i figure if you guys are modeling for HL2 then maybe some of you have experience with modeling for HL1. im having trouble getting it to work and im pretty much at the end of my rope here. if you guys could help id really appreciate it.
before we begin though...are there any smd importers for HL1 (3dstudio)? i could only find one for HL2....and im not sure if using it for HL1 modeling is the cause of all my problems or not.
anywho...i asked this question in a different forum but no responses yet. id like to get some second opinions anyway. ill just copy and paste the part of the thread i think was most informative on my problem at hand:
alright got a little down time now. i cant even get it to work using trickery anymore so ill walk you through as i attempt to make this work while you look for where im going wrong. first things first ill choose a model to decompile. gman is the one ive been working the most with. ill take the .mdl file from the svencoop/models/player directory and bring it down to my workstation to decompile. i decompile the model.
everything is decompiled successfully. all the smds, the qc, and the two skin bmps are there. i will now proceed to import it into 3d studio. i am using a HL2 importer because i cant find one for HL1.
it prompts me to select the skin textures for the model. it doesnt ask which one it wants so i imagaine it prompts alphabetically. (lol i was wrong....it wants dm_face.bmp and then dm_base.bmp)
and now i end up with this in 3d studio. (now to take note of....at this point i tried to export the smd and then compile...but it failed...im still going to continue showing what i typically do though.)
now im going to check the materials editor and make sure everything is ok before i continue.
notice the names end in .tga and not .bmp. i believe this is because of my importer. the actual files end in .bmp though so thats why they are showing up correctly on the model. i am now going to delete the skin modifier and re-add it so that i can assign the envelopes myself. what i do is i go through each envelope of each bone and assign a radius of 100 to all the envelopes (except for obsolete ones like fingers and toes) to make sure that every bone has a part of the mesh (this typically works). once i am done with all the envelopes i save the .max file as testmesh.max. i then export the smd file as testmesh.smd
now for the qc part....all i do is copy and paste the gman.qc and then rename it to testmesh.qc. then i just replace the contents of the qc so that compiling will work (the qc looks like the one i posted above, basically). now i take the qc and use it to compile.
failed....now i import the testmesh.smd to analyze what exactly is wrong.
now as you can see my envelopes lost the information of which bones are assigned to which vertices. all of them except a bone called "smdimport". the smdimport bone was not originally there...but it is the only bone that has vertices.....and in fact it has all the vertices assigned to it. when i go into normal view i find this smdimport bone near gmans feet.
i dont know why all this is working out this way. i have tried starting from scratch...i just end up with a bone named "sphere01" or something instead of "smdimport".
before we begin though...are there any smd importers for HL1 (3dstudio)? i could only find one for HL2....and im not sure if using it for HL1 modeling is the cause of all my problems or not.
anywho...i asked this question in a different forum but no responses yet. id like to get some second opinions anyway. ill just copy and paste the part of the thread i think was most informative on my problem at hand:
alright got a little down time now. i cant even get it to work using trickery anymore so ill walk you through as i attempt to make this work while you look for where im going wrong. first things first ill choose a model to decompile. gman is the one ive been working the most with. ill take the .mdl file from the svencoop/models/player directory and bring it down to my workstation to decompile. i decompile the model.
everything is decompiled successfully. all the smds, the qc, and the two skin bmps are there. i will now proceed to import it into 3d studio. i am using a HL2 importer because i cant find one for HL1.
it prompts me to select the skin textures for the model. it doesnt ask which one it wants so i imagaine it prompts alphabetically. (lol i was wrong....it wants dm_face.bmp and then dm_base.bmp)
and now i end up with this in 3d studio. (now to take note of....at this point i tried to export the smd and then compile...but it failed...im still going to continue showing what i typically do though.)
now im going to check the materials editor and make sure everything is ok before i continue.
notice the names end in .tga and not .bmp. i believe this is because of my importer. the actual files end in .bmp though so thats why they are showing up correctly on the model. i am now going to delete the skin modifier and re-add it so that i can assign the envelopes myself. what i do is i go through each envelope of each bone and assign a radius of 100 to all the envelopes (except for obsolete ones like fingers and toes) to make sure that every bone has a part of the mesh (this typically works). once i am done with all the envelopes i save the .max file as testmesh.max. i then export the smd file as testmesh.smd
now for the qc part....all i do is copy and paste the gman.qc and then rename it to testmesh.qc. then i just replace the contents of the qc so that compiling will work (the qc looks like the one i posted above, basically). now i take the qc and use it to compile.
failed....now i import the testmesh.smd to analyze what exactly is wrong.
now as you can see my envelopes lost the information of which bones are assigned to which vertices. all of them except a bone called "smdimport". the smdimport bone was not originally there...but it is the only bone that has vertices.....and in fact it has all the vertices assigned to it. when i go into normal view i find this smdimport bone near gmans feet.
i dont know why all this is working out this way. i have tried starting from scratch...i just end up with a bone named "sphere01" or something instead of "smdimport".
