[Request] Help skinning buildables and animated weapon models

[Marxist]

Well I've read through the tutorial on skinning animated models and successfully created a couple of grenade models, but I'm interested in creating new shotgun models etc, and I'm not sure where to start. I'm also interested in learning how to reskin buildables and the like as well since they seem to use a different process or program to be converted. Any help or a point in the right direction is appreciated.

[stalas]

Sorry, just getting into the FF community so I gotta ask. By skinning do you mean setting vertex weights and what not such as in 3dsmax for animating a model or making the visible textures for the model.

[Crazycarl]

Skinning usually means just changing the texture.

Marxist: It would help us if you picked one project. Say what you are trying to create and what's giving you trouble.

All models go through pretty much the same process:

1. build a mesh
2. UV map (define how the texture will wrap around the model)
3. build a skeleton for animation
4. link the bones to the mesh
5. animate the bones
6. Create a material texture
7. Export and compile to a .mdl

You can find tutorials for any one of these steps for your favorite modeling program.

If you just want to change colors or something, you can just do step 6. If you want to make changes to an existing model, you can decompile it, make the changes and compile again.