So I’ve been getting the urge to mess around with team fortress two and make my own models for the different characters. Going into it I can see it becoming a really big venture if I want to make everything right but my first steps are trying to get the files usable for blender to mess with.
First off Valve likes to compress their files twice over. So after using GCF Scape to decompile the player folder in the team fortress 2 content f\models folder I took the scout.mdl file and used Cannon Fodder’s MDL decompiler (all of this is easily googable) to get at the .smd and .dmx files for the scout. Finally… one last step. Now I just needed to find a good importer/exporter python script for SMD file types. Found this one:
http://www.3d2toy.com/downloader.php?ID=47
and this one:
http://folk.uio.no/jonmd/blender/smdimport/
I put both of these scripts into my blender.blender\scripts folder. I also made sure that python works by downloading 2.5 and also doing the whole environment variables step which you have to do with your computer (go to my computer, right click and select properties, then go to advance tab, click environment variables button on the bottom, and add PYTHONPATH for the name and this code bellow that:
C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\scripts\bpymodules )
So python works properly with blender. But I ran into a snag while trying to use the scripts. The first one didn’t work and came up with this error:
ImportError: No module named meshtools
So I went into the script code and erased meshtools from the line:
import Blender, meshtools, math, time
I was actually able to select my file before another error came up saying:
AttributeError: type object “Bone” has no attribute “New”
So I gave up on the 3d2toy one and went to the other script. Problem was I got the same error:
Traceback <most recent call last>:
file “<string>”, line 1, in <module>
file “C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender.blender\scripts\HL2_SMD_Import er_For_Blender\import_static_smd.py” line 81, in <module>
import Blender, meshtools, bpy, math, time
ImportError: No module named meshtools
So now I’m stuck… I don’t know how to access the .smd for blender to use and I have a fear it might be on my computer’s end (or at least how I got python set up with blender).
any one can help? Once I get this process down and make it work I’ll hopefully have the erge to make modifcations to all the character models with some sort of theme to it.
I have to say though… valve’s games are one of the harder to modify. Well they give you those handy editor tools but by mod I mean take their models and modify them and put them back into the game for use. Games like oblivion are so much easier. One importer/exporter one place to put it all. And one mod file extension to worry about (which simply calls the mod to play in the game).
sigh but I’m simply a modiler and animator… don’t know much script beyond Blitz Basic
(they are in same package)