[article] Custom Props: Part 1

This is a discussion topic for the article "Custom Props: Part 1" by ReNo which can be found here

Article description:

Modelling in Milkshape

Id like to see what you do as far as texturing with vtf's
im familiar with how to texture in milk but how do i create the texture for a model (like is there any special parameters?

and how do you do "lod"?
other than that nice

Ah man i feel bad for you for using milkshape. SOmone get this poor man a real modeling program. HOwever it is a good intro.

How in the f**k did you get so many images out of a possible 8 total?
someone cheated.

nice tut btw

TBH I find milkshape to be a good modelling program- doesn't contain a load of crap and useless stuff. It was built for HL, so it works for HL!

One thing I'm curious about- how do you get the scale correct? You could in theory build the basic shape of this in Hammer and export the dxf, then import that...

Wow, sweet tutorial!
Its a coincidence that i created a week ago a similair security camera for half-life:)

Very odd Pepper :O

Nice tutorial.

All the issues you guys raise are very valid, but I really didn't want to fill this part of the tutorial out any more than I already have.

Warlord, I'll cover all the stuff about VTF's in the skinning part of the tutorial, and LOD stuff I'll do in the compiling part.

Orph, just uploaded them all to my pit

Myrk, milkshape does actually have a unit number down in the bottom left, so you can check the size of your model there. For this part of the tutorial size isn't an issue, but obviously once you are putting it into source it matters. The unit conversion is 1 to 1, so a 64 unit tall milkshape model will be 64 units tall in hammer. When compiling you can scale the model, so the size you build it is really of no consequence.

Glad you all like it, and Ferret, after reading up some tutorials on 3ds max, I think I'd kill to get the knife tool

Origins! For the love of god, ORIGINS! Did I mention you should cover origins?

You'd think origin placement would be easy, but it's practically the most common thing that'll go wrong between art and design departments, it seems. :P Nothing worse than a poorly placed origin - especially when you don't have a wireframe view to line it up on the grid

Don't you worry my KungFuSquirrel, thats planned for the animation section. But now you mention it, is it the origin in model space that acts as the origin, or the primary joint in the model? The props I've put into source had their main joint at the origin, so I couldn't actually tell you. I'll need to test it I guess.

I had forgotten to ask. how do you create custom hitboxes. so physics can be more accurate?

Does milkshape even have source compiling tools?

It doesnt need to, all it does is export to the SMD file format which the SDK model compile tools then use. to compile into an MDL.

The process of making a physics model, or a lower LOD version, is all still modelling. If you can build the highest detail version of a model, then its easy to make lower detail versions or physics versions using milkshape as well. I'll discuss the technical side of these in the compiling part, but don't expect me to explain the building process in as much detail as I have here

Woooooow dude

That was perfect...