KevinKraeer
05-15-2011, 11:38 PM
Hi everyone. I'm a maya guy switching to XSI (Mod Tool) to do some work on a Half-Life 2 mod. For viewmodel weapons, I do my modeling and texturing in Maya, then use Crosswalk to port stuff over to XSI (dotXSI format).
In Maya I delete history, and freeze transforms; then I have a clean mesh for any piece that moves - clip, trigger, slide, and main gunbody, for example. Right now I'm working on a rifle, which I can export and bring into XSI without any trouble. Textures and stuff look great, and the modeling work - which includes a combination of hard and soft edges - is preserved perfectly.
For viewmodel guns to work in HL2, the gun and the arms need to be one mesh. I've worked out all the particulars of skinning, parenting to the hand, getting it into the game, etc. My problem is that when I'm in XSI and I use Poly Mesh > Merge to combine the gun pieces, the nice mix of hard/soft edges on my gun is lost. Instead, the gun seems to be all "Soft" edges. I found a couple of things around here and elsewhere about setting the "Tolerance" to 0 during the merge, or using "Freeze M"(?), but I don't think I'm using either solution correctly.
If you have an idea what I could be doing wrong I would greatly appreciate your advice! Thanks in advance for your help.
P.S. - I am totally cool with re-softening/hardening edges on an edge-by-edge basis if that's what it takes, just not sure which tool to use.
In Maya I delete history, and freeze transforms; then I have a clean mesh for any piece that moves - clip, trigger, slide, and main gunbody, for example. Right now I'm working on a rifle, which I can export and bring into XSI without any trouble. Textures and stuff look great, and the modeling work - which includes a combination of hard and soft edges - is preserved perfectly.
For viewmodel guns to work in HL2, the gun and the arms need to be one mesh. I've worked out all the particulars of skinning, parenting to the hand, getting it into the game, etc. My problem is that when I'm in XSI and I use Poly Mesh > Merge to combine the gun pieces, the nice mix of hard/soft edges on my gun is lost. Instead, the gun seems to be all "Soft" edges. I found a couple of things around here and elsewhere about setting the "Tolerance" to 0 during the merge, or using "Freeze M"(?), but I don't think I'm using either solution correctly.
If you have an idea what I could be doing wrong I would greatly appreciate your advice! Thanks in advance for your help.
P.S. - I am totally cool with re-softening/hardening edges on an edge-by-edge basis if that's what it takes, just not sure which tool to use.