How to import custom models into DayZ

• Tool / where CGTrader / Poly Haven / Blender
• Why it matters Clean low-poly imports best

Download a model in FBX (or OBJ) with its base-colour textures, or build your own in Blender. Free, game-ready models are everywhere — CGTrader, Poly Haven (CC0), Kenney, Sketchfab, BlenderKit — and you can also bring clothing or equipment over from Arma 3, whose rigging and weighting are usually reusable in DayZ (verify the skeleton and selections). Keep it low-poly: a prop should sit around 1–5k triangles, a weapon 10–20k on its highest LOD, clothing in the low thousands, because the engine draws thousands of objects and several LODs at once and excess geometry costs FPS — render cost on the client, plus object and physics cost on the server.

What imports well is clean topology, the logical parts modelled as separate pieces, a proper UV unwrap and real-world scale; avoid n-gons, overlapping UVs and baked-in animations. FBX is the preferred interchange into Object Builder because it carries multiple objects, normals and materials — OBJ works but loses the hierarchy and LOD structure.

Always check the licence. Terms vary, and donations or perks can make a modded server count as commercial use, so prefer CC0 or commercially-licensed royalty-free assets — and never rip models from another game or mod, which is the most common cause of a takedown.

• Tool / where Blender + Arma Toolbox
• Why it matters Scale, parts, UVs, orientation

Open the model in Blender, delete anything you do not need — stray ground meshes, extra LODs, baked animations — and name the logical parts as separate components, because both collision and animation rely on that split later. Do a clean UV unwrap, triangulate, check the normals and sharp edges, fix the origin and orientation, and apply transforms with Ctrl+A after every edit.

If you are porting clothing, this is where you fit it to the DayZ body: weight it to the character skeleton, test the male/female fit for clipping, and trim it to one garment (the engine splits clothing into trousers, jacket and gear), using Sculpt → Grab to remove the body bleed-through that shows through the model. For an Arma 3 source you debinarize the PBO first (Crowbar) and import the MLOD with the Arma Toolbox.

Export to FBX. Blender’s FBX export usually comes into Object Builder too large; you do not fix that here — you compensate at import in the next step with a master scale of 0.01, checking the result against a known vanilla object.

• Tool / where DayZ Tools → Settings / Tools
• Why it matters Portable, relative asset paths

DayZ Tools is the free official toolkit (Steam App 830640) and holds everything you need: Object Builder, ImageToPAA, TexView, Addon Builder and Bulldozer. In Settings, point it at a project drive, run Tools → Extract Game Data once (a few minutes), then Tools → Mount Drive P. Your own mod also lives on this P: drive, in its own folder.

Lay the mod folder out now: a root such as P:\MyMod holding config.cpp, model.cfg, a $PBOPREFIX$ file with the internal path prefix, and a subfolder per asset with a data folder for the .paa textures and .rvmat materials. The packed result will be @MyMod\addons\mymod.pbo plus @MyMod\keys\mykey.bikey.

The P: drive matters because it gives every asset a relative, portable path. Reference a texture by an absolute C:\ path and it only loads on your machine — anyone who downloads the mod gets missing textures. The $PBOPREFIX$ has to exist early, since your model, material and config paths all resolve through it.

• Tool / where Object Builder → File → Import
• Why it matters Turns the model into a .p3d

Choose File → Import → FBX and set Master scale to 0.01 — that restores the correct, metre-accurate size. Untick the animation option and set FPS to 0, or the model will not show in Bulldozer. Save as .p3d into your mod folder.

To size it precisely, spawn a proxy of a similar vanilla object — for a weapon, an M4 proxy — and line your model up against it, matching the triggers, the length and the overall scale, then delete the proxy. Always re-check the size in-game against a known vanilla object, because the sense of scale inside Object Builder is misleading. Right-click drags the model, Alt+right-click rotates the view.

• Tool / where ImageToPAA / TexView
• Why it matters The engine reads .paa, not PNG

Convert your PNGs to .paa with ImageToPAA or TexView into the mod’s data folder. DayZ uses three map types: _CO (colour), _NOHQ (normal) and _SMDI (specular, whose channels carry the specular level and gloss). A downloaded PBR model must be converted, not just renamed — albedo becomes _CO, normal becomes _NOHQ, and metallic plus roughness are baked into _SMDI.

Keep textures at power-of-two sizes (512 / 1024 / 2048, max 4096) because the tools and engine expect it — non-standard sizes can fail to convert or behave badly; if a valid texture still refuses, open it directly in TexView. A weapon or a reticle can also reuse vanilla textures and glass materials — for example lens_glass — referenced straight from another PBO instead of shipping your own copy.

• Tool / where Object Builder + text editor
• Why it matters How the surface looks and reacts

Materials live in .rvmat files that bind the engine’s Super shader to your texture stages. Do not hand-write them — copy a vanilla rvmat from a similar material or object type (not a weapon rvmat for a static prop) and re-path its stage lines to your textures: stage 1 is the _NOHQ, stage 5 the _SMDI, with the _CO applied on the model itself.

Items that take damage — weapons, tools, destructible objects — need three variants: the main rvmat plus a _damage and a _destruct, which the engine crossfades as the item degrades from pristine to ruined. On the model select the faces, press E, point them at the .paa and the .rvmat, and Apply, then check it in Bulldozer to confirm the texture sits correctly.

• Tool / where Object Builder + Blender (Decimate)
• Why it matters Performance at range

A model is shown through several Resolution LODs that the engine swaps by camera distance: LOD 0 is the full mesh, and each further LOD roughly halves the polygon count down to a very coarse ~500-poly level. A simple prop needs one or two; weapons and detailed objects want four or five.

The quick way to build them is in Blender with the Arma Toolbox: duplicate the main LOD a few times and apply a Decimate modifier to each, lowering the ratio step by step — around 50%, then 38%, then lower. Import them back into Object Builder and redefine each LOD’s hidden selection so the material still binds. Decimation can break UVs, sharp edges and named selections, so re-check the material sections after each LOD; fewer sections per LOD is always better.

Resolution LODs are only the visible ones. A finished model also carries the functional LODs covered in the next steps — Geometry, Fire Geometry and Memory — and, depending on the content type, View Geometry (line of sight), View Pilot (first person), Roadway (walkable surfaces) and a Shadow Volume. Add only the LODs the type actually needs.

• Tool / where Object Builder, duplicate + set type
• Why it matters You walk into it, not through it

Duplicate the resolution LOD and set its type to Geometry, then clear the textures off it — geometry needs none. Split it into Component01, Component02… with Structure → Topology → Find Components, give each a mass, keep every component closed and convex, and add the autocenter = 0 named property to the first resolution and geometry LODs.

Collision is built from components, not one big box: select the logical parts — a trailer’s hitch, its body, each stair — separately, or the engine bricks the whole thing into a solid block. A building’s interior is only walkable if the walls, floor and roof are separate components, and there is a practical limit of about 99 per LOD, so take a whole wall as one selection rather than per window.

There is also a lighter box method: clear the mesh in the geometry LOD, turn on the background LOD and four views, and draw simple Create Box colliders around the shape, each given a component and a mass. For floors, stairs and roofs the player must stand and walk on, also add a Roadway LOD over those surfaces — without it characters slide off or cannot traverse them.

• Tool / where Object Builder
• Why it matters Bullets and hit sounds

Duplicate the geometry and set it to Fire Geometry — this is what bullets and melee actually trace against. Without it shots pass straight through the object with no impact, and a Fire Geometry component left without a material makes the binarizer fail.

Select the components, press E and assign a penetration material from P:\DZ\data\penetration — metal_plate is the common choice and gives a metallic hit sound. Two kinds exist: normal materials whose thickness equals the modelled part, and plate materials with a fixed thickness regardless of geometry. For a weapon you usually build several boxes along the body so hits register accurately.

• Tool / where Object Builder, Memory LOD
• Why it matters Axes, attach and effect points

The Memory LOD holds non-rendered named points and axes that make the object behave. For any item you set the bounding box, ce_center, ce_radius and an inview point — the last controls how large and zoomed the inventory icon looks.

What else you place depends entirely on the vanilla class you inherit, so work from a similar vanilla model: a weapon adds an eye point, the muzzle point (usti hav) at the barrel for the shot and flash, a direction point (konic hav) and the cartridge-ejection start and end; a door or ladder adds its rotation axes and step points; an optic adds eye-relief and reticle-alignment points. Get the names exactly right — the engine looks them up by name.

• Tool / where Object Builder
• Why it matters Attachments, slots, magazines

Anything beyond a static prop hangs on proxies and named selections, and the two diverge by type. A weapon brings in separate proxies for its magazine, optic, suppressor and other attachments, lined up on the model and copied into every LOD; clothing and storage instead rely on named selections for their slots and on the skeleton weighting from step 2. Create the proxy, position it, and give it a selection name such as magazine.

The critical rule is that the hidden selection — ZBYTEK on the model, the bolt, the camo slot — must match exactly across the .p3d, the model.cfg and the config’s hiddenSelections. A mismatch there is exactly why a texture, an attachment or an animation silently fails.

• Tool / where pboProject (or Addon Builder)
• Why it matters Produces the loadable mod

Pack the mod folder from the P: drive into a .pbo. pboProject is the reliable choice — it checks every reference (config, rvmat and texture paths) and reports errors precisely, and a single mistyped rvmat stage will stop the build — whereas Addon Builder works for simple packs but is less strict and gives weaker diagnostics on complex models. Read the binarization log to find the exact file when a build fails.

Linux servers are case-sensitive, so keep every folder, file and path name lowercase and consistent. Sign the PBO with DSUtils — keep the private key private and ship only the public .bikey in the mod’s keys folder, and re-sign after every change — so verifySignatures servers accept it. The finished layout is @MyMod\addons\*.pbo plus @MyMod\keys\*.bikey.

• Tool / where DayZ Community Offline Mode
• Why it matters Fast checks without a server

Test with DayZ Community Offline Mode, a free community tool — download it from GitHub (Arkensor): https://github.com/Arkensor/DayZCommunityOfflineMode, drop it into your DayZ Missions folder and launch the included .bat. Inside, press Y → Object, type your class name and place the object — you instantly see its size, collision and hit sound, without standing up a server. Test by asset type: a static prop for placement, collision and bullet impacts; a building for its interior, stairs, doors and ladders; a weapon for chambering, firing, reload, attachments and sounds; clothing for equip, drop, bleed-through and the inventory icon. To place static objects on a live map you then use the Object Spawner JSON or a terrain/editor export.

Fix, repack, retest until it behaves. Common fixes are a see-through area (select the offending face, copy it, press W, paste), a wrong bolt (redefine it), or a forgotten magazine script. If something is missing or renders white, the logs in %localappdata%\DayZ name the exact missing model, texture, bad path or broken config class — read them first.

• Tool / where Config + model.cfg + DayZ-Samples
• Why it matters Where the types diverge

A weapon needs the most beyond the model. You author a magazine and ammo — CfgMagazines for the magazine, CfgAmmo for the projectile (hit and damage, initSpeed, airFriction) — then declare the compatible magazines[] and chambering on the weapon and inherit recoil and dispersion from a close vanilla rifle. Its reload and fire animations are normally inherited from that vanilla weapon through model.cfg rather than scripted.

Custom sounds are their own layer: a CfgSoundShaders + CfgSoundSets config defines the shot and suppressed-shot sounds (ideally with tail and interior variants), which the weapon then references on its semi and full-auto fire modes. The three sound shaders must line up with the sound sets; a missing reference is simply silent in-game, so check the logs.

Clothing diverges earliest — back in Blender — with the skeleton weighting and body fit from step 2, plus the right named selections. Its config inherits Clothing_Base with itemSize, itemsCargoSize, heatIsolation and clothingType, and colour variants come from hiddenSelectionsTextures rather than separate models. A walkable building leans on the Geometry components and the Roadway LOD; its doors and ladders are driven from the Memory LOD axes and points bound to model.cfg animations and config actions — copy Bohemia’s DayZ-Samples (Test_Building, Test_Ladders).

An optic (scope) is a small build of its own: the reticle is a separate thin p3d with a glass/lens material, you place eye and alignment points in the Memory LOD, and the class inherits ItemOptics for its zoom, zeroing and magnification modes. Keep it simple by basing it on the closest vanilla optic and only changing what you need (for example the zoom range).