Regarding the "Complete Guide to Adding Custom Objects to your TF2 Map" tutorial

[3DRyan]

First off, I posted part of this in that actual tutorial, but I'm not sure if people would see it, so here it is.

1)I found out what the "$normalmapalphaenvmapmask" does by looking it up in the valve developer wiki:

$normalmapalphaenvmapmask <bool>
Use the alpha channel of $bumpmap as the specular mask.
This must be used if the material has a bump map.

2) For alphas to work you have to have the alpha be part of the $materials base texture and have this additional line:

"$translucent" 1

This tells source to recognize the alpha included in the file and determine the alpha on a pixel by pixel basis (In other words, allows you to use your grayscale alpha as opposed to having the whole image be transparent or not).

3) Here's a problem that I have run into regarding getting the right scale for objects:

You say that one unit in hammer equals one in maya. And that 16 units in hammer and maya equals one foot. So, I take 16x6 to get the approximate size of a human. All seems well, but I compare it to a model that I previously put into hammer that turned out being WAY too small, and it's about the same size. Very tiny compared to the size of a human model. I reset to default settings in maya which is centimeters for units. Am I doing something wrong here?

Not sure if everyone already knew all of this, but it was left out of the tut, so I figured it might help some noobs such as myself Awesome tutorial btw, the best on the web for this subject by far!

 

[Snipergen]

1) Yes, spec map has to be in the normal map if you use a normal.
2) Yep yep
3) Scale is indeed relative, I mostly export 3 times or adjust my scale in the .qc to get it right.

 

[FaTony]

1 unit in hammer = 1 unit in xsi (not maya) afaik.

 

[TheDarkerSideofYourShadow]

My suggestion, for scale, is to just do a rough object in hammer, then import it to XSI

 

[FaTony]

I think we have a maya user in this thread, so XSI is not applicable.

 

[Hawk]

Thanks, 3DRyan. If I get time this weekend I'll try to update tutorial.

1 Maya unit is definitely equal to 1 Hammer unit. I think the problem in the equation we're finding is that 16 hammer units aren't actually 1 foot in TF2. I got that measurement from Valve's wiki, but I just checked the size of a Demoman in Hammer at it would mean he's 5.5 feet tall. The Heavy would be 5.8 feet tall. That doesn't sound right.

I've never had any scale problems, but that could be because I plan my objects with in-Hammer mockups like this:

Probably what I'll do is just change the part about 16 hammer units being 1 foot... because I don't think it's true now, even if it came from the wiki. Or maybe it really is true, but only for Half Life.

 

[efciem]

The best thing to do in my experience, is build a very simple "bounding box" of brushes that approximate the size/shape of the model you making.. ( in hammer ).. then export those brushes as a .DXF and import into your 3d model package of choice.

then build the model based on that scale.

perfect every time.

 

[3DRyan]

Great! It'll make a great tutorial even better. The way I work is I model my object in maya and export it as OBJ, and bring it into xsi mod tool to convert it to SMD. I have problems with getting my UVS to show up in mod tool, and haven't been able to get it right. I'm also having problems with getting specular, bump, and alpha maps to all work within one texture. I think I might write up a mini tutorial on this if I get it to work right. Just a more in-depth look at how different maps work in source. Would anyone be interested in this? Or has it been done?

DXF, huh? I'll try that.