Category talk:Modeling

Re-structuring modelling tutorials ?

Here are some interesting ideas developing for a methodical re-structuring of Modelling Tutorials. These discussions never seem to start in the right place! So, if you're interested in the structuring of the Modeling category, please take a look and chip in with comments and suggestions. If it happens it will be a big task, so it would be nice to have a thorough plan before we start :-) --Beeswax 06:26, 26 Apr 2008 (PDT)

SubCategory's

i have set the modeling page to use SubCategory's and set most of the tool specific tutorials to use said SubCategory's

--Stevenm64 05:16, 11 Jan 2006 (PST)

Along that vein, anything that's in a subcategory should probably be removed from the main category, to keep the main clean. IMO, at least. --Charron 16:02, 11 Jan 2006 (PST)

Agreed. I'm going to put that on my "to do on the VDC" list. --Etset 11:21, 28 Jan 2008 (PST)

As a general rule I would suggest subcategory-listed articles should also be listed in main category. If someone is searching for a modelling article, they want a full index - ie the main category list. If they are browsing for info an overview of an aspect of modelling, they will go to a subcategory, which is only a filtered version of the main list. Otherwise 'top level' articles get buried in subcategories. Note: Categories are most useful when their contents do overlap with other categories - use them more like tags, hierarchical categories tend to hide information from users. --Beeswax 13:19, 6 Apr 2008 (PDT)

Also, Categories should not be used as a substitute for proper "keyworded" article titles. Ie. If an article is only relevant to achieving something in XSI, the title should indicated that - eg "Texturing models in XSI", or (as we have) "XSI model texturing". It would be a mistake to create a hierarchy of categories: "XSI" -> "models" -> "texturing". Note the title word order is important, as it creates order in alphabeticised lists. --Beeswax 13:19, 6 Apr 2008 (PDT)

The Modeling Category basically contains Tutorials for Creating and Editing Source Models. Tutorials are specific to a given Application and would thus seem to lend themselves to sub-categories. However XSI, 3DS, etc are only model editors so the distinction only applies as far as creating the UV-mapped SMD file. The MDL compiler (studiomdl & QC scripts) doesn't care (much) what made the SMD (AFAIK, only exception is $upaxis). Creating Textures and Materials for models is (usually) done outside the model editor, (using an image editor, and a text editor, and then a VTF compiler and a VMT compiler. Because UV mapping must be done before the SMD is exported, the texture-creation is not really something you can easily add on later. Animation is not my field at all, it seems dauntingly complex and IMO deserves it's own section!

Workflow is unfortunately affected to some degree by different features of different applications. This can make it difficult to use workflow categories effectively. It's tempting to say the Cat Modeling is just for making the textured mesh in XSI or 3DS, etc but this does not integrate well into an overall model creation workflow. It might be a better idea to use (merge and cleanup!) an article such as Model Creation Overview to explain and contain the links to specific Tutorials without itself getting bogged down in too much detail?

Generic tips and guidelines (ie not application-specific, eg polygoncounts, or animation.mdls) should be accessible to all tutorials ... so it might be a good idea to build these as templates, for inline inclusion into specific tutorials and one-stop maintenance.

Rework / merge

Right now, a single SubCategory and a page for the modeling package do not make much sense in my opinion. The page of the modeling package is usually not filled with much info (except XSI, all are rather short). The SubCategory consists of a link to the page of the package, plus the few articles on it. My ideas:

• Merge the modeling package - pages with the SubCategory of the modeling package

or

• Add the most important links to the SubCategory (Link to the page, link to free version, link to the common exporter / importer)

--Vaarscha 06:35, 19 Apr 2006 (PDT)

Non-character animating?

I cannot find anything here that helps with creating dynamic props. Every tutorial seems to be about creating a character :/ Merkaba48

Remember that this is a category. The stuff at the top is helpful links pointed out. Go down to the bottom to find the articles in the modelling category, a lot of which aren't for characters. --Daedalus 20:58, 14 Mar 2007 (PDT)

I cannot find anything here either that help animating dynamic props - and I checked the article list at the bottom, and have read through a lot of pages now. --Pandaboy 02:45, 9 November 2011 (PST)

3d Studio Character Woes

I've built, textured and rigged a character using a custom skeleton in 3d studio max. Using the Biped I can export fine and import into HL2 using ragdoll physics. The problem starts as soon as I start giving the model animations. I've got functional run-animations based strongly off Valve's defaults but when I added twist points (rotate the torso, head, etc) the entire animation sequence goes haywire.

the bones become distorted and the model turns into a mess. I think it's to do with the default XSI settings for IK links and bone hierarchy, but I don't know how to change it to function with 3ds max. Any help would be much appreciated. --[AF]Meelo 14:56, 19 Oct 2007 (PDT)

Skeletal Animation help

Hello,

We have designed a new npc for my mod and we have all the animations done... A problem we are runnig into is allowing the npc's movement animations to actually move it. Our npc does not use a blended animation to run and regardless I looked at the male npc qc for animations I don't see how one is defining the speed the animation plays in there. I was hoping someone could explain how to have npc animations for a new skeleton to define the speed the npc moves when playing the anim.

Thanks RomeoJGuy

the character will move as fast as the animation dictates. you just have to add motion extraction commands to the sequence. (this precludes using animations that are 'in place' -- the character must be moving in the animation.) For example $sequence run1 "run1.smd" fps 30 LX LY activity ACT_RUN 1 The LX LY extracts the motion from the first to the last frame of the animation in the X and Y axes, and applies that motion to your NPC when the animation plays. --JacobNicholson 10:43, 2 Aug 2005 (PDT)

A tutorial about the basics of model making

Could someone make a tutorial about the basics of how to make a model. Basically what I'm thinking is what do you need to do in XSI to get the model to actually work. Then what are the basic .qc commands that you need to know to get the smd file to compile properly and the model to actually work in the game. I mainly want this because I can't even get a six sided box to work.

I added a link to Getting Static Props into Source via XSI|EXP for HL2 to XSI page. It's a very basic tutorial about getting a single textured cube into the game. N-neko