ArmA 1 UV Unwrap Tutorial 2

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ArmA 1 aka Armed Assault (ArmA)

Make sure you got a .TGA equivalent texture handy, you can place it in the same dir as the .PAA files.

Open up the P3D, give it a twirl etc, then when you have decided which part you wish to edit, open the uv editor and

Go to filter and choose by “main texture”. I always get an error, but choose OK. You will then see your model UV map in yellow.
Go to filter and choose “browse new texture”. Go find the appropriate .TGA, and open it, now you will see the texture but no yellow UV map.
Repeat first step and choose by “main texture” once again.

Now you can see the texture and UV map for the model, you can move it around by selecting all, or select a point individually. the UV editor is a very powerful tool, some good points are you can eradicate any unwanted seams on arms and legs,check a uniform reference photo if the seams are at say the back of the arm, then you can select the arm clothing in o2,and alt/tab back to the UV editor and “select faces by selection in object” and the arm should be highlighted red, you can also “break” the part away on its own,flip it how you want to fit your needs alt/tabbing between UV editor and buldozer you will quickly make great progress.

Handy tips:

Arrange arm/leg selections so the middle part is the front of the model so the seams at the outer edge in UV editor are the back.

Make sure you change the texture name back to .PAA in o2 using the great “mass texture renamer”

If you have lots of textures for a model,this is really bad for arma,you really need 1,2 or if you really must 3 maximum and UV editor is a great way to “merge” textures together,the way i find i easier is to…

Add my child texture to the main in a paint program,then following the steps before,open the child texture in UV editor with choose by “main texture.” this will hold the current UV map you want to change in the editor ready. then go to “browse new texture” this time choosing the new texture you want to assign the child to.
Arrange the UV model map to how it was before over the part of the texture you want. if you look in buldozer you will see the texture all “funky”, but don't worry we can fix that now.
Go back to o2, and select the part of the model you wish to reassign, you can do this by the “mass name change”,or the regular “E” manual selection then “A” “B” (no need to load the texture in o2) and rename it to the new texture.PAA

There it is, now make sure it is renamed the .PAA version and remove the .TGA to a working dir if you haven't already done this.

Last bit: sections

The bis soldier model from the official release has 7 sections,try and keep as close as possible and arma will be happy with your addon. things to look for to keep sections nice and low is…

EVERY textured polygon must have an RVMAT assignment,if you have lots of sections check that first.o2 might assume some or every texture not assigned is a unique section,even if the polys have the same texture assignment. actually it's not in every case, but each section should either be rvmat assigned or not, sectional.
Put the uniform on one texture, gear on another o2 likes this. or even better everything on one texture :)
Sectional count guide: bis soldier

all the proxy triangles count for 1 section the head should count for 1
the body should count for 1
the gear should count for 1

And each one has an rvmat file which counts for 3 totaling 7.

Also try crazybump tool for your normal_nohq and ambient_as textures,it is really cool

Crazybump is free, and allows you greater control over your normal maps, and also saves emissive, specular, occlusion, diffuse and displacement textures as well, the displacement texture can be quickly turned into an AS map by turning the red and blue channels to white 255, leaving you to sculpt the amount of ambience shadow.