Blender Source Tools Help

This tutorial will show you how to export a simple model from Blender for compiling with studiomdl.

To learn about the general usage of Blender, see Is Blender 3D Good for Source/How to Start.

Todo: Is it not possible to export collision meshes? That's crap!

The export process

1. Create your model and texture it via UV mapping. The result should be a .blend file and all the TGA files you used as textures. The example used here is the PC Gamer UK mag secreted all around de_dust_pcg (blender file for the model pcgmag.blend and texture file pcgmag.tga)
2. Having installed the SMD exporter plugin, export your model to a Half-Life 2 SMD file, in this case pcgmag.smd.
3. Copy the SMD file into <game>/modelsrc and the TGA file(s) into <game>/materialsrc/models
4. The SMD you have already is just the reference model. We will also need an additional SMD to declare the 'idle' animation. So, in a text-editor, create a file called pcgmag_idle.smd (or some other name ending in SMD) and enter this as its contents:

version 1
nodes
0 "joint0" -1
end
skeleton
time 0
0 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0 0.000000 0.000000
end

You are now ready to compile the model.