Whoa, I spent a couple minutes searching for this thread on the first two pages of the forum and then I realized it was stickied. I swear stickied threads are camouflaged or something.

Anyway, I originally wanted to post to bump this thread up to the first page, but I guess there's no need now.

I hope people will use this weekend to finish off some more models. We still have 19 days but hey, better sooner than later right?

I'm looking forward to getting mine started as soon as I return home.

I'll try and get some pictures from my dad for lights, he works with some really cool "real world" kind of lights in is work.

Awesome. If anyone else stumbles upon some useful reference images that they want to share, feel free to post them here.

Phew, I finished a small model in Blender and managed to get it in-game! Unfortuneately I get a pink checkboard texture no matter how hard I try.

I'll try to make a mini-light series. Mini-spotlights, mini-neon lamps, mini-lightbulps. They're not really small, just not bigger than they have to be. I always found the HL2 lights to be so big that they sometimes don't really fit where you want to put them, so hopefully, I can use this competition to build some alternatives.

your textures should be in;

[mod]materials/models/snarkpacks/p1_lights

and in your qc file, you would have the line;

$cdmaterials "models/snarkpacks/p1_lights"

you don't state the texture name, as that info gets embedded when you export to a .smd file.

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i eat paint

Gaaaaaaaaaaaah. This is so... confusing...

I've got a texture and I've got a model. Now what? Seriously...

I've applied the texture to the model, exported idle and reference SMDs, set up vmt/qc files, compiled the VTXes (map + normal map)... it's mostly the directory structure that's INSANELY CONFUSING. models/modelsrc/materials/materialsrc and where things go within those, relative paths, etc... GAH.

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-- midkay

I got it. I had to remove the models/snarkpacks/p1_lights prefixes from the model paths...

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-- midkay

I have to try that out!

So, anyone got some more in-game progress so far? :smile:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Mine works but I need to work on it and give it self-illumination, etc.

Maybe a shot later. :smile:

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-- midkay

Mine is having problems with a transparent texture closely behind an opaque texture. I might just fold and reform the whole thing.

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

Can someone post a working .smd so I can check if my exporter is
working right? I'm getting the pink checker board all the time,
although everything seems fine to me. All the paths .VMTs .QC... I want
to see if the problem is in the exporter.

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''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

Working .smd? Here's the source of my desk light, including .ms3d files, .smd's and .qc: cap_officelight_source.zip

Hope that helps some. For the materials, if you need those, they come with the model download itself, cap_officelight.zip

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Okay there's nothing wrong with the Blender exporter. The .SMDs are
just fine. After investing 2 more hours to this pink checker board
problem I got it fixed, but I still don't have a clue what was wrong.
Paths were right and I recompiled my test model for the tenth time and
model viewer still showed me the pink checker board. I closed it and
opened up Hammer to see if there's a problem with the .vtf file or the
.vmt and Hammer showed my test texture right. Then I fired up the
Modelviewer again and boom! The damn model suddenly worked... Now only
if I'd knew what I changed...



But thank you Captain P. :smile:

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''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

Well, I just got home safe and sound from Beijing, so it's about time I downloaded XSI on this computer and got crackin'

Anyone else still workin' on something (or planning to)?

I'm restructuring my lava lamp, I haven't been able to come up with a texture job that doesn't flicker.

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

It's taking me forever to get my auth. key for XSI.

I hope it comes reasonably soon, I'm sick of waiting.

Also, Stadric, that guy's reaction in that image is priceless.

Pfff finally. I think AOL filtered out my XSI email, so I had to reregister with my college email address to get the registration key.

I'll be modelling this light fixture for the challenge:



I'll be doing one light and three light versions. I also need how to figure out how to make an "on" skin and an "off" skin. As well as the metallic look.

I can make a tutorial on multiple skins if you guys want.
Tomorrow, it's too late today.(11:30)

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

I think it'd be useful. I'd use your tutorial at least :smile:

in short,

$texturegroup "skins"
{
{ "PRIMARY_TEXTURE.vmt" }
{ "REPLACEMENT_TEXTURE1.vmt" }
{ "REPLACEMENT_TEXTURE2.vmt" }
{ "REPLACEMENT_TEXTURE3.vmt" }
}

replace the CAPS with the actual texturenames.

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i eat paint

I'm quite occupied with my jobs and game project this week, but next week I'll get another model done. :smile:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Looks like Fishy beat me to it. Don't forget, that texture group line, and the accompanying lines have to come right after the "$body" line

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

10 days left. I still have my model left to do, and I know there are others with stuff planned. Lets get them all complete so I have enough for a real pack.

I'm trying to get that normal map plugin to work. The texturing is becoming almost the most difficult part!

I've hit a bump in the road. The texture is fine, and applied, and the model shows up and collides right, and all of that. The problem is the alpha in my texture is global; the entire prop in translucent.
This is what my alpha channel looks liks:

and this is what my .vmt looks like

"VertexLitGeneric"
{
"$Translucent" 1
"$baseTexture" "models\Snarkpacks\p1_lights\lavalamp"
"$model" 1
"$envmap" "env_cubemap"
"$surfaceprop" "glass"
"$envmapmask" "glass/glasswindowbreak070a_mask"
"$multipass" 1
"$nocull" 1
}

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

Stadric: so your Alpha channel isn't working? Have you saved the TGA as 32-bit, as I described above to somebody (was it you?)?

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-- midkay

Yeah I did, and the alpha is working, it's just that the whole model is transparent.

I got rid of nocull and multipass, since I don't need them.

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

I guess this will be ending soon. Here is my zip of the model I made.

http://www.slackiller.com/downloads/models/snarkpack_model.zip

the raw image


The finished model images

I'll try to crank something out in the next two days...

/me is a lazy procrastinator

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o

I have yet to fix my alpha woes, but I will host the model nonetheless if I can't fix it in time.

I can work without transparency.

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

Hi everyone,

I'm still in Bermuda, and will be here until September 3rd, but as soon as I get back I'll be sorting out the final models and zipping them all up into one pack. So, until I get back on September 3rd you can still post final images and a link to the model. If any of you need a download link you can send it to me via my email address (check the first page) and I'll host it.

I don't have time to catch up on anything else on the forums, but I just wanted to let you guys know that even when I was on vacation, I had you guys in mind :smile: <br style="color: white;">

My quest to make a collection of "slim" versions of common light fixtures turned out to be about 100 times more work than I expected. If the September 3 date is correct then I can still present one of the planned lights: A simple halogen spot light that can be stuck to almost any ceiling (or floor... or whatever).
Of course nice and small (8x8x1). Also rather low poly. You should be able to use dozens of these without any performance loss. There's even a low detail version (although the "high" detail version is very low-poly too) Some pics:




off-version:




I'll upload a zip hopefully today.

PS: Blender is great. I finally know all the basic stuff. Maybe I'll try a Blender/HL2 tutorial.

Alright, here's the zip-file.
I hope everything is in place. Chances are that's not the case as my Source engine modeling experience is rather zero-ish.

http://mitglied.lycos.de/reaper47/minispot.html

neat thread!

I'm just wondering about lights for hl1.. is there a easy way to make a light switch on, or off.
The only way I thought of was to have a sequence... mm, hard to explain..
the on texture would be additive, and what the sequence would do, is push the additive texture forward, and the non additive back... do you guys know what I mean? it would appear like its switching off and on because the sequence would only contain two frames. If anyone has a better idea, let me know.. thanks.

I must say that's quite off-topic... but there are on/off states for textures in HL1 (it's done via the texture name with an ending like _a _b or so, I can't remember) You should be able to use that for light textures, too, although its mainly meant for red/green states of buttons (func_button). Texlights wouldn't work then, I guess. You'd have to add a light entity manually and switch it on and off.

I didn't have my own computer last week so I guess I'll have to pass
this challenge. There's no way I can do an unwrap for all of the models
and paint it in time. So I guess I'm waiting for this months modeling
challenge then and see if I have better luck. Damn school always
interfering with ones life...

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''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

no, no.. I mean for a model... not for half-life levelediting.. lol I've been mapping for 4 years, soo.. lol.

Check my map.. you'll see then.. lol

Anywhos, ya, I was talking about a light model for half-life 1.

Sorry for the misunderstandings, unbreakable. I think brushes are fine for HL1 lights, so I didn't even think of using one for the HL1 engine. :heee:

________________________________

Pvt.Scythe, add your models to this section even if the snarkpack deadline has passed:

http://www.snarkpit.net/editing.php?game=HL2&page=files&type=models

I didn't even know Snarkpit had a proper modeling section until I searched this site a little closer for this competition. Would be nice to see the model section fill!

lol, yep, thats no problem. :smile:

well, anywhos.. I'm going to give it a try.. i don't know much about animating.. but it's time I learn :biggrin:

Sorry for the misunderstandings, unbreakable. I think brushes
are fine for HL1 lights, so I didn't even think of using one for the
HL1 engine. :heee:

________________________________

Pvt.Scythe, add your models to this section even if the snarkpack deadline has passed:

http://www.snarkpit.net/editing.php?game=HL2&page=files&type=models

I
didn't even know Snarkpit had a proper modeling section until I
searched this site a little closer for this competition. Would be nice
to see the model section fill!

Damn I didn't even know such section exisisted. :biggrin:

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''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires

Yeah -- all of you who did models, feel free to upload them individually to the website. In the meantime I'm going to be putting together a zip of all the lights.

I just got home from the airport, so give me a few minutes and I'll get it done.

Additionally, I'm slightly embarrassed that I didn't get my model done, so my apologies for that.

Anywho, off to download all the models!

As it stands I have submissions from: Stadric, Cap P, Fishy, Slackiller, and Reaper.

If anyone forgot to submit, please do so now.

I'll have the pack up for upload in the next day or two.

i remember someone mentioning you can translate autocad models into halflife models, but i don't remember the specifics. anyone can fill me in ? you still need XSI/maya/3dsmax in the process or not ? it's just that i'm learning Autodesk Inventor at work, and i find it really handy to work with.

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These words are my diaries screaming out loud

Auto Desk's AutoCad can output to 3DS Max. So, I imagine it can either be exported directly using a plug-in, or can be exported from Max.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Isn't the AutoCAD format quite a standard itself? I wouldn't be surpised if there was a built-in importer for AutoCAD files in most 3D programs (even the ones with a HL2 export plugin). Try browsing their sites.

There are import options for many formats in Blender for example. Is *.ac AutoCAD? Blender has it on its list.

autocad generally uses the DWG format for files.

But, seriously, it's just that: a format. I don't see why there isn't something that can't convert it, or at the least, read it.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I might not remember correctly, but we once worked with some engineers who used Inventor. The format they used was some obscure one that I only found one commercial convertor for. I also found some half-hidden specifications for the format, and it turned out to be one mess of different 'entity' types (lines, meshes, nurbs, whatever else). In the end I just remodelled their stuff.

Morale of the story: only start using such tools once you found a decent convertor. :wink:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

The custom content challenge is over, and Captain P, fishy, reaper47, Slackiller and Stadric all took the time to submit their work. Good job guys!

Read about the challenge and take a look at the WIP shots here.

Download temporarily removed to fix some problems.

Stay tuned for more!