I grabbed Blender for the sole sake of exporting SMDs so I could get models into HL2. But... it doesn't appear to work. I get an error saying: And I'm pretty dang sure that a mesh was, in fact, selected. I don't know what an armature is. Similarly, Maya is giving me just as much trouble. When I try to export an SMD using…
Try Dragonlord's SMD exporter. He knows what he's doing and doesn't develop it blindly. No skeleton/animation support yet though Also, make sure EVERY vert has a valid bind to a valid bone, if there's any unbound it will panic. This is true for every SMD exporter.
I love Blender. However, the SMD format has always been a bit tricky. I'd strongly recommend using the officially supported XSI mod tool for exporting SMDs. It's free to download, it comes with skeleton templates and a lot of character-specific tools, and it uses the same SMD exporter that Valve uses.
I've used MAX for exporting SMD files many times and haven't had the issue. Any chance I can see your max file? I think Cheap might be onto something with the vertex weighting, though max should assign weights to all the verts :\ EDIT: Yes, you need at least one bone to export and you must weight your model to it as well…
So I have to have a bone in the first place!? :| I hadn't any clue. Does the Phys model need a separate bone, or can it share the same bone as the primary mesh? Thanks for your help, I had no idea that the models required a bone, there was no information like that anywhere. I'll give Dragonlord's SMD exporter a try.