HL Character Development Created 18 years ago2005-12-19 21:18:16 UTC by pjmiller435

I didn't want to scour through the whole forums to find this answer if it's already been asked, if it has either call me a dumbass or supply a link, sorry for the newb question..... but what's an essiential way to edit the HL characters.... basically meaning of course to say take Gordon Freeman and make him Batman or whatever the modders fantasy is?

The real question is what programs to use for this..... I got HL2 and XSI MOD TOOL for HL2 and make animations and all of that junk, but I want to start with HL first, because it's much more ease of mind and will get me started very easily, and then later on I can move onto my HL2 project.

Thank you for your time and answers,

Paul Miller

ive seen some mentioning on modeling and things like milkshape 3d, gmax, etc. but are they just as good for characters n such? w/e ill let you pros respond with an answer and suggest what program(s) to use.

thanks for your help guys, thanks a lot.

You could just simply retexture the models if you want..

http://twhl.co.za/tutorial.php?id=59

Or... You can make your own models and change the .mdl of the model in question with your new model, although the animation would be soooo very screwed up... so I would not recommend that...

Good Luck...

[Edit] In order to add your custom things... just replace files that are already there with your own, or the origional with slight midifications...

I tried milkshape and it was quite nice but gmax is much better, unfortenatly it's no longer availible!

Milkshape is fine for low-poly models like in Half-Life. It even comes with a built-in model compiler and decompiler for Half-Life.

So, you can decompile an existing model, modify it, and compile again. Of course, you shouldn't change it's skeleton (or you'd have to redo every animation) and you should keep in mind that the skins should be 8-bits bitmaps (Wally is a good convertor here).

Yeah but milkshape costs 24$ which is annoying. There is another program that I heard of, it's called blender, never used it though.

Every good thing comes at a price, Elon. And $25 is cheap for what you get.

I don't know how i got milkshape then, and i got gmax just a little while ago

Milkshape is good for HL1. I do imagine you'd want to edit more than just Gordon's textures if you wanted a Batman.

Milkshape is a excellent program for starters, easy and powerfull. But, programs like G-max, Blender, 3dstudiomax and Maya give you a better and faster workflow.

All depends on how much money you want to spend.

i got plenty to spend, thats no question, i mean when i move onto my HL2 project I'll have 10 people helping me out and anybody else who wants to pitch in for my dark comedy game, lol. and i dont realle want to make Gordon Batman at all lol, that was just an example on what I wanted to do in the end.... change the models into something I want.

ADD

I just wanted to thank each and everyone of you for your contributions, this site has a lot of knowledgable people and I've been surfing around it for about three days before I became a member, looks like I'll be visiting this puppy a lot now.

some advice, double posting isn't really recomended. their will always be an edit button next to your name if you have the last post in a thead, use it instead.

oh ok sorry, and thanks, i never seen it, but now i know where to look, thanks.