TF2 - Polypack - mrscott
Edit 2: Turns out the deadline was midnight last night, not tonight, so I'm probably out of the running.
Edit: Done with just four hours left.
Original Post:
Holy crap there's like 3000 of these.
My plan is to make a few weapons for the engineer. The first is a ball-peen hammer which could replace either the wrench or the PDQ if it is indeed included in the engineer update. The second will be a nail gun (concept soon). I have some ideas for a shotgun replacement, but it may become a hat depending on time constraints.
Ball-peen Hammer Concept:
Edit: Done with just four hours left.
Original Post:
Holy crap there's like 3000 of these.
My plan is to make a few weapons for the engineer. The first is a ball-peen hammer which could replace either the wrench or the PDQ if it is indeed included in the engineer update. The second will be a nail gun (concept soon). I have some ideas for a shotgun replacement, but it may become a hat depending on time constraints.
Ball-peen Hammer Concept:
Replies
Converted to triangles (as seen above) it's around 800 polys. The handle should be cake.
1 quadrilateral polygon = 2 triangles. There shouldn't be any "conversion" as far as geometry goes. I really hope you didn't divide every square polygon into 2 polygons.
Could I see your wireframe?
It looks like he did that.
OP, do not do that.
The only experience I have with modeling is in Blender, so I'm not sure exactly how things are made in other programs. The hammer head was made in quadrilaterals, and then converted to triangles (which is more or less Ctrl-T) to get an idea of how it would look in the source engine (which I believe only renders triangles). If you look at the flatter part of the hammer head, you can see a diagonal line across each square; Blender automatically averages the orientation of each new triangle it creates from a quad, so I didn't manually change each quad to a tri.
As I said, I relatively new to this. I did not save the hammer in triangles. Will it work in source if I leave the model in quads, it or does it need to be tris?
I honestly didn't know that about Blender. I'm used to using Maya and 3DSMax. I guess I learned something new today. Just leave the model in quads. Quads automatically = tris. So I'm not sure if this conversion to triangles will do anything to the model when it's rendered in Source.
max ( i h8t it) has a useful function to "turn" triangles on quads that maya does not - good for low poly deformation editing not all models are triangulated the same.
valve leaves a lot of edge free surfaces because source is particulary good at optimized triangulation at render.
back on subject...
Mr scott- i believe you need a little more definition and character on the overall silhohete
it needs to read stronger and have weight ( and support its own weight and possible impact( the neck)
also have you considered using a wooden handle , it would add more textural interest
I've thought about using a wooden handle, but every time I've drawn it out it ends up looking too chunky. The handles on regular ball-peen hammers are pretty boring. I like the look of the oversized head on a spindly neck, however I am beefing up the size of the wooden part if the handle on my model.
I made the wooden part of the handle a bit bigger and added some nails holding together a big crack in it.
I've also finished a silhouette for the nail gun. This is a composite of parts from a few nail gun designs I have.
The nail gun is coming along nicely. Basically, I just need to come up with better designs for the cap, end of the handle, and safety (because they're either ugly or nonexistent at the moment), and finish some of the details around the trigger and firing mechanism. I might also need to tweak the proportions of the handle and main part of the gun.
The highlighted rectangle in the images is a piece of tape; the end cap is going to be missing it's bolts.
good luck ^^
EDIT: After reading this page of the Blender/TF2 thread on Facepunch (http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=734991&page=24), it seems that it isn't possible to use existing animations with a Blender to Source work flow, since the importer doesn't import the rotation of bones correctly. The other two free modeling packages that work for Source, KHED and Gmax, have similar problems. The solution to this appears to be to use Milkshape, or to rig and animate the model from scratch in Blender. You can download a trial for Milkshape here (http://chumbalum.swissquake.ch/ms3d/download.html) and watch a tutorial for making viewmodels with Milkshape on Youtube here (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBIQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D3CYXvdLoPtE&ei=UDIdTKveLuXunQektpTgBQ&usg=AFQjCNEleeajF2aRiI6-2ONihlputYa7SQ&sig2=IAchy_FW4dvIeZ_DudF21g).
This is my hammer in game, using Milkshape. I have to fix the .qc file, since the hammer texture won't show up and both hands use the glove texture for some reason. I also need to move the hammer, since the nails end up inside the hand.
It isn't necessary to remodel the items in Milkshape. If you export the weapon as a .smd using dvondrake's exporter from Blender, it can be imported into Milkshape. Also, if you plan on making completely new animations (which I need to do for the nail gun), it is possible to export them straight from Blender to Source. The problems arise when you try to use a new mesh with any of the existing animations.
If my items don't make it into the game, I'll make some animations for them and post them on fpsbanana or something. I'll also make that blender-to-source tutorial I was bragging about earlier.
I didn't have time to get all of them working in game. Since I'm using Blender, it's a bit of a process. I'll definitely update my post with some in-game shots as soon as I can get them working.