modifying existing models.

[suicyde]

Hi. I am trying to write a level (and hopefully develop it into a mod) and I want to use an existing HL2 model (specifically cattails.mdl).

However I would like to change it from green to yellow (ie a dried out cattail).

I have looked through the forum and cant seem to find anything about this. Can anybody help me.

Actaully what I want to do is have a field of cattailed and be able to light them a fire with either a pulse gun, grenade or rocket launder give of smoke and eventaully burn down to black dust. If anybody has any Ideas on that it would also help. (FYI I am using quark as my 3d mapping tool - I am no good at models so I am making do with HL2 exisiting models.).

-Suicyde

 

[suicyde]

2nd part answered

I haven't worked out the first part yet. I still need help with that.

But....

After watching the "vt_thruster_canister" tutorial (Thanks it really helped me a lot) I figured out how to do the 2nd part
What I figure is:

I will setup the square base/ground as a clear invisible prop/physical (this will be parent). with a number of cattials on top of it (child's).
trigger 1 - ON damage to the base, start fire. burn for 10 secs
trigger 2 - on fire sensor above adjacent area start fire burn for 10 secs. (delay 2 seconds before triggering have to play around with this).

Fire only to be triggered once.

at 7 second mark, disable cattails (or progressively over 10 seconds remove them, I've yet to figure what looks best)

at 9 seconds ground texture changed to black ash.

At 10 secs fire gone.

This way I can make a field of dry grass a death trap.

Feel free to use this idea. And if anybody has a better model for dry grass/plants that they want to share let me know.

-Suicyde

 

[Exavior]

To change the color of the cattails, what you need to do is replace their default texture with a custom one.

Do a forum search for "GCFScape" This program will let you open up the GCF files that contain all the models/textures/sounds/etc for the game. One of the GCF files will contain "materials\models\props_foliage\cattails.vtf"

That is the texture file for the cattails. You need to copy that texture over to the materials file for the game you are working on (CS/HL2/HL2MP)

Now all you have to do is convert the .vtf file to a tga, edit it, then convert it back to a .vtf file.