Comments on: SMD Importer – getting closer to release!

By: Jed

Jed — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:47:27 +0000

Orientation can be due to the modelling program they were made in. Max comes from an old CAD standard of “looking down” on a page so X&Y are on the horizontal plane and Z is “up”. Most other packages orientate their axes as if you’re looking at a screen so X&Y are in the vertical plane and Z the horizontal.

As for fixing it, yes, I’ve considered adding an option to re-orientate on export but it’s a “wishlist” item hence it’s low down my priority list.

Progress is going well, some issues to fix but maybe a alpha release in a week or so.

By: boedy

boedy — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:49:57 +0000

Oeh SHINY! Good work. Do you have a release date planned yet?

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:43:29 +0000

Hey Jed,

First off, thanks a bunch for all the tools. Modding Source with Max would be really difficult if not impossible without you. You’re a rockstar.

And now the prerequisite question: In working on this importer, did you find any rhyhme or reason behind why decompiled .smds are oriented in different directions? When I imported with the old Mdldecompiler and Max 7 importer, the skinned mesh files came in Y up, the reference poses and partial body anims as X up and the full body anims as Z up. Has any of your work made any sense out of why that is? I’m halfway through a custom TF2 character and hit a wall with this.

By: Jed

Jed — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:01:16 +0000

To get the TF2 models to decompile you need to change the IDST tag at the top to a lower version number. HL2/EP1 MDL’s are version 44 whereas TF2/EP2 are version 48.

The key is the single byte after the IDST header which is HEX 30 in TF2 models. You need to change this to HEX 2C. If you want that in plain-text speak, change IDST0 to IDST, in the file.

By: Tuna

Tuna — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:32:28 +0000

Been looking for a way to import the existing TF2 models into 3ds max, to do some animations with them. However, I haven’t really reached the point where I’d be importing the models as smd files into 3ds max, as I am failing on even converting the mdl etc files into smd files. Seeing as this plugin requires them to be in smd format, how would you go on about making them into smd’s?

The MDLDecompiler by cannonfodder doesn’t work at all for me. I’ve tried the removing of the 0 etc, no luck what so ever. Any assistance in getting the ingame PLAYER models to 3ds max would be greatly appreciated, or any other suggestions how you could go on about adding custom gesture movements.

By: Phil

Phil — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 14:51:23 +0000

Beautiful.

By: Mystfit

Mystfit — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 11:58:36 +0000

Dear lord, this looks like it could possibly fix all my problems.

I’ve been having massive trouble trying to find a way to accurately animate TF2 characters for machinima purposes, but this looks like it could fix all my problems in a snap.

Dying for the first release.

By: Barnz

Barnz — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:50:51 +0000

Great news. I’m waiting for this since you announced it.

By: Big Bloss

Big Bloss — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 04:28:31 +0000

“You deserve a medal doc”

By: Penguin

Penguin — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:44:27 +0000

Fantastic work man :) This will be appreciated by so many people that it can’t be explained!

All of your work is worth awards! :D You’ve coded so many alternative tools that you should be awarded with a nobel prize heh

Keep up the good work! :)