Arma 3 - How to import a blender model - Part 1

Arma 3 - How to import a blender model - Part 1

In my today's try to get ahead in Arma3 Editing, I want to import a building into Arma 3 which I modeled in Blender.

So as always I took a quick look at tutorials to refresh my memories. I do not want any YouTube tutorials or so, just text and pictures.

On the first I found :

Arma 3 Basic Modeling Import Tutorial for Noobs - Difficulty EASY

and this entry on the bohemia forums.

This seems quite ok for the start. So now I model a quick easy non-accessible building with some texture blocks I extracted today somewhere.

This is my , very basic, building I want to import :

So I had them installed long time ago, but I was missing the Arma3 Tools, *happy sound*, so I got them over Steam.

As far as I understood, it should be fairly easy to import a (blender) model with O2, a tool provided by Bohemia.

Well. Ehm. In the Arma3 Tools, which actually have a pretty menu now and wow.But I cant find O2, and I remember vaguely it was TexView 2 I used, did I ?

Well. It is the object builder I am after it seems, but the first time I pressed on it, nothing happened and the arma3 tools crashed. :(

After trying a lot I must admit that nothing works with the arma3 tools.

I get a strange .net error in the windows logs and the logs of arma3 tools itself are saying nothing.

I have to read further into this. Stay tuned !!!


Well, it chained my mind to it, so I read on, despite being terrible fatigue. What do you do when you do not know what do to ? Yes. RTFM. So.

Arma_3_Tools_Installation

Maybe, just maybe, I find the reason for the Object Builder crashing here. And I did, it seems.

Buldozer, the 3D Viewer Module (previous Oxygen, I remember that !) of Arma3 has to be installed on a virtual drive. And yes, an actual virtual drive with the letter P: ! Click here to read the full tragedy or what they call documentation :D !

 

Hurrai ! Now lets import my .obj 3D File which I exported from Blender !!

We got our first error message !!! At least the infrastructure seems now to be solidish.

So, I triangulated my model in Blender. And while I was there, I exported the model as 3ds_max .3ds format, but I got this error message :

I never worked with max, well I did hunderts of years ago. Hmm. Then again as obj !

HEUREKA ! I imported my model into the object builder as obj. (Always triangulate !)

Of course the texture is missing and the normals seem to be turned around. Have to read up upon that after a extensive short break.

In Blender, I exported the file again to obj, and before that I revered the normals. But it still looked like that inside-out, so I reveresed it with the Reverse Option under Faces inside the Object Builder. And now it looks correct, still missing the texture, and when I start Buldozer alias Arma3 as viewer, it still crashes.

But I think I just need to add some very basic project respective addon definition files to make it work inside Arma3. *reads up*

Well, now Arma crashed and I know why. I had to change to path of the arma3 buldozer viewer to that of its version inside the game path !!! And I set the resolution to default, also.

And now it works and the model is loaded, yet without the texture, but the UV Map is inside the object builder, I saw that.

Hmm The UV is fine.

 

So what the bush is going. I converted the .png texture to a .tga, cause it seems this is one of the formats the object builder can use, png is not.

I converted the png to 256x256 non-compressed tga. Then I started Buldozer, which converted the "resources", then in the Object Builder I activted DirectX (via the Atomic Icon) and Textures (via another icon, hover !) and voila, the texture work in the work windows of Object Builder ! *dances*

I then used the good old Tex View ... 2 ! to convert the tga to a paa, which is a packed texture format for arma3's engine. I then assigned the paa to the object, which turns the texture off in the object builder BUT it then works in the Buldozer Viewer, which depends on a working addon format on the fly as far as I understand that right now.

So now I need to pack it and before that I think I need to find some templates for placable object definition files somewhere...*close to sleep cause late* .... *mobilizes reserve energy*

I put the p3d and the paa into one directory and tried to run the AddOn Builder on that directory.
As excepted now the last thing is a missing description of some sort, like a hhp file, I remember only vaguely.

So. I am downloading the official steam example arma3 file, but I will google this before I go sleep and I need to seriously get hydrated.