Baal Garnaal, that's a very good point. Clever tweaking can often save a few polies. I'm always amazed by the guys on http://polycount.com/. They always manage to nail down a character perfectly with often fewer than 1k tris. Especially the (very) low poly Team Fortress 2 crew blow me away. Most members there are in the gaming industry at the large companies. If you need inspiration or reference pictures for low poly models you should defenitely check it out

I have some questions, I couldn't find a 'weapon editing' tutorial so don't get mad I want to create weapons and I assume it can be done the same way as player models -the animation.

Maya is my tool of choice, I also have a smd exporter used to hl2. My question is, what do I do with the textures, should I export them with the smd or should I save em separately?

If there is a specialized weapon tutorial, please tell me

I'm not a noob to modelling, but I don't know the least about exporting or animation.

I'd assume you'd do it the same way. Maybe you'd need to talk to Doc-Pyton.
http://forums.alientrap.local/profile.php? ... ile&u=1292

Cool, I just pm'd him, I really want to create some guns and my own textures as the ones in game are slightly low-rez.

I guess I'll acquire milkshape as I just read taht the maya hl2 exporter doesn't work for nexuiz.

Nevertheless, I have a question about the exporting part:

"4. Then export your textures as .tga
- You need to export as .smd because the .smd gets converted into a .zym."

Does this mean that:
1. The texture applied to a model is exported with the smd? or...
2. The texture has to be exported separately as a smd? (how?) or...
3. You simply export the texture from photoshop as a tga?

1 + 2... I think. I'm not 100% sure.

Hello,

i tried making a player model for Nexuiz but ran into some problems.I exported the smd with blender and compiled the model. The problem is that it has no animations or textures.
The animations are stored in the .zym file or not? and i placed the textures in both the model folder and i made a textures folder.
I'm hoping someone can help me out.

Here's a screenshot of the problem.

First of all:
Lol

Finally:
I think your problem may be your animation and your model is on the wrong angle. Flip it.

BTW: The model looks nice.

movento wrote:Hello,

Hi

movento wrote:The animations are stored in the .zym file or not?

a program called zmodel compiles a mesh smd and several animation smds into a single zym file. texture names are relative to the nexuiz/data folder.

@ shaggy: i exported the model the same direction as the skleleton was.

today i tried to export the smd using maya but when i tried to compile it the zymcompiler gave me a "error processing script"

also,in blender i sometimes get an error that says "cannot multi-fold meshes (edges used by more then 2 faces)
does this have something to do with alpha planes?

no it has nothing to do with if the texture has an alpha channel or not.
The blender smd export script calculates smoothing groups for you but if an edge has 3 or more faces this is a mathematical paradox so the script crashes. I haven't looked into the code enough to disable this calculation (it isn't critical) but all you have to do is find and delete any edge with 3 faces or more. Multifolds are USUALLY the result of a bad 'merge points' or 'add face'. It is hard to explain in practical terms what a multifold is but with humanoids you are usually looking for a flap or polygon, of zero thickness, attached to a surface. Many times if a well made model is giving a multifold error make sure no polygons cut across the inside of it.

To help you visualise an edge with 3 faces, imagine you made a simple Y shape out of 3 edges/lines and 4 vertices. if you extrude this shape the edges/line extruded out of the middle point is attached to 3 faces simultaneously and, hence, multifold.

Hope it helps.

thanks for explaining that. The model still has no textures or animations ingame though.
I have to export the model as a static mesh or not? When i try to export as an animation sequence i get a python scrypt errror,even though i have python installed

I would really like to get this working,so any help is welcome.

I wish I had the time to explain in detail but i don't so in bullet points this is what U gotta do in blender to fix animations and texture:
1. Append the armature from the Pyria template to your blender file and apply it (as a modifier) to your mesh
2. Edit the armature (don't add or delete bones) to fit your mesh and weight-paint as necessary. Only focus on the major bones.
3. Rename the applied material to match your texture, e.g. coolmarine.jpg.
4. Export the static mesh OVERWRITING the pyria.smd file in the "new animations" folder.
5. Execute the compile-zym.bat file in the "new animations" folder and pyria.zym should appear. Rename as necessary and place in the Nexuiz\data\models\player\ folder.

Bon chance!
P.S. the animations are stored in the other smd files in the "new animations" folder so your soldier will run like a girl.

I had a similr problem when I exported a test model. The gun is in the right place, and if it animates properly when running, then the problem is the model isnt attached to the skeleton properly. Make sure it is weighted properly in the mesh.smd file. The other .smd files are the animations only. Create a seperate folder for you model in the data/model/players folder, add the mesh.smd, and the other animation .smd files in there. Copy the compilation file from the source skeleton folder to your model folder. Make sure you change the names in that file to match your model. Then complie it with the .zym compiler. The textures go in the data/textures/ folder.

KadaverJack wrote:zmodel is open source and should work on pretty much any os that has a c compiler:
http://svn.icculus.org/twilight/trunk/zmodel/

thanks for the link. i downloaded the code and the makefile and it built with a simple make command on ubuntu. does the zyms without any problems.

From where i can download the finished playermodels

Is there any way I can get away without making all the animations? I sorta don't understand how to export the animations, so I want to cut down on as much work as I can. Is there a way I can use one animation for all of them? (Yes, I know that will look really weird, I don't care)

I've never made a functional .zym player model, but I understand that you can copy the skeleton of an existing player model, and use those animations (I think).

The current animations aren't very satisfying...

Hello, it's me again.
Some days i ago i gave the exporting another shot,and now the animations work(i must've rigged it terrible though lol. I guess i can fix that if i learn how to rig better)
My problem is that it has no textures, i assigned the diffuse,specular and normal map in blender and pasted the textures in the data/textures folder. It could be because i assigned them wrong in blender,the material editor is really confusing for me.
Here's a picture of my model ingame(yes it looks terrible)

movento-
i'm a blender user too and i've done some character modelling so i should be able to help you out. might be worth starting a new thread though.

ihsan wrote:First install the nexuiz-compatible SMD export script into blender. Just copy nex_smd_mesh_export.py and import_static_smd.py into your blender/scripts directory.

Thank you so much for yur whole explanation and yur .zip file, I almost a model.....
But I'm stuck
Sorry but I just [size=0][size=18]can't find blender/scrip[/size]ts folder[/size] for the life of me.
I have blender 2.47 i think and I have Mac OS X tiger, and am trying to character model.

I have read every thread on blender exporting/importing for nexuiz and they all really just talk about some old lost broken script or something for the .smd file and nothing has an actual link before I found your post.
It took me forever to get this far but I have no clue what to try now.
I think there might be a need for a clearer path for getting blender into Nexuiz.

There will never be one if modelers don't help us making one.

http://emptyset.endoftheinternet.org/~r ... _export.py

is my version of the HL2 SMD export script, and it should work for Nexuiz. However, you need zmodel installed in your PATH (on OS X, you have to compile zmodel and put it in /usr/local/bin).

1. Download and install Xcode (somewhere on the Apple site)
2. Get zmodel.c and makefile from http://svn.icculus.org/twilight/trunk/zmodel/, and run "make" in that directory (using Terminal.app).
3. Do "sudo mv zmodel /usr/local/bin/"
4. (enter password)

Then move hl2_smd_mesh_export.py to whereever OS X Blender expects its scripts in.

For using that script, you have to know:

- The script exports a SINGLE mesh with an attached armature. If you have multiple meshes, JOIN (J key) them first. You can't have multiple armatures.
- The script creates the .zym file and a directory named like your model with SMD files. The .zym file can be used as Nexuiz player model. In case you need to edit something in the control file, the .txt file is included too, and you can run zmodel on it (from Terminal.app, again).
- The actions for the model animations have to be named like follows (without the stuff in the parentheses):
0-die1-20n (0.5 seconds)
1-die2-20n (0.5 seconds)
2-draw-20n (0.35 seconds)
3-duck-20n (any duration, but should be instant)
4-duckwalk-20 (any duration)
5-duckjump-20 (any duration, but should be instant)
6-duckidle-20 (any duration)
7-idle-20 (any duration)
8-jump-20n (any duration, but should be instant)
9-pain1-20n (2 seconds)
10-pain2-20n (2 seconds)
11-shoot-20n (0.2 second recommended, but cut off when shooting anim is over)
12-taunt-20n (unused by the code, 1 second allocated)
13-run-20 (any duration)
14-runbackwards-20 (any duration)
15-strafeleft-20 (any duration)
16-straferight-20 (any duration)
17-dead1-20 (must be identical to the last frame of die1)
18-dead2-20 (must be identical to the last frame of die2)
19-forwardright-20 (any duration)
20-forwardleft-20 (any duration)
21-backright-20 (any duration)
22-backleft-20 (any duration)

That is because the export script sorts them by the number in front, and the number at the end is the frame rate (you may change that to your preferred frame rate). Currently, the frame rate set globally in blender is ignored (because I have no idea how to get that in the export script API). The "n" means "not looped".

Hello, I have a question regarding something about this and Blender if I may ask; I opened the default pyria model in Blender and want to edit it, but whenever I attempt to enter Edit Mode to edit the vertexes only the character changes position and I want to edit it over the default T-pose. How do I fix that? I do know a few basics about the modeling and since that tutorial mentioned in the first post is big I don't know where in it to go for this info or if I find the answer in it so I thought to ask here instead. This is a screenshot of my problem;



The first shot to the left is in Object Mode. The character is in the pose I want... the "T pose". But I want to enter Edit Mode to edit the verticles, the character switches to the walking pos and I want it to keep the T pose in Edit Mode as well. Any way to fix that in Blender? Thanks and sorry if that was a newbish question

in the modifier stak there is an "apply modifier in editmode" button (it looks like the editmode screen). Make sure it is on for the armature ant you can pose and edit without any confusion.

Thank you, ihsan. I got further with my model today but I still need help with one more thing; It seems that I managed to bust a hole in my model by mistake, and now my character model is missing a surface between 3 vertexes and can be seen into that way. How do you select 3 or move vertexes and fill a surface between them in case something happened and a surface between vertexes got deleted? Also will the texture map correctly on that face again once it's redone?

To answer your question just select 3 or more vertices and press the f key. You will need to assign UV coordinates for texturing and may have to flip the normal.

in general pressing the space bar brings up context menus with most of the stuff you'd need to do. You should try that before posting.

So what's happened to all these models? I've seen many people post pics of a model they're working on - but I haven't seen a finished product. Nexuiz really needs some new models/modellers, so please continue to work on these...

The same thing which has happened with all previous models (players or weapons). Supposedly lying somewhere unfinished or unreleased.

So I have been lurking on the Nexuiz scene for only a couple of weeks now, but I have been noodling around with the idea of adding playermodels, but I need some clarification on the SMD export step. Particularly, bones seem to be troublesome. I am using Maya 7.0 and the Valve SMD plugin (trying Prall too). I have a working playermodel in nexuiz, but right now it is just moving around in all it's t-pose glory since I can't get bones to export properly. So I guess my questions are as follows.

Given the two Maya exporters, Prall or Valve, which would be better to use? I haven't had luck with either regarding bones/weighting.

Does Nexuiz use a standardized bone naming convention or do I have some room there?

Should I use Rigid binding on my skeleton or Smooth Bind with Max influences set to 1 (essentially 100% weighting per vertex)? I have tried both with no luck.

I noticed that when I am exporting my mesh the weighting isn't getting caught. My geometry is all assigned as a child to the mesh and not the bones. So all the triangles in the geometry block of the SMD are assigned the handle of the mesh instead of their corresponding bones.

I tried importing some SMDs from the actual playermodel's and haven't been able to reproduce the proper skinning out of Maya, even with the exact model and mesh.

This probably doesn't completely capture the essence of my problem, but if anyone has had more success (or even failures as well) I would be grateful for some input on exporting for SMD.

Yes to Max influences set to 1

As you probably know it's zmodel which combines the SMD mesh files with a standardised list of SMD animation files to make the nexuiz ZYM file. If your character is constantly in the T pose it probably means that the bones in the animation SMDs and mesh SMD don't match (so all polys are joined to the first bone). The good thing about SMD files is they are text so you can pop it into notepad, gedit or vi and see what is going on.

I use blender myself so i can't give you maya-specific help.