I discovered today that it’s now possible to create models for Source from Blender, which is great, because I personally prefer it to Softimage XSI. I needed to create a couple of very simple props for a small project I’m working on.
The process was simple - create a model from Blender, texture it, export to an SMD, create an empty sequence, compile model textures into Valve textures (vtex) and finally, compile model (studiomdl).
The tricky part was creating a QC file that would compile - although I had my reference SMD (i.e. the mesh itself), I had no animation SMD because the Blender SMD exporter doesn’t support them yet. Instead, I created a simple model in XSI and exported the animation SMD, which I then hacked to work with my model. It was important to change the animation SMD in notepad to update the bone reference.
The final QC file (‘model.qc’) looked like this:
$modelname dave/model.mdl
$cdmaterials "models/dave/modeltex"
$scale 3.5
$surfaceprop "flesh"
$staticprop
$body studio "model.smd"
$sequence idle “model_idle” fps 1
The reference SMD (‘model.smd’) started like this:
version 1
nodes
0 "joint0" -1
end
skeleton
time 0
0 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
end
triangles
pcgamermag.tga
…so the animation SMD (‘model_idle.smd’) was this:
version 1
nodes
0 "joint0" -1
end
skeleton
time 0
0 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0 0.000000 0.000000
end
Of course, the Source SDK model compiling guide and the XSI modelling for Source guide helped with the inbetween parts (compiling the model, textures etc.), but overall, it was fairly easy.