Addon Developer Workshop

[Max Power]

Welcome to the BIS Forum Addon Dev Workshop Thread.

This thread is for posting work in progress materials for critique, or for getting peer opinions. The idea is addon makers, can post shots of their raw assets in order to find out where they stand and what they can improve on, or to get help solving problems. Steel sharpens steel, or so they say.

Here are some ground rules:

WIP Material ONLY - This thread is for posting WIP materials for meaningful comment only. The asset in the shot must be clearly WIP. Posed shots of lounging units with the WIP rationale being 'oh, I haven't finished the wound textures yet' will result in administrative action.

Post with an Objective - This thread is for offering / getting critiques, problem solving, or getting other advice in addon content development. Please let us know what you want to get out of our responses.

No Promoting - Please post your promotions for your near completed addons in the promos thread. You can also feel free to start your own addon thread at any time.

Absolutely NO SPAM - This is not the place for non-constructive spamming. Comments such as 'I came' will be treated as spam.

Post Only Your Own Work - Posting the content of others without permission can result in a ban. If the work is a result of multiple people, please give appropriate credit to all participants.

Obey the Rules for Content Posting - Currently, the maximum image size is 100 kb. The Forum does resize them, however, it does not automatically put them below the kilobyte limit. The forum rules for posting content are listed below.

§6) No posting of explicit images
No posting of pictures containing porn, real killing, mutilations, wounds, carnage, and other disgusting/explicit images. This also includes links to pages that contain such images. If you are in doubt, contact a moderator via private message before posting. You won't be banned for checking out if a link is ok to post if it's a genuine request.


§15) Do not hotlink images over 100kb (102400 bytes) in size
Do not link images over 100kb using the IMG tags to display an image in your post. If you wish to post an image larger then 100 kb feel free to post the URL instead of hotlinking.

§19) Videos/Movies
No Video/movies, either posted or linked to shall contain any of the following.

Porn, real killing, mutilations, wounds, carnage, and other disgusting/explicit footage. If something offensive is being shown in cartoon form it shall be treated as if the imagery were real and not simply cartoon. This also includes team killing or anything glorifying deliberate and or anti-social behaviour on any Public or Private server.


§20) Posting addon/mod other content without permission
For many years this community has been known as the premium addon/mod creating community, people work tirelessly and in great detail to create fantastic addons/mods/missions/campaigns to release for free so that everyone benefits, including Bohemia Interactive. There are a few simple rules in place to provide the respect to these creative people/groups that they deserve:


The first and most fundamental rule is that you must seek permission to alter someone's work, to mirror it or use it in any way other than for personal use. No permission, no editing, no mirroring, no adding to your mod pack, no editing and sharing around your private squad, none of that is acceptable.


Obviously we cannot unfortunately control what people do outside of these forums, however on these forums you must follow this rule, if a person/team post a thread to share an addon/mod using content from someone else without permission and we receive a complaint then the mod thread will be closed until the issue is resolved and the forum member(s) risks being permanently banned from these forums for taking someone's work without permission.


This isn't just limited to re-using content in addons/mods/missions however, it's not acceptable to edit someone's work without permission and then to post screenshots of it on the forums (even if the edited addon/mod is purely for personal use), it's also not acceptable to edit someone's work, or use someone's work in any way that you don't have permission for and then to create videos which you post on these forums, doing any of the above without the permission of the original creators risks a permanent ban, for individuals, for whole mod teams or squads.

[Max Power]

Okay, thread cleaned up. Let's try this again.

[Fox '09]

I'll start off


I'm working on some trousers for a new soldier base model, this is modeled after the regular BDU trousers. The pocket flap normals are fixed now, but aside from that what do you guys think? Are the proportions correct? And perhaps a more precise question, do you think a smoother, low poly model would be more appropriate for normal map creation? Though there are some bumps and bits around the model it's nothing major. I was thinking if I could bake a displacement map and somehow apply that to the model, (even just slightly) it would give a better effect. I'm afraid it's (the low poly) too low poly though, and If I want to do it it may be not worth the extra.

[NZDF CRASH]

They look good so far fox. I don't see too much issues apart from some smoothing of parts of the model required around the back of the legs and ass.

[Max Power]

Looking good Fox. It looks like you could smooth out some of the mesh as NZDF CRASH mentioned. Optimally, you could also use the meshflow to define the form of what you're going for better, but I think this is suitable. I was looking on the internet for examples of mesh flow for drapery, but it seems like all the art available in a casual google image search turns up polygon grids for trousers. One thing to look out for is in these renders, the man's front seems indistinguishable from his back except for the pockets. The anatomy of the area has a little bit of a bias towards the front.

For instance:


This is a woman's anatomy but you can see here that the lower part of the torso is shaped a little bit like a kidney bean. The spinal arch leans the torso a bit to the front and makes the butt stick out.


It may be hard to see in this small image but further to that forward bias, the shape of the pelvis can be characterized as a bucket tipped to the front 45 degrees or so.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jAHrmbvyBe...orsoMsmall.jpg
This is a nice if not somewhat exaggerated drawing of what I'm talking about. Here, I think the legs are quite overwrought but this is the kind of bias you can use to give your man a bit more anatomy and liveliness. Soldiers ought to have big legs anyway.

Another thing you can do is define the trunk and separate the legs with a couple of strip of polygons as scene in these images:

http://wiki.polycount.com/BodyTopolo...ashruMishu.jpg
Actually this first image shows some of the drapery of the pants being defined as I was looking for earlier...
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7vQ93w-4eL.../body_cage.jpg
Don't worry about what's going on in the upper thighs of this character I don't know what he's getting at with those edgeloops.

This meshflow defines the form a but better and is better for deformation, but I think arma characters are rarely seen doing slow motion jumping split kicks so dwelling on those details is not necessary.

---------- Post added at 18:21 ---------- Previous post was at 17:59 ----------

I think I should add a word of caution about making topologies too different from BIS's if you're using BIS textures, or textures made from BIS textures. I was recently making a head. I planned to reference BIS textures but use a new head model with topology that I thought would be easier to control at modelling time, since I don't have a 3d scanner handy. At unwrapping time, this turned into a huge nightmare. So, with all my fancy talk about anatomical topologies, don't stray too far from BIS's way of doing things if you intend on using BIS textures or texture derived from BIS's.

[Fox '09]

Thanks max for the insightful response.

I see what you're pointing at in respect to the anatomy, especially with the pelvis area. My main concern is the clothing dynamics on trousers below the butt. When standing straight up it is generally pretty flat but it seems to create a bridge between the butt and the leg, sometimes a bit wavy. If there is a question I would pose it would be if I should model it to be more anatomical / general shape or a firing position specific pose, since you can't really chew gum and walk at the same time. It is this balance I'm always concerned about.

As far as BIS topology style, I'll keep that in mind as I intend to do some more detailed arm models to be used with T-shirts etc. Not sure about the textures but nonetheless It may come back to haunt me if I don't make sure of it.

[PuFu]

when it comes to topology for cloths, i always found the Garment tool in max to produce the best results:
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/conten...0230208026.png
left side - triangles. rights side garment topo.

http://i.imgur.com/0rHYy.jpg

Last time i have tried to create a realistically looking pair of pants (for a short animation though - so i had no concern regarding its polycount - but this could be easily used for a HP model to be retopo for LP), i went cloth simulation way, defining the seams and stitching lines myself, trying to achieve a better folding pattern. The end result was ok, although had to manually adjust it quite a few when i was done with it.

[Fox '09]

My friend works with 3ds, I'll perhaps talk to him about that tool, seems worth a go. Thanks guys, I'll absorb this information and see what I can come up with.

[Cabbagebasher!]

i thought it be good to post my very earlie stages of my WIP noob attempt at making a addon, atm i have a few capbadges and a pretty decent beret. my plan is to make a Royal Marine addons ace friendly but a bit more old school with combat 95 uniform and webbing. but atm now i figured out the best way to make capbadges its my main objective to make a collection of them for relese. so here a few pics

http://i765.photobucket.com/albums/x...adgeRender.jpg

http://i765.photobucket.com/albums/x...adgeRender.jpg

http://i765.photobucket.com/albums/x...adgeRender.jpg

these was mapped in 3ds max with the help of adobe programs. i can get them imported to O2 but its a program i not figured out yet.

any way feedback on the idea is welcome,

[Bad Benson]

looking solid. not much to see modelling-wise (no wireframe no smoothing). although i'm a fan of putting a lot of detail into the model rather then the texture to give it a good silhouette myself, i'd suggest u bake those badges into the normal map. alone the contours of them take up so many polies. i don't think it's worth the effort considering the effect it will have.
what i would do is continue modelling them and even model every tiny detail. then bake it into a normalmap and use that on the model of the beret/cap or whatever u'll put them on. that way u'll get more detail and much less polies. baking flat stuff is fairly easy. check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFSXt...eature=related

P.S.: hope my english makes sense