XSI ModTool Tutorial

I've been banging my head against the XSI ModTool for 2 days now and i'm at my wits end.

I've been trying to export a simple polygon mesh cube to SMD and then compiling to MDL. The SMD export goes well, the MDL compile goes well, but when i view my model in the Valve Model Viewer, i see absolutely nothing.

I've been completely unable to find any complete (and simple) tutorials on the matter, and i'd appreciate it if any of the pro (or anyone who's got it working)XSI modellers would spend 10 minutes explaining it to the rest of us.

All i need in order to get me going is a thorough description of the following steps:

1. Model a simple cube
2. Apply a custom texture (pre-created VTF texture)
3. Export to SMD
4. Compile to MDL (with .qc file etc.)
5. View in the Model Viewer

Now i've done all of the above, but i'm very obviously doing something wrong. A step by step guide would be of great help.

try freezing translations after building the cube

---

Dark_Kilauea
DVS Administration
http://www.dvstudio-production.com/

freezing the translations didn't work.

however, i found a tutorial here that did: http://www.gamedesign.net/node/1002

Should have been seaching for XSI and not ModTool sigh Thanks anyhow Dark_Kilauea.

Now I have some other issues...

This is the model in XSI:



This is the model in the SDK model viewer:



It looks like a transform problem, like all parts of the fence are on top of each other. I did do Freeze All Transforms.

What am i doing wrong here?

Looks like instances not being exported as meshes or such to me. I have this problem with 3ds Max when exporting, for example.

What I (still) use for HL2 modelling is Milkshape 3D. It's a great low-poly modeller for HL, but also supports HL2 up to a certain point. You could try it and import the .smd's to check the actual exported mesh (and look at poly counts to see if it's indeed an overlapping problem or not).

---

Create-ivity - a game development blog

All you will ever need to know about making models in HL2 (Or anything for that matter) is found here:

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Category:Modeling

---

Posting And You

Thanks omegaslayer, exactly what i was looking for. Seems like everything i could need is there.