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[Officer Caitlyn]

Hello~ <(^^)>

So, recently, this friend of mine asked me if I could help him with some modelling, now he asked me to make a Katana sword model to replace the crowbar in Half-Life 2 (Ep1, Vanilla, EP2, bla bla bla, HL2) Anyways, so I've got the base files ripped (both W and V models) and now the thing is, changing the V models did Jack shit, and apparently, the model disappears. NOW the thing is, this has happened to me when I tried CS:Source modding; I managed to get the AK-47 and what not modded, all good, when it came to the AWP, things got out of hand, I think some rotation or some QC related thingy wasn't right and I had to do some rotation, BUT I DON'T KNOW JACK about that and it really frustrated me (just as bad as skinning a player model heh)... <(-..-*)>

I'm just wondering, mainly, asking you Shawn, do you have any ideas or information on this? Seems like I'm the only one daring to do this. There HAVE been mods for the crowbar to replace it with neat stuff like a combat axe and so, but any ideas as to how to go about with this? Also, tried Importing the model, got a weird Xform error, used QC, no probs, but any idea's what settings I Should use or so? I used to use Studio compiler and something QC compiler or something like that to make models, but I'm COMPLETELY out of touch as to what to do with the new common folders ever since the common folder was introduced... Props, okay, weapons and stuff, haha, NOPE. ZERO.

Many MANY thanks in advance. <(^u^)>

[wallworm]

I think the best person for this is Joris. He's done a lot of prop swapping/re-skinning I believe. I'm mainly a content creator and have not spent a lot of time swapping out assets in existing mods/games. I'm sure he'll pipe in soon.

[Officer Caitlyn]

Ah, no worries. I'll wait patiently. <(^^)> But I've downloaded Crowbar, and so far, it's helping out; I found that not checking 'Single Mesh' on the SMD importer puts it in an infinite loop... I don't know if it's just me, but it's been doing that for every model... Also, the QC's aren't getting exported correctly, so for now, I'm just exporting the SMD's and recompiling them like I used to for CS:Source. (I think my moddings coming back to me, damn, was I really this smart when I was 13?? <(0.o)>

Thanks for the comment though Shawn, will wait~ 

[wallworm]

Hmmm... I recommend single mesh because it is much faster . Using the non-single mesh is really only recommended if you really need each part of the model separated into different objects based on the node meshes of the SMD (which probably is unexpected anyway as the artist might just expect one mesh and N# bones ... but each original node exports as both  bone and a mesh in the original scenes). I don't think it's often a good idea, but some people prefer it. However, this causes the importer to need to make a new node with a skin modifier for each separate node mesh AND each separate material that was in the original SMD. And this drastically affects the speed of the import because the Skin modifier has a bad problem in Max where the functions to access it often require the object to be selected and the modifier tab open --and each time that happens it causes a huge slowdown. I suspect that slowdown is what appears as an infinite loop. I just did a test import of a hostage model... and with single mesh off there are 65 mesh nodes and it took a while to import... but with single mesh on it imported in a couple seconds.

My guess is that the import is just ridiculously slow with single mesh off. And depending on your system, that might take longer and longer.

[Officer Caitlyn]

Hi Shawn,

Well it could be... I don't have the beefiest of computers in existence... <(o~o)> But I think I understand what you mean, could be the whole reason in fact... Anyways, I really don't have time to let it import like that, but yeah... It probably is ridiculously slow...

Thanks for the explanation though, much appreciated. <(^^)>

[Officer Caitlyn]

So, after some time and reading up and work, this happened... <(oAo)>











Spec Maps, Alpha, and well, yeah, I dunno, but it looks flipping fantastic! Had to make my own 'Source Mod' for a source game, which was a huge pain in the butt, but yeah, it works!!! <(^D^)> I really like the look of it, now if you excuse me, I'm off to make a Source Remake of Delta Force 2! Squeee~

[wallworm]

Excellent job!

Please take a little time to share with other users the solution for your dilemma :) I know the same question has popped up before and will come back again.