[Diaz]

You have to use the classic HUD for it to work. The enhanced one doesn't work as Fusion doesn't include any graphics to work with it.

As for Unreal / HL models, I haven't found a way to do the conversion. The only importer for Unreal's .3d format that I know of (for Milkshape) crashes when I try to import animations. Only static meshes seem to work.

There's also the fact that I don't know much about .md3 format. Doesn't it store vertex animations? How would you convert a model with skeletal animation into .md3?

[Jblade]

 Diaz, on 21 March 2012 - 10:50 AM, said:

There's also the fact that I don't know much about .md3 format. Doesn't it store vertex animations? How would you convert a model with skeletal animation into .md3?

Very clumsily. You can convert decompiled HL models 'easily' to MD3 enough but each animation frame is stored in vertex form (or whatever it's called) so the file size becomes large very quickly if you have a decent number of frames and/or it's a high-poly model.

For reference, the 1911 I used in Imagination World was a model put up for use on FPSBanana; I put it on some animations by Toadie who I spoke to often whilst I was around the Half-life community. All together the MDL is about 525kb; the size of the MD3 for the gun alone is about 6.5mb with animations for drawing, firing, reloading when empty and reloading when not (And that's not including the different hand models)

It's not vital right now since Polymer needs optimisations more before work on better model formats or whatever is added but a better model format should definitly be considering in the far future.

EDIT: And also things like attachments aren't possible, so if you wanted to have different gun models or equipment visible you'd have to make model variations for that. I tried to make the guns a seperate sprite that stayed with the player at all times but it looked terrible since it lagged behind the player at all times.

[Diaz]

Well... the enemies from HL that were used in Fusion don't have many animations and are very low poly, so I might give it a try, who knows!
How well do the resulting .md3's compress? At least if they do it well the result would be distributable...

[Kyanos]

 Diaz, on 21 March 2012 - 01:57 PM, said:

Well... the enemies from HL that were used in Fusion don't have many animations and are very low poly, so I might give it a try, who knows!
How well do the resulting .md3's compress? At least if they do it well the result would be distributable...

MD3s don't compress at all. Each frame just multiplies the file size. I just made a 135 frame 20MB animated tree
Pushing the limits of the blender export script I am working on. Major update within the week, the new script will obey object and armature transformations. (loc, rot, scale) Just doing a few more tests. Had quad 2 tri support but it was very buggy.

[Hendricks266]

 James, on 21 March 2012 - 01:23 PM, said:

It's not vital right now since Polymer needs optimisations more before work on better model formats or whatever is added but a better model format should definitly be considering in the far future.

I believe newer formats are planned for the future but the issue is that the support for skeletal animations goes beyond the file format, into rendering, otherwise performance would suffer (sort of like a decompressing a zip, having to render the skeletals to vertex).

[Diaz]

 Drek, on 21 March 2012 - 02:16 PM, said:

MD3s don't compress at all. Each frame just multiplies the file size. I just made a 135 frame 20MB animated tree
Pushing the limits of the blender export script I am working on. Major update within the week, the new script will obey object and armature transformations. (loc, rot, scale) Just doing a few more tests. Had quad 2 tri support but it was very buggy.

Oh, I was talking about compressing with an external program, like 7zip...

Got the HL soldier into max... now if I could export it without getting ugly errors ("not a one to one correspondance between texture vertices and true vertices")... lol, this error brings back old memories from the Q3 days.

[Kyanos]

Sorry, it's around %45 using 7zip on one quick test I did. From 5.8MB to 2.6MB.

[Mblackwell]

Doesn't the engine do smoothing/interpolation that should make using fewer frames not a terrible issue? Also you're not required to have all of the variations you are for a half-life model.

[Diaz]

It doesn't seem to be a problem for the models I'm using in Fusion. The HL soldiers in the TC only have 3 different animations (shooting, running and dying) and the poly count is very low. The resulting models are just 400K each.

Perhaps I'll try to model a 3D Cultist from Blood using this skeleton, who knows.

Now for bigger models reducing the number of keyframes seems to be a must...

[Diaz]

I decided to model a low poly Blood cultist... here's a work in progress with a placeholder skin:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Looks like it works well with the HL soldier skeleton!

[Hendricks266]

I'm such a tease.



(Keep in mind this is just a mockup. At the time of this post, no work has been done towards the coding for this feature, and GUI code is the last piece to be written.)

[Lunick]

At first I was like

But then I saw "Keep in mind this is just a mockup" and I

[Jimmy]

You're gonna get an STD teasing around town like this.

[Jblade]

Diaz, on 22 March 2012 - 01:41 PM, said:

I decided to model a low poly Blood cultist... here's a work in progress with a placeholder skin:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Looks like it works well with the HL soldier skeleton!

...That's amazing even with the placeholder skin. I never thought I'd see the day where somebody made a Blood cultist model, and yet here we are (Resident Evil 4's castle section was cool for more hooded cultist stuff though, you can run through with the Tommy gun and pretend you're playing a 3rd person blood)

[Mark]

That Blood cultist model needs a good Blood map re-make to hang around in.

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 

[Lunick]

There is too much teasing going on in this thread

[MusicallyInspired]

Lol smiley fail.

[Lunick]

MusicallyInspired, on 23 March 2012 - 10:55 PM, said:

Lol smiley fail.

I think I'll just cry.

[Tea Monster]

Diaz, have you tried Noesis to convert those models?

[Diaz]

Just tried it. Unfortunately it doesn't support Unreal's .3D

[Tea Monster]

Don't know if this is any good, but might be worth a shot.
http://www.gildor.or...projects/umodel

Or maybe this:
http://www.oldunreal...?num=1295475900

[Diaz]

Yup, that program works to extract the models from the original packages... into .3d vertex mesh format. The problem is I can't get those .3d files into any modeling program... only Milkshape does have an importer but it crashes when I try to import animations. t just imports the mesh... and I'm no good at animating myself

[Hank]

Diaz, on 24 March 2012 - 05:42 PM, said:

Yup, that program works to extract the models from the original packages... into .3d vertex mesh format. The problem is I can't get those .3d files into any modeling program... only Milkshape does have an importer but it crashes when I try to import animations. t just imports the mesh... and I'm no good at animating myself

What do you mean by modeling program? Have you tested Softimage and exporting/importing ? It is free. The other program would be LightWave , but cost a fortune. Not sure what your work flow is, but if this is for md3 models, both will work and the latter with your eyes closed.

[Gambini]

He needs a program able to open the format that that thing spits, regardless of havig to do some work on them or not. Softimage is subpar when it comes to porting models.

I´m not familiar with Unreal model format but these may be useful as they´re known by their wide range of format support:

http://www.misfitcod.../misfitmodel3d/

http://khed.glsl.ru/

[Diaz]

No luck with any of those programs.

The modeling package I use otherwise is 3DS Max 2011... I guess if I want to get the skaarj into the TC I'll have to re-animate it myself. I'll see...

[Daedolon]

James, on 23 March 2012 - 02:00 AM, said:

I never thought I'd see the day where somebody made a Blood cultist model

I thought Transfusion had one? Just saying.

[Hank]

Gambini, on 25 March 2012 - 12:01 AM, said:

He needs a program able to open the format that that thing spits, regardless of havig to do some work on them or not. Softimage is subpar when it comes to porting models.

I disagree. Softimage has (ancient) plug-ins to get old Unreal in and out as Quake 3, and they work. The only catch is that I am too lacy to make sprites out of the models to port them fully to EDuke32. Still, now that we have our own programmer making a plug-in for Blender, I prolly use that plugin for Blender from now on.

[Diaz]

Do you know where to get those plugins? I'm having a hard time finding them.

That would be awesome. Besides 3ds max, I also have Softimage Mod Tool installed in my computer.

By the way, the Blood cultist made it into the game... hopefully I'll be able to make a decent skin for it.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[Mark]

Looks like you're the new modeller in town. Ok guys, lets start the huge list of models he has to make for us now.

[Tea Monster]

That is looking pretty good already.

What is the file extension of the original file?
Does that Unreal tool kick out anything that Noesis can read? It would be a bit of a ball-ache, but it would get your model into Max if it went through Noesis and came out as an FBX or Collada file.