Need help in exporting texture files

[Spitfire51]

I was just wondering if anyone know how to open texturefiles from hl2.
im a proffesional skinner and i was thinking of reskinning some of the combine soldiers for fun, but i havent been abel to find a way to extract the texture files.
I tried opening the texture in hammer, and convert to vmf, but i have no idea where the vmf is located, after convertion.
ive tried to extract the .mld file n tried several programs to open it in, since hlmv does not let you extract texturefiles.

Someone please help me, im really getting frustrated over this!

 

[SidewinderX]

you really can't extract the .mdl files.... they're not just a mesh persea...

anyway, there should be a tool called vtf2tga in steam/.../sourcesdk/bin drag and drop.

 

[Mr-Fusion]

The texture files aren't located in the mdl like in Half-Life 1. In fact you don't even need to do any decompiling/recompiling at all, which is helpful for simple reskinning. But it's tricky understanding the directory structure at first.

The combine soldier texture files would be in the source materials.gcf. They're in vtf format which you should convert to tga using the program sidewinder mentioned. Edit them in photoshop, save, then convert back to vtf use another progam called vtex.exe also located in sourcesdk/bin.

Then put them in the directory corresponding to where they are in the gcf.

It'll be something lke steam/steamapps/username/half-life2/hl2/materials/models/combine/

I'm not sure if that's extension but you'll see the correct naming in the gcf.

 

[Spitfire51]

thnx alot!
hehe yes it is very confusing, ill post what i did when im done with the reskin.

 

[Spitfire51]

ok. run into problems. again... hehe
how do i convert the file? the vft2tga dosnt seem to run, i know there is something im suppouse to do after running cmd in "run"

 

[thereisaspoon]

to use vtf2tga u go to ur %sourcesdk%/bin and type vtf2tga -i path\to\vtf -o path\to\output

(%sourcesdk% is a environment variable that should be set when you installed the sdk, u type it in any path box and it goes to the sdk folder, or u can use it in the cmd prompt, type cd %sourcesdk%)
u can put the vtf in any folder c:\vtfname.vtf is pretty ez since u dont have to type much. path to output would be c:\tganame

 

[Spitfire51]

thnx alot!
finally i can get this working

 

[Spitfire51]

ok, so how do i convert them to vtf?
whats the command for that?

when dragging and dropping the saved tga file on "vtex"
it says : problems configuring output dir

 

[Faulk_Wulf]

Is there a documented step-by-step tutorial of this? This is (obviously) harder to follow then a reskin for HL1. The model I desire to reskin is the soldier_stripped.mdl... Any help or links would be appreciated.

 

[(Fragger)]

http://www.gamingforums.com/showthread.php?t=163783

 

[Faulk_Wulf]

Very much thanks.