User:DougWood
Creating a view model for Source using XSI
Camera Setup
Lets start by positioning the camera in XSI to give us a similar view as what we will be seeing in the game. Set a 54 degree F.O.V. perspective camera at origin, using the coordinates shown below, facing along the negative Y axis.
Positioning
If its not in the scene already, merge/import your weapon mesh. Position your weapon to where it looks best in the camera view. To do this move the weapon mesh and not the camera. I recommend doing this before you finish your model because its good to see where to best spend your polygons. As you can see in the below picture (area marked as A.) the front of the shotgun mesh has some detail near the barrel that is not seen in the camera view. Those polygons would perhaps be best used up near the handle or simply deleted.
Merging texture coordinates
In this example, the shotgun and arms have been modeled and textured seperatatly. View model weapons need to consist of a single mesh, so we need to merge both the shotgun and arm meshes together while keeping the texture coordinates in tact. Do to this, merge the arm mesh into the scene (File > Merge), next, under the Model panel select Poly. Mesh > Merge.
