From Max 8 to HL2 - help

[akiller]

Hi All,

I've been searching for hours on how to do this, with hardly any luck. I'm creating a player model for half life 2 and I'll eventually need to set it up with lip synching etc.

From my understanding I model it, texture it, rig it and animate it under max, then export it into an SMD?

I can't find any decent resources/guides on how to take the model from max into hl, I've found some SMD exporters but then I'm pretty lost. Valves SDK documentation isn't really great either, they only talk about the software they use to create models, and not max.

Thanks for your help.

 

[naaier]

you're a noob, right? go to www.poopinmymouth.com (yes, really) lots of toots there covering just this

 

[mindless_moder]

ignore the post above. you pretty much have the process figured out all you really need is to get cannon fodders smd exporter and mdl compiler/decompiler tools . smd's just contain the geometrical data and some other information (skeletal data etc. CORRECT ME if im wrong) HL2 doesnt deal with smd's directly it compiles all the various smd's into one format called .mdl the mdl has the smd's for all animations , physics meshes and the actual geometry (reference smd.) it might seem a bit intimidating but its really quite simple . i cant link you to any tutorials atm moment but you can get all the tools you need here : http://www.chaosincarnate.net/cannonfodder/cftools.htm
just decompile an mdl , import some smd's and see how it works.