[SOLVED] Retextured unit: unable to see it in the game (not mission editor)

[Doktor Headshot]

Prologue:

Hello everyone,
I'm Guido89 and I'm a mission maker.
It's has been a long time I didn't post here because of school and lacking of time for making my missions.
As far as Operation Flashpoint has been overcame by ArmA and as far as my PC grew old, I was unable to play online and for this reason I made lanned multiplayer mission for some friends of mine very found to me and to the game.
At the moment, I'm working to a mp mission called "Rainbow Six Syndrome" (an explicited tribute to the Rainbow Six saga) in which I'd like to use custom units as the Rainbow agents; well, not so much custom but only retextured Blackops BIS model.


Chapter 1: Setting up
Ok, now we enter the technical stuff. I guess I properly installed "Oxygen" tool because I carefully followed a step by step tutorial and I made the Z: hard drive unit, buldozer worked fine etc. etc. I also put my addon directory in the Oxygen's main one and reloaded textures, models and stuffl like that in the Oxygen subfolders. I wrote up a config.cpp for my little addon - and I think it is set-up properly because the game always start - and furhtermore new units were shown in the mission editor. By an hand is funny to see own creatures in the "Intro" world (or Eden or Cain...) just the creator is a god but by the other hand is more funny to play with them (eh... eh... eh...). So, what I had to did it was to push the rectangular box named "Preview".


Chapter 2: Beyond obscureness and rage
After I worked on them, after I experimented with Oxygen for the first time (just to see the models in buldozer), after I spent much time for the texturing operation and after I fixed the textures' paths with the TxtPathSwap tool (after previously mlodded the p3d model with Odol Explorer), I thought my long journey, through numbers, icons, human shapes and byblic-lenghten scripts, came to a sort of end.
But I was wrong... I was terribly wrong...

grc_addon\model\rainbow_assault_mdl.p3d: Unsupperted version 4164812.205

Someone shot me that message but I realized I had no weapons to respond with.

(Side note: if models got binarized with the Binarize tool, the game started with a sort of invisible unit that even if it moved, the screen kept up blocked and only unit's footsteps sounds were heard; if unit fired, the game crashed)

Chapter 3: The buddy who gave me the weapon I needed

...


...

Ok it seems that at 22.00 PM there was no time to write the chapters 3...
So, I'm gonna skip you straight to the end.
Don't ask me how: I just solved this problem after lot of experimentation and browsing through OFPEC forum...
And I want to share my new knowledge with other new addons maker (well I don't want to consider myself an addon maker because I did it just for my mission's sake).

By assuming you already installed Oxygen with all datas file and made it work right, and by assuming you moved your addon folder to the Z: hardrive (automated by the batch file of Oxygen), here you are a quick summarizing tutorial that let you to retexture an official BIS unit just like you want and that I wrote after learnt from other users' posts.


@SETTING UP

Get TxtPathSwap from ftp://ftp.ofpr.info/ofpd/unofaddons2/TxtPathSwap.rar
Note about this: this helps you in setting rthe ight path for your textures because I found a pain to do it in Oxygen.

Get OdolExplorer v.2.00 from http://www.armamod.org/mod/o2/dw/ODOL_Explorer_v2.0.rar
Note about this: I know the last version is 2.4 but I experienced problem later, when I tried to texturize units with TxtPathSwap (as matter of facts, it didn't let me open it). Some users said 2.4 is a stable version that overcomes the ODOL/MODL issues caused by the conversion from a type of model to the other one; I'm not saying they're wrong: I'm just telling you what I experienced.

Install both of them by extracting them from the archives to anywhere you want.


@TEXTURING AND EXPORTING

Launch Odex and save the character model you want as a MLOD model.
Import model to Oxygen and save it before making any kind of modification on it (thanks to someone on this forum who wrote this: I don't remember now who his).
Give the character model the texture you want with TxtPathSwap by being careful at the path (that must start with the name of the addon: e.g. myaddon\mycharactermodel\mytextures.pac) and at its lenght.
Open again the character model with Oxygen, press "ALT" and "L" to call the lod's window.
Double click on "Geometry" (make sure it is selected), then "Edit" and finally on "Select All".
Press "ALT" and "M" to call the mass window.
Put "90.000" as value and click to "Apply" (if I'm not in wrong, I think it was Planck to suggest this to another user with my same problem).
Save again the character model and you're ok.


@MAKING CONFIG.CPP

Open your beloved WordPad and paste the following code.
 

Code: [Select]

class CfgPatches
{
    class ADDONNAME
    {
          units[]={"UNITNAME"};
          requiredVersion=1.85;
     };
};
 
class CfgModels
{
    class Default{};
    class Man:Default{};
    class MODELNAME:Man{};
};
 
class CfgVehicles
{
    class All{};
    class AllVehicles:All{};
    class Land:AllVehicles{};
    class Man:Land{};
    class Soldier:Man{};
    class SoldierWB:Soldier{};
    class UNITNAME:SoldierWB
    {
        displayName="UNITNAME";
        vehicleClass="CLASSNAME"
        model="\ADDONNAME\...\MODELNAME";
        weapons[]={"WEAPONSUNIT"};
        magazines[]={"MAGAZINESUNIT"};
    };
};


Edit the uppercase-written words to suits your spicy taste but bear in mind that "UNITNAME" must be different from "MODELNAME" (at least on my PC it didn't worked if they were the same).
Once you've done with it, save the file as "config.cpp" and make sure its extension is .cpp and not something like "config.cpp.txt".


@COMPILING AND TESTING ADDON

Get MakePbo from http://ofp.gamepark.cz/utilities/makepbo_11.zip, launch the program and make your addon.
Then move it to your "Res\Addons" folder or to "Addons" folder.
...And enjoy it!

Hope it helped someone.