Help on HL Model Painting???

Snuffy

I'm looking for some help with modifying a HL model. I need someone to point me in the right direction as far as taking apart a .mdl and repainting it, then how to recompile it. I don't really want to get into custom modeling or animations, I just want to modify Barney for instance and repaint him green to make a flight suit and possibly cut and paste a BMP or JPG face on him. I'm in a group of military pilots that play HL for hours in between missions, and we thought our faces on the Models would be a blast. Thanks, Snuffy

KMan

http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/

I think the HL Model viewer will let you save out the texture pieces as bitmaps, then load your changed ones in and save them in it's place.
It's been a while since I have used it last, so my memory is a bit fuzzy.

mr.toast

d/l half-life model viewer, and theres an option to export the texture files, also make sure after editing the textures, that you save them as 8bit .bmps (or change to indexed mode in photoshop)and i also think that 512x512 is the highest res you can use in hl

KDR_11k

In theory you can feed HL any texture size (and polygon count if you know how to force it) but Valve gave HL a downsampler to maintain 3dfx compatibility, anything larger than 256x256 gets downsampled.

Snuffy

OK I got the BMP to Export to Paint. Forgive me for sounding ignorant but there must be a way to break up the pieces. For instance to work on an arm, or face. Also I would like to create a Fighter Pilot Helmet that we wear to put on the model. What Program would I use to shape the helmet?