Real Virtuality Engine?

[bluesydave 28]

Hi,

I've been an artist in the games industry for nearly 25 years.

Seeing as I'm out of work with depression, I thought I might create a couple of zombies for the Mod (or the standalone), but I can't seem to find a download link for the Real Virtuality Game Engine anywhere.

I would need an existing character model to use as a basis for the binding pose, how many polygons are used and that kind of thing.

Can anyone help me out please?

All the best,

Dave Hall :beans:

[janus0104 212]

http://forums.bistud...A-MODELLING-(O2)

http://community.bis..._Addon_Tutorial

BI Tools:

http://community.bis...ki/BI_Tools_2.5

Problem with making new zombies is... but I could be wrong, I've only looked at it for a little bit...

The current animations, skeletons and models are binarized since they're proprietary, so you can't open them in an editor. It's clearly possible since that taviana community map thing has custom zombies, but I wouldn't know how to go about that.

Or you could try simply using the textures that we can't edit but at least look at from the dayz.pbo and see if you can make one with that... but that sucks.

If you get anywhere, lemme know, I was always interested in how they did it.

Nice showreel btw, might wanna send a mail over to matt.lightfoot@bistudio.com I hear they're looking for an architecturally skilled 3D artist.

I laughed pretty hard when I saw this on your showreel:

Why did I laugh? Because my other screen was showing this at the same time: http://gyazo.com/5f9ea2bca7eea93602140750ebb5ae54

Edited February 9, 2013 by Elvaron

[fully 51]

Get BI tools, its all in there =)

[bluesydave 28]

Thanks folks, will take a look now.

[purepassion 383]

Hey there bluesydave!

First of all, there is no real SDK for the RV engine however you get all the tools to create any sort of content for free. You can download them from here or install them from your Arma 2:CO game.

For modelling and texturing, you'll mainly be using Oxygen2 and TexView2.

Additionally, you should carefully read through some of these tutorials and also check out this section in the official BIS forums to get more feedback and information.

Looking forward to any results! Quite a nice showreel you have :)

hehe I must type faster :P

Edited February 9, 2013 by PurePassion

[bluesydave 28]

Thanks PurePassion!

[h3retic 224]

Dave Hall?

"Dean Hall"

almost like brothers *tragic*

[badbenson (DayZ) 38]

making new characters is kind of a pain.

there are 3 ways to go.

1. reskin: change the textures of existing arma 2 models. this requires hexediting to change the texture paths inside the models since those are binarized. (search the bohemia interactive forums for a detailed guide)

- this is what dayZ (mod) does using some of the chernarussian civilians

- easiest way

- limited

2. making new models using arma 1 models (which were released; arma 2 models aren't available in an editable format). what you do is take models from arma 1 make some changes to make them fully compatible with arma 2 and add small stuff like vest pouches or in your case maybe an eyeball hanging out of the eye cavity :D

- this is (for zombies) the imho the best way since you can add model parts but don't have to do any complicated rigging

- some of the arma 1 models have bad UV layout which makes reskinning hard sometimes

- you'll have working hands

3. make a model from scratch and rig it to the arma 2 skeleton in oxygen (part of the BI tools)

- this is more limited than you would think

- model has to fit the skeleton

- rigging in oxygen is a PAIN (atleast compared to stuff like Maya)

- stuff will look really awkward if you don't stay close to the arma skeleton

- total freedom model-wise

- most work

i heard about a way to rig/skin the model to the skeleton in Maya (oxygen has a Maya weight import) but i never found all i needed for it (arma skeleton for maya + guide how to translate to oxygen).

i already made models for arma 2 using method 2 and 3. and i can tell you, since you basically only want to make fucked up humans, that method 2 should be the best for you for now. i made a skinny grey alien which looked awesome in zBrush but rigged to the arma skeleton it just looks awkward.

the guys making models for the stand alone (BI staff) are using proper tools (they sure don't use oxygen for modelling and rigging) which aren't available for the public so that shouldn't be compared to what you want to achieve. also they are reusing the character base models already made for arma 3.

you don't have those resources so keep it simple.

don't get me wrong. method 3 is still a good option but you would have to learn alot of arma specific stuff first. sorry about the messy post. just quickly sharing some stuff. hope it helps :)

some useful links:

weighting in o2:

http://forums.bistud...light=weighting

example of an arma 1 model prepared to work in arma 2:

http://forums.bistud...inkowski sample

details on how to use parts of the arma 2 character sample model to get arma 1 models to work in arma 2:

http://forums.bistud...inkowski sample

needed resources:

arma 1 character models:

http://www.armaholic...t=SAMPLE+MODELS

the arma 2 sample character:

http://www.armaholic...t=ARMA+2+SAMPLE

Edited February 9, 2013 by badbenson

[janus0104 212]

snip

Sweet info dump, thanks a lot. Any good rule of thumb on polycounts for ArmA2?

Another question, since you mentioned that zbrush'd alien, did you bake textures for it out of zbrush? Looking at existing textures it's pretty much straight-forward for the color map being _co for color or _ca for RGBA, _no/_nohq being normal map (though how _no and _noqh are being used i dunno), but what on earth is _as? And have you figured out a way to create SMDI textures without photoshop?

[badbenson (DayZ) 38]

polycount:

look at the sample character for arma 2 inside oxygen. if you select it and hit E you will get some stats. arma models have resolution lods. if you set those up right you shouldn't have to worry too much about polycount. just keep it inside reasonable boundaries. an arma 2 model is around 3000-4000 polies in the highest resolution lod i think. just a guesstimation though.

as map:

as far as i know AS stands for ambient shadow. it's basically an ambient occlusion map. it has less influence than you would think though. basically it only becomes visible on parts of the model that are in shadow. it's always good to bake some AO into the colour map aldo. i keep it subtle though.

smdi:

those are simple specular maps. there are ways to generate those from normal maps (crazybump). there is no one way to create them or any fail safe method since it depends on the case though. scratches on a gun are different than an overall shimmer on skin for example. when i generate them i always edit them in photoshop afterwards since they are a tool for the artist to decide which part will be shiny and how much not just an overall lighting pass.

they are black and white and get turned into some redish stuff when you convert them with texview.

[janus0104 212]

Yeah, I read the specs pdf on SMDI, but thanks for clearing it up. Another thing I'm worried about is actually testing stuff. Do you have a recommended workflow to get a new item into the game (any version of arma 2 really, just to see scale and whether mesh/texture are being loaded properly) or should I just follow the how-to-make-an-addon tutorial? How are IK weights done for objects such as a gun?

Working on my nailgun atm, would love to have a simple way to just load in a character in some kind of demo scenario, place the item, pick it up and hold it in the hand to see if it all works.