Its it just me ...

[Andy]

... or are we, in terms of modeling for halflife, screwed?

I mean, lets face it, the models are way in advance of anything we've seen in game before (imho), and unless there's something really clever that they've done to make simple stuff look really good, I have a feeling that the modelers out there will be in for some fun. If the E3 vid is anything to judge from, the characters look goes far beyond any abilities required to model for HL 1, we're talking Shrek and Final Fantasy here. (Well, not quite but you get the point).

And thats not all!
Now there are facial muscles to think about, not to mention eyes. I really hope that they include some in depth tutorials with any HL2 SDK, along with (and this would be really nice), some generic models. Otherwise, I have a feeling that all we'll see for a while will be HL1 quality, or limited in terms of how modders can reuse existing HL2 models.

 

[Yakuza]

You would be supprised at how a bump-map texture can improve the quality of a lower poly model.

Anyways I got an e-mail from Chris at Valve regarding modeling info. This is what he had to say:

Hi Shawn,

We aren't quite prepared to talk about the specifics yet, but yes, you will
be able to get your own models and animations into the game. Mod creation
for Half-Life 2 will be just as open as for Half-Life 1, even more so, in
many areas.

Chris.

-----Original Message-----
From: Shawn Sullivan [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, June 02, 2003 8:02 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Quick Question regarding Modeling possibilities for Half-Life 2
mods.


Several of us perspective "mod" designers are wondering, what role will we
be able to play as far as modeling our own characters and animations. I am
aware you guys are use XSI for all of your models and animations, so my
question is:

will it be possible for people to get their own models and animations into
the game?
If so what programs might we be looking at that will give us this
capability?

 

[Andy]

Thats quite cool. But what about facial expressions and so on? It was bad enough doing bones and skeletons, now we gotta do muscles too?!

Btw, I don't see why they won't talk about stuff like editing and Hammer. Its not like its going to spoil the game, and it will prevent people like us from blindly speculating and going into it in a couple of months time with assumptions. Surely better to say, "in Hammer you will be able to do this", "physics assignment works like this", "texturing follows this set of rules", and let us get on with our fantasising. If anything it will make people dribble than spoil it for them.

I mean do we really have to result to this!

http://www.joshbeeler.com/ramses/vhe2.html