Forum posts

I dont know why they jumped ship on engines. UE3 to UE4 is pretty seamless

It's a shame i came into this forum too late
glad you got it working.

If you ever want to model using Blender, let me know

Idk Stojke, I had a sinus infection accompanied by post-nasal drip. Went to the doctor, got some Amoxicillin, cleared up in 4 days. I feel great now.

There's something wrong with your level changes.

Make sure your info_landmarks are set properly Here's a Tutorial. Oldie but goodie

Also, here's a good description by Archie about 3/4 down the page: Check this out

MP5 just needs a reduced accuracy cone and i think it's fine - or mimic CS, where if you let the recoil cool down, the first shot is dead center.

Im inside a long streak of: i care but I'm too lazy to work on it.
I've launched sledge 4 times, looked around a bit and played world of tanks instead.

Ugh. I want to finish haha.

Im not really sure what exactly motivates me, but I know that working a 40 hour a week job and going to the gym takes away enough energy that I don't want to be creative anymore.

If i get a free Saturday or Sunday, I'm much more open to being creative - that said.... if I don't have a hangover or plans to visit friends or family.

Spawn it on an invisible func_rotating?

It's probably been about a decade since i've mapped for CS 1.6... but is there a way to set the buyzone or another entity to limit the weapons available for purchase?
can a compromise be reached somehow?

Clever!

I don't see any issues so long as you don't use Alien Controllers and Apaches at the same time.

I suppose i could always use hammer for texturing - i keep everything on grid as it is because i'm OCD.
I'd just rather not use 2 tools when I could use one, you know?

Sledge is almost there. I can taste it.

i made a box with some lights - I should be done soon

Just place a brush with a texture on it and use that as a reference.

I've done this many times to create quick layouts from sketches.
It can be done for more complex brushwork, but if you need to get that detailed, you might as well toss a model in there.

My gripe is the bug when alt-right-clicking on anything other than a 90 degree angle; it does something weird with the texture axis'

I would have to assume so

I don't care if anyone steals my idea, but I Want to re create the test chamber map but it the experiment goes fine. Gordon de gowns and goes to his office... then gets fired for being late again. So you make your way back to the tram and do the entire intro in reverse and it fades out to: "Subject: Gordon Freeman. Status: Terminated"

Cheese

How about some screen shots so we can see exactly what's going on?

Make a simpler mesh and bake the normals from the more detailed one?

What props are you referring to, specifically?

Some artist (Mart Virkus) is drawing a comic every day during the month of October that follows Gordon through HL1!!
Check it : https://arcaderage.co/2016/10/06/30-days-of-half-life/

Totally understand. If you change your mind, i have a video tutorial series on importing and exporting goldsource models from blender. Plus it's free

Convert to blender and i can lend a hand

I bought some Bungee Cords so I can strap boxes of hookers to the back of my motorcycle.

Seems fine

You'll get that sometimes if the compile fails in CSG or BSP before entering VIS or RAD.
Check for compile errors and if that doesn't do anything, doublecheck your setups and make sure you're running the proper program at the proper stage in the compile..

The last thing i would say, is use the compilator! The Mighty Atom, AKA MuzzleFlash AKA Angry Carrot programmed it a while back and it's a mighty useful tool for compiling maps - especially if you want to tweak settings - Check it out HERE

You need to export your map to a .map file, and then run the compile separately however it's well worth the extra step!

I'll grab the widescreen one and do another upload later on then. That link will be dead, so I'll post a new one once it's done!

Thanks!

Sure man i would appreciate that

Your voice is barely hear able

Sorry about that. I'll have to keep that in mid for the next time i make a video

Your top rotor was directly connected with your body bone while I kept all 3 bones separated

In this application, that doesn't really matter. It was just habit to extrude another bone out of the base instead of duplicating a new one.

As for my texture problem I can't get it fixed

I did not notice that until now because i only worked in wireframe, but I see what you're talking about and you need to re-do the UV map for sure. I also noted some missing polygons where the rotor meets the body... If you need help with these two things, you know where to find me!

Guistudio doesn't work for me anymore either. I get the same error and I address a solution in the video.

Also in the video is how I split the mesh up into the pieces, and how i parented everything. It's literally a from-scratch tutorial!

It's 40% uploaded but it'll be live here in a few minutes! VIDEO!!

Video coming soon! In the meantime, here's the model for you so you can poke around and see how I laid things out - HELICOPTER MODEL DOWNLOAD

Blender is pretty awesome man! Once you get used to all the steps... export, fixing SMDs, QC scripting... it's not too hard to model for GS!

You're limited to about 1000 vertices per SMD. So you need to export the model as many different parts, but they all compile into a single model.

I went back in and created vertex groups. I then used an Armature deform on the vertex groups instead of straight parenting.

I'm gonna try a few more things to see if i can get an easier workflow, then I'll make another video. This time, I'll talk through it and I'll see if i can grab the blender plugin that shows keystrokes and stuff.

After that... since it's already done.. haha I'll upload it for you.

GOT IT!

Details to follow soon

I got it to compile but now only the root bone is animating. i had this issue before and i dont remember how i solved it. still working on it

@ ninjadefuse: I have a video series on that

I'm getting a compile error "too many vertices in body"
I've gotten that before but i've gotten around it by splitting the model into parts. I'm going to eat something and get back on that.

Well there's definitely a problem; The other bones aren't exporting. Try selecting everything (press a) then exporting.

The blender implicit bone doesn't need to be there but it won't hurt anything.

Also also make sure that when you're creating your bones, enter edit mode on your "base" armature and duplicate from there, else you end up with 3 single-bone armatures instead of 1 3-bone armature.

Keep trying! It sounds like you're almost there

Hey man i won't be at my computer for at least a day so i can't take a look yet. What i can say is check the name of the action, bitmap texture and pay attention to the export process.

What's your QC look like and are you getting a successful compile?

Also make sure you have version 2 of the S2GSC tool. Version one does not work.

1) The grid size is controlled in the 3D view window, there's a [+] in the top right corner. The settings are somewhere in there.

2) when you're extruding a bone (or moving or rotating something) press X Y or Z to constrain movement to that axis. Also you can press Shift+axis to constrain to everything BUT that axis.

3)Shift+D duplicates an item. Thats how it seemed to appear out of nowhere

4) congratulations!!

5) you need to convert the smd to goldsource. It comes out of blender in the source format. Check my profile for my Blender to Goldsource video series. There's links to all the tools.

I think your main issue is that the rotating parts of the chopper are a part of the main body.
to make everything easier, separate the heckrotor and the rotor from the main chopper so you have 3 separate objects.

The bones take care of keeping everything together.
From there you can do a 2 keyframe animation for the rotation.

When you're in the graph editor, you can linerize the graph to get a constant rotation.

I'll do a quick video on it so you can try it for yourself.

---

This video link should be live in a few hours. Just keep trying if it isn't - I'm uploading it now.

https://youtu.be/BXwSKP8LSAM

In the video you'll see a few main steps.

1) deleting the existing armature (sorry)
2) duplicating the helicopter object two times
--- Deleting the body and top rotor (rotor_rear)
--- Deleting the body and rear rotor (rotor_top)
--- Deleting the rotors (body)
--- You'll note i'm selecting & deselecting the existing vertex groups
3) rotating the helicopter to lie as close as i can to the XYZ axis - trust me when I say it makes animating easier
4) creating a new armature
--- create main body bone
--- create top rotor bone, parent to the main body bone
--- create rear rotor bone, parent to the main body bone
5) parent helicopter parts to the correct bones
6) open the dope sheet and animate
--- you'll see me struggle with this in the video since i'm not an expert with it haha
--- on the graph sheet, once you create 2 keyframes, it draws a line between them. this line defaults to a smooth falloff.. Normally great for regular animations, bad for constant speed rotations
--- I modify the tangent angles of the start and end keyframes to make a linear path between keyframes (There's probably a better way to do this, but I don't know it, and this way has worked for me in the past)
7) I played with the animation framerate to smooth out the animation since we're only rotating 90 degrees over a few keyframes. You'll have to define the same FPS in your QC file when you compile.

Other things to note:
You shouldn't do a complete 90 degree rotation because the start and end keyframe are in the same spot - which will display the rotor in the same spot twice. If you look close enough you can see this in the video.
This is hokey, but we can get a smoother animation with some math: say you want 5 keyframes per 90 degrees.. that's 18 degrees per keyframe. so you want to rotate the rotor 90-18 for a total of 72 degrees.. So the next keyframe is actually 0, but since you have 4 rotors, it mimics the full 90 degree rotation.
Hopefully you can follow along with the video for yourself and learn. Try it over the weekend and if you can't get it, I'll upload what I have and you can just animate the rear rotor.

Honestly you need to find a balance of number of entities vs quality / polygons in the models. If a model is just a decorative piece, it can have less polys and a smaller texture map. If a model is an object of focus, it needs to look good = more polys or a better texture map. There's a balance and unfortunately it's really hard to find it.

I think you just drop the dlls in your valve folder and set hammer to use the spirit fgd

I never started a Hub map. That stream was my personal entry.
I was going to see how many people entered before I started the Hub.

A clipnode determines where the player can or can not walk.
A func_detail or a func_wall will cut into existing clipnodes and generate more. (even a func_detail set to be non-solid will generate a clipnode, btw - i learned that lesson the hard way)
A func_illusionary will not generate clip nodes.
Super detailed solid world geometry wreaks havoc on the clipnode count so that's why you should cover complex items with simpler (preferably rectangular) clip brushes.

Ctrl-B? (Snap to Grid)

texture the unseen faces with bevel?

Woah you cut your polys in half! Good work

I've had success using hint brushes horizontally. Try extending a hint brush out from the roof line as well

they do but they're a pain to set up properly. just keep playing with it.