an animation to a building. The model.cfg is an ugly file that requires alot of redundant entries, but I will provide an example and explain it.

Make sure the layers are flatened.

The detail LODS which are numbered allow you to apply different textures at different distances. Procedural may be somewhat beyond my expertise...

make sure to leave the .. ahead of the path.

Make sure you have the object selected and check the "export selection only" box in the export options in blender.

Sadly I never did get into making gear modifying the character models. I do not know how to swap a head. But I do know its not so trivial as making a pie. :)

Gattington ahah ok. Thank you. Is quite done... i need to fox some texture but is working 😉

@@bunkerbuster73 Gotta link to a pic? The human model stuff is bigtime to tackle, kudos to you! :)

Gattington tomorrow I’ll send a pic 😬

It is possible at this point that it's outdated. I never recevied entry not defined messages, and it seems to be plaguing you through the process. Possibly a debug setting, do you have any more details about the entry not defined error?

PREACH!!

Couldn't be bothered to texture it because I got a shit UV map, but I made a pc case xD gyazo.com/880bc6160b0c966e78795ab8ddce83c2

NAILED IT, scale looks spot on and everything! Well done. And now you can make ANYTHING.

I made it! You can find it in the examples in the video's info under show more.

Yes headgear works for the most part the same way but you need to offset the object the correct distance from the origin in z so it sits up on the head instead of down by the feet. Also headgear requires a few extra lods to link it to the way a character stands and make it turn with the head. Geometry LOD needs to be present with clothing even if its empty, and needs autocenter=0 in Named Properties. I've spent time having that one broken before. community.bistudio.com/wikidata/images/a/a7/A3_Character_Examples_1.1.zip Here are the bohemia character modification templates. These can make getting the correct LODs in place easier and show you where to locate the meshes for it to work. The Headgear example should you a really easy template to follow/fill. community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Modding_Characters this is the wiki entry on character modding, Second entry from the bottom gives the requirements for a peice of headgear. I hope this helps!

Thanks man! appreciated, been looking all over for this.

It's nothing! Glad it was some help, lemme know how the headpeice comes out! :)

Also, I tried making something else just now but its doing the exact same thing. How could I contact you to give you the file I made?

Okay, so I tried the inventory editor, (or at least what I thought was the inventory editor), and I cannot see the items I had made I looked everywhere, nothing though. Thanks for responding! I hope to talk soon.

Hey, I know its been almost a week, but by any chance did you figure out what my issue was? Thanks for the help.

Sorry man I did not figure it out.

Alright, thanks anyways

I can only see it in rendered and material mode*

gotta screenshot? You will only ever see the texture in rendered or material or texture mode. Solid or wireframe will still be flat colors.

Gattington that's not the problem anymore but when I go in game on editor and try to player addItem then command it doesn't put the object in my inventory I did the config.cpp and the classes and file paths

Hiya! Make sure the Armatools plugin is activated. Also that it's got "arma 3 object" ticked in the submenu to the right. When you export, make sure you have "Selected Only" ticked on the left below the filetree. This exports just the isolated part to p3d and not the entire blender file, layers and all.

Gattington ok thanks dude!, gr8 tutorial btw

It did not help me, still 0 bytes

make sure you select the object you are trying to export as well, and check that "selection only" is checked in the export dialogue.

The same techniques can apply, you will want to look at the source code files of some example clothing, but yes the basic concepts remain the same of creating and loading different model representations into the different lods to tell arma how to handle the model. Clothing is much more complicated than buildings or basic shapes, and I got lost in vehicles before I ever got into clothing. I do know its easier to skin the entire character model than work with modular clothing parts. But that's taking shortcuts. And I know you ain't about that life. :)

@@TheGattington Hey Gattington, I just want to give you thanks on how much this tutorial has helped me within modding with Arma. This single video has been my lifeline, and without it, I would not be able to do what I can now. I'll be sure to credit you when I drop my addons soon. Thanks again man.

@@mintrose3399 Yay thank you so much!

p3d should really only be opened in object builder or arma 3 itself.

Ah, when I browse to the file, it will insert the local filepath, d:\arma3modding\items ev_gatts_buildings\ When you load it to a pbo, you will use the rev_gatts_building folder as the overall container, which will name the pbo rev_gatts_buildings.pbo and maintain the directory structure inside that folder. When I browse to the filepath it includes "d:\arma3modding ev_gatts_buildings\textures\" But when it loads the pbo, it wants to see everything in relation to the pbo top directory, which is the pbo name. So I am deleting "d:\arma3modding\" from the beginning of the filepath so that when it loads in arma, it doesn't try to look on the user's personal harddrive under d:\arma3modding for the texture, but instead understands the file path is relative to the pbo name. If you leave the full filepath to the texture, it will work on your computer, but nobody elses. Let me know if this is clear enough.

Gattington ah so rev_gatts_buildings is the rev_gatts_buildings.pbo? wait a pbo was placed in the addons fomder right

That is correct. When I use binPBO from the armatools suite, I have it pointed at the @directory in my arma 3 folder within the steam folders so that it writes the new pbo file directly into the @Gattington folder. When I compress to pbo, the directory "rev_gatts_buildings" becomes the rev_gatts_buildings.pbo in M:\Steam\steamapps\common\Arma3\@Gattington\Addons ev_gatts_buildings.pbo When I launch with @Gattington enabled in the launcher or armasync, and this will initalize the pbo as the game loads. Arma then basically interprets the pbo file as a directory within the game's filesystem. You can save your pbo anywhere you would like, and then copy it to the mod folder, this is just the way I have done it to save a little time in testing revisions.

Gattington ah cool okay uhm a few months ago I asked about the config.cpp and model.cfg..did you make a video in the meantime about it? and also good night if you're not already sleepin :)

I did, its at the end of the buildings tutorial.

Warning Message: Cannot open object jsd_test\jsd_test_box.p3d

Never mind steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/910170110837995541/71EE534D3D5D8FB21243D7F1296A290A346B0A0B/

I'm sorry my dude, are you having a problem with any particular step? I understand if peices of this video are obsolete, here, 5 years later. Surprised this is holding up as well as it has. Sadly I've been pulled away from arma dev for the time being by real life and my career choices. Meanwhile if you want to reply with which part is obsolete or what you are having a problem with, I will try to look into it and give you any tip I can. Much love, keep developing!!!

@@TheGattington at 16 min i cant seem to find the option Arma Object properties. When i Import the p3d file to object builder it just gives me an error "Unable to load file. Load error."

Its linked in the description for download. Its just a txt file with a .cpp extension and a particular data layout.

@@TheGattington You are the man. Thank you!

@@usmcbound777 De Nada, Amigo.

This is explained in another video and pertains to skeletons and animations. Stuff aint trivial so strap in for a bit of a watch but I get to it pretty quickly in this video. Check it out! :) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-S1UL2Ks0eMs.html

Gattington Thank you is just saw the video

Fuckingk LOLZ

Lol reacting to my comment from five years ago?