With Left 4 Dead, Valve has changed their file format (.gcf).  Now, the game is delivered in .ncf, with particles, materials, and models arriving in a new format, .vpk.

A new version of GCFScape (1.7.1), adding support for L4D, is available at: http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?p=29

how do we view the left 4 dead files in xsi anyone know? i’d like to help a friend make a few characters from his concept art for a mod idea we have, but no idea how to import the files into xsi. anyone know how i do that?

Take a look at this thread - http://community.softimage.com/showthread.php?t=3224

I haven’t tried importing L4D models into XSI yet, but it should be same process.  As I mentioned above, make sure you’ve got the latest version of GCFScape.

hey dwig, i tried going through your tutorial today and when i tried loading a .mdl model with the mdldecompiler it always said something like

“is not a model”

can you give it a shot if you have sometime and post what you did again to get it working? i’d sure love to get a crack at this stuff.

For Orange Box games, you need to open the .mdl file in Notepad++.  Change it to , (comma).  So it should be IDST, instead of IDST1.

But....  I just found a new problem… Since L4D did away with DirectX8, mdldecompiler is throwing an error that it can’t find the file and crashes....  Damnit!

So, I’m not sure how to get it to decompile… Sorry…

Maybe someone else can help out figuring this out… I’ll see what I can come up with.

TeamFortress2 files:
heavy.dx80.vtx
heavy.dx90.vtx
heavy.mdl
heavy.phy
heavy.sw.vtx
heavy.vvd
heavy_animations.mdl

Left4Dead:
anim_boomer.mdl
boomer.mdl
boomer.phy
boomer.vtx
boomer.vvd

Bingo!

I made two copies of boomer.vtx and renamed them to boomer.dx80.vtx and boomer.dx90.vtx.

In XSI, Import SMD, changed to .qc and imported the mdldecompiler.qc file.

Voila!

thats so awesome. can you possibly type the steps you did so i can get to where you are and start checking this stuff out?

i didn’t get the use notepad++ and change to a comma.

if i had steps to go through that would help me a ton. man thats so great!

Go back to the thread I mentioned above.  It has a link to download notepad++.

Valve changed the source engine in the Orange Box.  Any models from Ep1 and earlier, you don’t need to modify the .mdl file in order to decompile with mdldecompiler.  Anything from OrangeBox and on, you need to modify the .mdl file, or you’ll get the “is not a model” error that you reported.

1)Extract game files with newest version of gcfscape.
2)Open the .mdl file that you want to decompile with Notepad++
3)Line 1 looks like this (for boomer):
IDST1NULNULNULUSUB,*infected/boomer.mdlNULNULNULNUL.....
4)Change that first 1 to a comma:
IDST,NULNULNUL.........
5)Save
6)open up mdldecompiler and decompile the model.

hey dwig, here is what ive done so far.

i extracted all the files using gfcscape onto my desktop. so i now have a l4d folder and inside it there is.

materials>
particles>
models>

i went into the models folder and edited

survivor_biker.mdl using notepad++ and replaced the 1 with a coma.

i then went into the decompiler and loaded the file and extracted it and the decompiler kept crasing like you said before.

so in the folder where the biker.mdl is i copied surviror_biker.vtx and pasted that file twice and renamed one

survivor_biker.dx80.vtx
and
survivor_biker.dx90.vtx

so then the decompiler starts extracting and then crashes. i have my output folder my desktop and in the end i ended up with 2 files.

mdldecompiler.qc
mdldecompiler_expressions.vta

so i dont see any .tga files or anything like that, is there something i’m missing? i hope i’m not bugging you to much, but i’d really like to get this able to view and i’m close i think i just dont know whats going on now.

also once (hopefully) it does extract correctly do i need some plugins for xsi or something to be able to read this files? i went to import in xsi real quick and saw nothing for .smd or anything. hope you know what is going on and dont mind helping out a bit more. i really really apprecaite everything.

Damn.  I just tried survivor_biker and experienced the same behavior; crash without stating why.  I dunno.  Maybe it’s trying to look for another reference file (like the missing .dx80). 

Try some other models to see if you can get them into XSI.  Maybe a static prop that doesn’t have tons of animations with it..  You’re supposed to get a qc file and smd files after you decompile it.  To load in XSI, ValveSource/Import SMD/(Change to qc filetype) select the qc file.

You’ll need to retarget the textures.  Navigate into the materials/models/whatever directory and select the vtf file.

Also, you’ll need to redo the envelope weights on imported meshes.  For some reason, they’re totally jacked. 

You need the ValveSource Tools addon (I think current version is for v6, but it runs fine on my 7.01 ESS 32bit Vista.  I think someone else had a problem with 64bit vista).  That can be found in the downloads section on here, I think under plugins.  If it’s down, I think you can also find it somewhere on http://www.softimage.com

I’ll try to look at it closer tomorrow…