XSI & SMD Animations (TF2 related)

EArkham

Heyas,

Lurked for a bit, finally getting around to posting.

Been working on some Team Fortress 2 items, and I'd like to modify some accompanying animations (or at least use the existing ones as a basis for making new ones). I use XSI Mod Tool 6. I'm having a lot of problems importing smd files for tweaking animations; the weightmaps and origins get really screwed up.

Milkshape seems to import/export them fine, but I really hate the Milkshape interface. It just doesn't seem as flexible or as intuitive as XSI. Plus after reading their forums, I have no interest in purchasing when my trial runs out.

So is there a way to import an smd or dmx.smd into XSI without it screwing things up massively?

As a side question, did those of you who submitted entries for the TF2 Polycount contest (or to the contribute site in general) bother with creating viewmodels? Looks like the latest TF2 stuff uses a set of arms + a c_weapon for the viewmodel, though I'm not sure if they also use the c_weapon for the world view as well.

Thanks,

Kep

EArkham

Found a partial solution: XSI seems to do fine with dotXSI files (weightmaps looked okay after a non-comprehensive test). I'll probably convert all the smd files of the TF2 characters & arms to dotXSI while my Milkshape trial is active.

Not a perfect solution, but it'll at least give me the ability to reference the existing weightmaps & animations.

Kep