Exporting Nightmare

Well, I've spent the last hour and a half trying to export something simple like a door from the Google Sketchup Warehouse, but I didn't get much luck. The first annoying annoying part is exporting the textures. These models use materials and textures that are unrecognized by hammer and hl2, so it becomes your responsibility to export those textures/materials into .tga files. Next you need to create a vmt file using notepad that's named after those textures and add texture information to them. Next you need to export your model into an smd and export again but this time with soften edges. This other one is a collision model and is necessary for compilation. Next you need to place these files in a specific folder, create a qc file using notepad with proper compilation instructions, then run studiomdl.exe with the qc file to compile it. I ran into errors along the way with the textures and didn't get the results I wanted. This process is too tedious to deal with and will be much more of a headache to export the kind of models we made this semester in Sketchup.

Video Rant

Nice Weekend

Finally finished setting up in west. I had my room reassigned into West and had to move everything from H-quad. Really enjoying it and getting better sleep, should help me with my studies. I've been doing a lot of thinking and self observation lately. I really notice how I take on different personalities and emotions when talking to certain people. I also noticed how much anxiety really controls me. It's also so easy to make excuses when I'm facing fear, but for some reason I make that excuse a truth to me and completely ignore the fact that I'm avoiding it. Social anxiety is such a problem and I'm interested in trying different things to overcome it. Many people say that the only way to conquer fear is to face, and I believe that. I'm trying to get myself out more and trying to meet more people. Sometimes it's a little hard to socialize here though, a lot of people just sit in their rooms with their doors closed. Really get's depressing sometimes, but that's why I need to get out and do something with myself. Didn't mean to ramble on, but it's something I've been thinking seriously about.

Hammer Time

Well, later today I will be testing out importing Sketchup models into hammer. Quite a complicated process which involves many steps, but if done correctly we can actually import our models fully textured. The tutorial seems pretty simple to follow and we will hopefully be able to find a quick way of accomplishing this. Wish I had more time to put work into this and my models, but this week has been pretty hectic. Between midterms, projects, programming assignments, and my new room assignment, I've had no time for anything. I have to move out of my building this weekend and that's going to be an annoying process. Well let's hope for the best and pray that we don't run into errors during the exporting process.

Texture/Hammer

So here is my second texture video. I placed my phone on top of an hour glass and recorded it. I increased the speed of the video to show the sand deplete quickly. I wish there was better lighting though… On a side note, I’ve been messing around with Sketchup’s vmf export tool. It really is very picky with what you can export, especially if you import custom models from the 3d Warehouse. Once again I want to explore use smd file types to import models into hammer, but it’s a pretty complex process. I just found a website that gives you a tutorial, so I’m going to have to follow it carefully and hope for the best. If I can successfully compile the model into an mdl file, then we shouldn’t have much issues using hammer to make our models playable in game. It’s a pretty annoying process though and requires many steps. Once we figure it out, it shouldn’t be too hard to do it again.