Few days ago, [R-DEV]motherdear showed his and [R-DEV]The.Fist's work on the Namer APC model, an IDF asset which should appear in our next release.
[R-DEV]Rhino posted in one of his blogs his work on the BTR80 showing what is the work which follows the creation of a model, since doing models is nice, but putting them in the vbf2 engine is even better
The step where a model is integrated in the vbf2 engine is what we usually call the export.
I have nearly finished the export of the Namer right now, I still have the wreck (the model appearing when you destroy a vehicle) and its LODs (Level Of Details) to add to the export scene.
So, in what consists the export ? (quick answer would be 253 different elements consisting of bones, modifiers, geometry and similar, but that is pretty technical lol)
First, I had to check if the Namer was of the same size as the Merkava (they share the same chassis, and their lengths are almost the same)
Then, I thought about what will move on this vehicle : here we have the wheels (which are of different types either they touch the ground or not.), the gun mount (on which the coder will attach a .50cal), the two cameras of the namer (the driver one and the one linked to the gun).
You should say : but why he hasn't added the tracks too ?
We use another technique for them, we apply on them a texture which will slightly move on itself miming the track motion, I will not go into details with this, you would sleep in less than one minute.
After having separated all those elements and linked them in a precise order, we come to this, an alpha hierarchy :
When this is done, the coder (here, it will be [R-DEV]J.F.Leusch69) can code every part of the vehicle.
This hierarchy must be done for every LOD of the model (I suppose you have read Rhino's blog before reading this). motherdear had to do four LODs for the Namer, as you can see here :
From back to front, left to right :
COL 0 (bullet mesh), COL 1 (vehicle mesh), COL 2 (playermesh)
LOD 0 (what you see up close), LOD1, LOD2, LOD3 and LOD4.
1st player model (what the vehicle driver and gunner sees)
Each of these models are then plugged into the proper areas of the export and is setup in the hierachy. When the Export is done and is put into the engine, the exporter also has to define distances that the LOD's will switch at, and the coder [R-DEV]LEUSCH has to code the vehicle, defining turning radius, rotation limits of cameras, player positions and so on.
So while this vehicle has been in produktion it has been worked on by:
[R-DEV]Motherdear
[R-DEV]Fist
[R-DEV]Chuc
[R-COM]Hauteclocque
[R-DEV]Leusch
On top of this there is always people checking in on the model, progress, checking the uvw. Doing the textures and huds and so on.
Many many hours go into creating these things and we hope it is appreciated, but last and not least. A few ingame pictures.
Enjoy
/[R-DEV]Motherdear, [R-COM] Hauteclocque
It's such an awesome vehicle on Beirut
