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A basic guide to posing guys and attaching guns. scudzilla not included.

1. Introduction / Decompiling

Update: The tut isn't 100% up to date with the newest version of CS and Milkshape, but I'm keeping it up here as a lot of the things it says are good to think about when you're making any piece of art with Milkshape.

Clarification: I've been getting some mail from people who expected something else out of this tutorial, so let me clear things up:

This tutorial DOES NOT show you how to make replacement models.

This tutorial DOES show you how to pose guys and attach guns and stuff to them so that you can make really spiffy CS-Art!

On with the show...

Introduction

First things first, straight from the MilkShape 3D web page:

MilkShape 3D is a lowcount polygon modeler, which is capable of importing and exporting various (game) file formats. Currently there is support for Half-Life models, Quake2 models, Quake III Arena models, Unreal/UT models and Genesis 3D models.

This tutorial was written with the intention of improving your abilitiy to make CS-Art. I'm not going to show you how to model a scudzilla with testicles of fury or make unique weapon replacement models either. There's already plenty of sites out there with that kind of information. Next to the titles of some sections you'll notice an "(avi)" link. This means there's a movie available for that particular section. All movies are zipped and under a meg so give em a try!

If you haven't already, download the latest version of MilkShape now. This tutorial assumes you're using version 1.5.7 (the latest as of this writing). You might want to check out the documentation and play around with MilkShape for a few minutes before continuing to the next section.

Decompiling

Whichever model you're looking to decompile you will now find it within your /cstrike/models/ folder, be it in the /weapons, or /player folders.

It's best to create a folder for your project and keep a copy of all your parts (guns, players, more guns) in folder's within that. The reason for this is that after you decompile a model, a whole bunch of of .smd files are dumped into whatever folder the model was in and it's easy to lose track of things. For this tutorial, I am using p_p228.mdl and terror.mdl. So my project folder looks like this:

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|

+-- Tutorial

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+-- P228 Model

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+-- Terrorist Model

The p_p228.mdl file goes in the P228 Model folder and the terror.mdl goes in the Terrorist Model folder. So let's go into Milkshape and decompile these suckers. First, make sure you have Show Message Window and Show Keyframer checked in the Window menu.

Now click Tools, Half-Life, Decompile Normal HL MDL File. Go to the project folder and select p_p228.mdl. Now click Open. A dialog box will pop up. Check the first, third and fourth boxes only. If you choose to decompile the sequence .smd files then you will be stuck with all the bases for the in game animations. And we don't want all those poking around and creating more confusion. You'll notice in the message window at the bottom that some .smd files were written to disk. Repeat the same procedure for the terror.mdl.

Next: Importing and Setting Up

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Importing and Setting Up

Now we want to open up the player model and then give him a handgun. Click File, Import, Half-Life SMD. Go to the Terrorist Model folder. There are now a few files in the folder. The file we're looking for is terror.smd (the correct reference .smd is named in the same vein as the model itself). This has all the polygons and basic skeleton. So after opening that file a dialog box will pop up. Once again, make sure everything is checked and click ok. After a few hard drive turns, you should have a terrorist chillin like below.

Next, import the reference_p228.smd the same way you would with a player model EXCEPT when the SMD Import dialog box pops up, make sure Triangles is the only thing selected. This is very important! So important that to the right is a screenshot to avoid any confusion:

Before we continue, let's hide some parts of the terrorist to make it easier to work with the gun and the hand. Click on the Groups tab at the upper right. Select holster-1, Click Hide. Repeat this to hide everything except terror_arms and w_p228. You should have something that looks like this:

I chose the P228 for this tutorial because notice that the gun is pitch black. This happens to a few of the guns because I believe Gooseman accidently inverted them. The way to fix this is by mirroring the gun. While still in the Groups tab, click on w_p228 from the list, and click on Select. The gun should highlight red on the 2d windows. Click on Vertex from the top menu, then Mirror Left

The gun moves over a bit, but at least it looks proper. Let's move the gun back over to the right hand and do some positioning. Click on the Model tab. Click on Move. You can either drag the gun with your mouse or type in a numeric amount. After its in position, click the Rotate button in the Model tab to the right. Adjust the gun so it lines up correctly (don't worry about the hand yet) and looks something like this:

Next: Attaching and Posing

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Attaching Objects and Posing

It's time to attach the gun to the terrorist's hand. Go to the Joints tab. Select Bip01 R Hand. Click SelAssigned. Note how a bunch of red dots appear on the hand in the 2d windows. Now go to the Groups tab. Click on w_p228 from the list and click on Select. Note how the gun highlights red along with the hand dots. Go back to the Joints tab. Click assign. Make sure it worked by clicking SelAssigned again. Now there should be red dots around the gun as well as the hand.

Posing time. Go to the Model tab and unhide the parts from earlier (just select an item and click Hide again). In the Model tab, make sure Rotate is selected. Click that lil Anim button in the bottom right corner. Go to the Joints tab. Select Bip01 R Arm1 and click and drag in the upper right 2d window until he's pointing his gun forward. Now tweak with the Bip01 R Finger0 and Bip01 R Finger1 until it looks like he's gripping the gun. Keep in mind that the different 2d windows let you rotate along different axis.

The only thing left to do is adjust the other bones until you finish the pose. Easier said then done however. You need only select specific limbs and other body parts to do so. As a tip, rotate is the only tool you should use to manipulate limbs while move should only be used if you wish to relocate the whole player model during drastic posings. Below is the finished product, a classic pose:

Next: Compiling and Beyond MilkShape

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Compiling

For use in QSB (Quake Scene Builder) or a model viewer: Click Animate, Set Keyframe. Then move the slider at the bottom all the way to the right. Click Animate, Set Keyframe again. Click File, Export, Half-Life SMD. Select template_terror.smd (you may want to back it up first). When asked, choose Reference and click ok. Export again, select idle.smd this time (again, backing up is a good idea). When asked, choose Sequence and click ok. Adding the gun to the terrorist also meant adding an additional skin. Go into your folder with the P228 and copy the .bmp to the folder with the terrorist. Go back to MilkShape. Click Tools, Half-Life, Compile QC File and select the terror.qc. Watch the message window and make sure there aren't any errors. Your hard drive will spin for a bit and then you can grab the new .mdl file out of that folder.

Note: If you want to use the model in-game, there's a slightly different technique required. I'll talk about that in a future update.

For Use in 3D Studio Max: please refer yourself to the tutorial written by Foxtrot-Niner (here)

What's Next?

From here you can go and use other programs to enhance the work you've done in MilkShape. I'll be writing tutorials for QSB and Photoshop in the future that pick up where this tutorial has left off. Think of it as a three-part series, like Back to the Future, but not. Gimme some feedback or post your comments in the My forum because I'm gonna be doing this for awhile and would like to know what you guys think. Come on, don't be scared. All the cool kids are doing it.

- Daemonite / with minor updates done by fuddo