Hi-

Firstly, I am a complete noob when it comes to modeling.

With that in mind-- I made a large brush art pillar in hammer for use many times in a map. It is too detailed so obviously when you have a number of them in the same map the compiler hates you and the map size is huge.

So I want to make it in to a model for use in the map. I exported it as a DXF from hammer, then opened it in cinema 40 and saved as a .X file, then imported that in to XSI. The structure has many faces that aren’t on a cube plane so I need to map the textures several times using best fit planes:

Is there a better way to do this? Is there an automated way to do this?

Secondly, I’m having a heck of a time exporting the model as the appropriate source files. I installed the valve add-on from SDK in XSI and a VMFExport menu is now in the tool bar, however it is completely blank (empty menu). Any ideas there?

Thanks

PS here is a SS that kind of illustrates both problems:

You can actually select the brushes inside of Hammer, and convert them to a model there. This will prevent it from cutting up the rest of the brushes around it, which might make the compiler love you more.
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Detail_brush

There’s also a way you can export the map and open it inside of XSI itself if you have the ValveTools installed. This way you wont have to add another program to the pipeline.

An object like this has a lot of repeating shapes, so what you could do is delete 3 of the sides and leave one remaining. Then you only have to unwrap and texture the one side, and when you’re done you can copy it to recreate the rest of the pillar, and merge them back into one object. If there are many of these pillars in the level, you could also create some level of details for it (either reduce the polygon count manually, or see if it holds up fine using Modify>Poly.Mesh>Polygon Reduction), and export those.

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/LOD_Models


As for the Valvetools, how did you install the addon? Normally You’d see ‘ValveSource’ in the menu bar instead of ‘VMFExport’.

Thanks for all your comments-

First, I actually made all of the pillars func_detail before I went to this step, but it still had too many vertices for hammer to compile; func_detail didn’t help.

Thanks for the LOD link that should be quite helpful in simplifying the object.

For valvetools, I went to:
File -> Add-ons -> Install…
Chose directory
C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\userid\sourcesdk\xsi
And picked
ValveSource.0105.01.xsiaddon
The only file there. Clicked install, and that’s where I got.

Download this addon, and install it instead.

http://www.softimage.com/downloads/Add_ons/default.aspx