Agricultural tool models & more

[Korpisoturi]

Here's some models I've made today and yesterday. I've never made textures to models before, but I think those look quite good.

Give some feedback about the models and skins if you will.


A scythe and an axe.


Hammer and a sicle.


My knife.


A workhelmet, I finally got the XSI exporting tool to work...


An armchair. The textures I made for it were horrible.

 

[Stertman]

Pretty nice..
is there any good tutorials on how to get models into hl2/hammer and use them as props? physics and statics

 

[SimonomiS]

You see those blue boxes around the Region Tool? Theres one on the right, slightly longer than the others, put your cursor over it and it turns into a slider. Turn it all the way up.

Anti-aliasing is your friend.

I can't see the helmet or armchair though. All looks quite good though. :thumbs:

 

[Que-Ever]

"oh, it's a scythe." </blackadder>

Nice models. The helmet looks particularly not-out-of-place.

 

[Afterburn3r]

the only and sole downfall of your models is the textures which are too low-res in my opinion and turned out blurry and muddy... but otherwise the models themselves are good

 

[mindless_moder]

i agree the texturing needs a fair bit of work . it looks like plain grey with brown + smudge too ..yous hould look up soime pictures of actual rust.

 

[Korpisoturi]

it looks like plain grey with brown + smudge too

Well.. It is just plain grey with brown smudge. That's because I don't know (yet) how to make it look more like real rust. Btw, how big should the textures be? I use 512x512 on those ones and they're meant to be just phys props, not weapons.

Thanks simonomis, I've always wondered how to make the regional render sharper. Is there a way to make the rendered area bigger? I'll replace the pictures with sharper ones when I get home.

Stertman, write this to google: XSI compiling smd

 

[mindless_moder]

512 textures are fine for props that are this small ..as for texturing you should check some good tutorials .
heres a good one which teaches a lot of theory its about 3 pages
http://www.planetquake.com/skindom/features/metaltut/index.shtml
http://www.planetquake.com/skindom/tutorials/
here are some video tutorials
http://www.planetquake.com/polycount/resources/general/video_tutorials/video-tut-list.shtml

 

[Korpisoturi]

Thanks for the tutorials mindless.

I tried to export the models to hl2 with the hl2 Compile tool I had used before to export the helmet, and the compiling goes fine until I see the result in the model viewer: the models are all flattened vertically and that's definately not what I want. This is the scythe:


Can someone explain?

 

[mindless_moder]

did u give it a bone ?

 

[Kamikazie]

hmm the second one looks fimilar

SOVIET RUSSIA!

 

[Korpisoturi]

Yeah, the kgb tortured me and forced me to put the hammer and the sicle together like that.

did u give it a bone ?

Um.. No I didn't. I've read somewhere that the XSI automatically adds a bone to the model when I export it to .smd and I have no idea how to add bones.

 

[simon]

reset the xforms (thats how its done in 3DSmax) this will solve your problem i think

 

[Korpisoturi]

Well I'm using XSI and I still haven't found out what's wrong. I've tried everything, but nothing seems to work. It seems that the problem is not with the compiling tool, because I've also tried compiling the model with the studiomdl.exe, but the model still appears flattened.

 

[mindless_moder]

you should try rigging it to a single bone that might help if that doesnt reimport the smd that u exported and check the weights on the bones that xsi made.

 

[Korpisoturi]

Nope, nothing works.

It seems that the XSI doesn't automatically add bones to the models, because when I import a model I've just exported, it doesn't have a bone and it is flattened like the scythe.

I've tried adding bones to the models, but it does nothing. I'm, however, not sure if I'm making it right. I'll explain how I add the bones when I get home, plz tell me if I'm doing something wrong.

 

[Korpisoturi]

So, here's what I do:
1. Skeleton->Draw 2d chain (in the vertical animation toolbox)
2. I make the bone by clicking two times (in diffrent places of course) on the model in the right view window
3. Now I have a root, a bone and an eff
4. I select all the vertices in my model and click Envelope->Set envelope (in the vertical animation toolbox), then select the bone between the root and the eff and press the right mouse button
5. A "Envelope_weights : Automatic Envelope Assignment"-window appears. It says: "Number of skeleton objects: 2" and "Assigment method: Distance-based" I change nothing in it and close the window.
6. I can now see the vertices even if I'm in object-mode. The bone has turned from green to blue and the eff has turned from green to yellow
7. I deselect everything and then choose the model in object mode
8. ValveSource->Export SMD... I name the model modelname_ref.smd (ie. viikate_ref) and leave all the options selected and click ok

9. When I import the model back it's all screwed up :frown:

 

[Cunbelin]

Two things to try, select all objects and hit the center button on the upper right, then set the transforms to all 1 for scale, and all zero for translation and rotation. Also make sure you have applied UV coordinates to all objects.

 

[crackhead]

xsi does automaticly add bones when you export to an smd file. and you are assigning the bone correctly. i have no idea why it is screwing up. are you compiling them as static props?

 

[Korpisoturi]

Wohoo, it works! Thanks Cunbelin.

I set all the transforms to 1 in center mode. Only visible thing that followed was that the projection objects (the green wireframe boxes etc. that you use to project textures) changed size, but when I exported the model, it worked.

xsi does automaticly add bones when you export to an smd file. and you are assigning the bone correctly. i have no idea why it is screwing up. are you compiling them as static props?

It seems that the problem was not with the bones or compiling afterall. And it really seems that the XSI does not add bones, because I've exported and imported the models countless times and there's no bone or even a null. I'll post some ingame pics of the models sometime soon, though I'll have to consentrate on graduating in listening comprehension in english and swedish next week..

 

[Cunbelin]

The issue with centers has to do with the fact that local transforms are not exported, when you set the transforms back to their base values you got rid of any local transformations.

 

[Korpisoturi]

Well here they are, finally..

 

[Angry Lawyer]

I love the miner's helmet. It's pretty high on my AWESOME scale.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[SimonomiS]

Looks good, would've been better if you didn't shrink the image. (I assume you did, or had really low AA.)

 

[Korpisoturi]

Thanks Lawyer. What's funny is that I actually got the idea of making a miners helmet from a Zombie Master-discussion where someone suggested miner-zombies.
Simonomis, the reason why the image's so small is that I have to keep the hl2dm resolution at 800x600 because it lags like hell if the res is any larger.. Well anyway I took another pic with greater resolution and all:

The knife is also there now and I included the miners helmet too because so many ppl seem to like it.

 

[crackhead]

i dont meen to argue but when i export a model to an smd on xsi mod tool 4.2 it automaticly adds a bone and doesnt cause any problems.