[TUTORIAL] Blender and the Source Engine

[MaccyF]

I've got another issue. I tried to make an umbrella prop, but all the parts seem to be showing through eachother.

looks like your normals are inside out, also, i assume you want to see the canopy from both above and below, so i'd suggest adding
"$nocull 1" to your VMT.

 

[Mikroscopic]

The canopy isn't a flat plane though, it has a separate texture for top and bottom. I made sure the normals were correct, if they weren't then the AO bake would have looked messed up.

EDIT: Nevermind, silly me had $translucent in the vmt.

 

[MaccyF]

The canopy isn't a flat plane though, it has a separate texture for top and bottom. I made sure the normals were correct, if they weren't then the AO bake would have looked messed up.

i'm afraid i don't know whats going wrong then

 

[Mikroscopic]

You might want to mention making sure no renderable objects are overlapping each other in the AO bake section.

 

[Asd417]

Great tutorial! You made making static props much easier. But it still does not teach me how to make an animated prop.

 

[Asd417]

I managed to make an animated prop myself but the process is really simple.

1. Rig your model.
2. When exporting to smd file, export both model and bones together.
3. Export another smd but only with bones and name it differently so you can refer back in the qc file with $Sequence command

I did manage to get it into hammer but when my model plays the animation it rotates 90 degrees anticlockwise (or clockwise I cant remember)
I am suspecting that the bones were somehow oriented incorrectly but I am not sure.

 

[MaccyF]

I managed to make an animated prop myself but the process is really simple.

1. Rig your model.
2. When exporting to smd file, export both model and bones together.
3. Export another smd but only with bones and name it differently so you can refer back in the qc file with $Sequence command

I did manage to get it into hammer but when my model plays the animation it rotates 90 degrees anticlockwise (or clockwise I cant remember)
I am suspecting that the bones were somehow oriented incorrectly but I am not sure.

try applying the model and rigs rotation using ctrl+a, if that doesn't work you might be able to fix the issue by just rotating the armature by 90 degrees

 

[Tumby]

Why use SMD instead of DMX? DMX is superior in every way! Especially for things related to animation it's pretty much required due to poor limitations of SMDs.

 

[MaccyF]

Why use SMD instead of DMX? DMX is superior in every way! Especially for things related to animation it's pretty much required due to poor limitations of SMDs.

habit and knowlege, though if you'd be willing to summarise how a DMX workflow differs that'd be great!

 

[Mikroscopic]

I used a program to convert some brushes in a VMF to an SMD file, but it separated the textures into three different materials. How do I export these from blender so that they show up on the model? I can send you the .blend file if you want.

 

[Tumby]

Every seperate material in hammer will be a seperate material in Blender. Combining it all into one would be counter-productive, considering you will need to make a seperate VMT for each material. The names of the material within blender is the name of the VMT the model will look for. The file-path is specified in the QC.

 

[Mikroscopic]

Every seperate material in hammer will be a seperate material in Blender. Combining it all into one would be counter-productive, considering you will need to make a seperate VMT for each material. The names of the material within blender is the name of the VMT the model will look for. The file-path is specified in the QC.

So just name the material "name.vmt" in blender? Is there anything I need to change about the vmt files to make them compatible with the model?

 

[Tumby]

Don't name it "name.vmt", just "name". VMT is a file format, not part of a file's name.
VMTs are set up like any other VMTs. What would you possible do in there anyways?

 

[Mikroscopic]

Don't name it "name.vmt", just "name". VMT is a file format, not part of a file's name.
VMTs are set up like any other VMTs. What would you possible do in there anyways?

Still not working. Textures are still invisible after compiling.

 

[Tumby]

Set it to wireframe view. If no blue lines appear, it's the model data that you are having trouble with.
Missing textures usually appear as our good old friend, the black and pink checkerboard.

 

[tomGER]

Its nice to finally see a tutorial that isnt outdated as it was really hard to learn with these old tutorials from 2012 ^^

 

[Mikroscopic]

Set it to wireframe view. If no blue lines appear, it's the model data that you are having trouble with.
Missing textures usually appear as our good old friend, the black and pink checkerboard.

The wireframe is visible. Collision mesh is visible too.

 

[Tumby]

Go to the model tab and look at the right side of the screen. What does it say about materials? Can it find them?

 

[Mikroscopic]

Go to the model tab and look at the right side of the screen. What does it say about materials? Can it find them?

 

[Tumby]

I guess you could paste the VMTs? You got a special kind of problem, I must say.

EDIT: The problem was that he used the LightMappedGeneric shader, which does not work on models.