Believe it or not I actually read all of that. Amazing what interest in subject matter will do haha.
Your method for the scope housing layer is almost exactly how I do mine. I didn't go quite into as much detail with the image though. but I did do a few other things different.
I kept the game resolution as is, used the NoCardSwitch flag for the 3D sighted image. Then I also use "RenderFOV #" on the weapon in the weapon.DEF. I think the games default for this is 80, but I would reduce it down to about 65 when capturing the screenshot for my sight graphic.
RenderFOV does what it says, renders the 1st person 3D model in what ever FOV you set. so if you use a lower FOV, when looking down the sights on the 3D model, it appears much closer and more focused on the graphic and less of a longer perspective.
For the actual capture, I turn off the games AA, and capture it as a .BMP so there's no quality loss or blurring. in the past I used the clear blue sky as a background, but now I've created a large greenscreen object in 3DS max with illuminated surface to use in the game. haha. So now I can just open the screenshot in GIMP and use color to alpha or the color select tool to cut out the background in just a few clicks.
As for the positioning. I've gotten pretty quick about adjusting the Tpos for sights. all Tpos for every gun is spot on in the mod. Mainly because I originally was going to use 3D sights for my mod, but I also want to be able to adjust elevation on all optics that have the ability to. Which doesn't work when using "nocardswitch".
I even used a 3D model trick on my old 3D holographic sights to make it so the retice only appeared in the optic when you sighted in so you didn't see the reticle floating in the middle of the optic when un sighted.
Anyhow, using nocardswitch along with inset will leave the crosshair on screen when sighted, so you can really make sure it's on target.
Tpos = X Y Z Yaw Pitch Roll
First you'll want to adjust XYZ so that the sights are lined up exactly where they need to be from the camera perspective. it's ok if they're not aligned with the hud crosshairs.
Then adjust yaw, pitch, and roll to align the sight picture to the crosshairs. Which adjusting these shouldn't really effect the sight alignment. if it does, you can make minor adjustments to XYZ once you have the optic aligned to the crosshair.
After this, your POS values should be set based off the Tpos. But ONLY change the XYZ values to get your hip fire position. This will keep your muzzle pointing at the crosshair when you're not sighted in. You may have to adjust it slightly for weapons whose optics have a high "height over bore" because the barrel will be noticeably lower than the point of impact when firing from the hip, but it still gets you close.
Great job Baldo, love your attention to technical and aesthetic detail.
