left 4 dead 2 как сделать мод

Left 4 dead 2 как сделать мод

You will need 4 programs not offered by Steam.Yes they are all free.

This is different from Microsoft Paint.

This program will be used to actually skin the weapon.

This program will be used to fish out the files hidden deep within pak_01.dir
In other words The weapons texture and material files.

This is the most crucial program so make sure you don’t forget it.

This is what we need in order to publish any mods or addons to the Left 4 DEAD 2 workshop.

Luckily, this one is offered for free by Steam. Now how to actually install it:

Paint.net is a much more basic version of phototshop. And its free.
Though not nearly as complex, we dont need it to be. Its easy to use and figure out so its perfect for skinning.

The files we are after are located in a VPK treasure chest, known as pak01.dir

And GCF Scape is the key to unlock that chest.

This program will allow us to access the files we actualy need. AKA the weapon textures.

This is also free, yayy

Download GCF Scape here:

This is th end of this section.

Before you start there are a couple of things you need to do before you start.

Create a new folder. Call it what you want to call your addon. For example im going to make a simple AK47 skin. You would want to name it so you can which skin it is, and what you want to make it. For example if you wanted it black, you may want to call it Black AK47. But for guide purposes, I am going to make it featuring Hatsune Miku. (Dont judge me).

This is mostly for later but it wouldnt hurt to do it now.

Go TO: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Left 4 Dead 2\bin on your computer
Scroll down until you see vpk.
Create a desktop shortcut

I will get more into this later, so just forget it for now.

Now to fetch the neccessary files. To make it easier copy and paste this:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Left 4 Dead 2

Once there type pak01.dir into your search bar, open the one that has the biggest file size, (around 3mb). Make sure you open it with GCFScape.

Once it pulls up open it with GCF Scape. It should look like this:

Not to get to the appropriate files follow this pathway:

materials > models > v_models > weapons > from here you would select the folder in which the weapon you want to chose is catagorized. I am doing th AK47 so I would go to rifles. So my pathway would look like this:
materials > models > v_models > weapons > rifle

You may have noticed each weapon has 3 files. Some weapons have more but thats OK.
Grab ALL the files that have to do with that weapon and drag them into your folder you created earlier.
DO NOT CLOSE GCFSCAPE. Instead create folders that match the path you used to get to the files. Create them in your weapons folder.

YAY NOW WE CAN DO WHAT YOU CAME FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE

I cant really tell you HOW to do it, because your the one creating it. Best I can give ya is play around with it until your satisfied with it. You will have to use trial and error to figure out which peice is which.

Now the skin is done, so now its time to convert the files back into VPK form.

In your weapons folder, drag the «materials» folder to your desktop

Now, go to this folder directory:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Left 4 Dead 2\bin

Scroll until you see vpk

Make a Desktop Shortcut to it.

Drag the «materials» folder to it. It should create this:

Now the addon is ready to be tested.

Place the new VPK file here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Left 4 Dead 2\left4dead2\addons

Now open up Left 4 Dead 2. Type map c1m1 into the developer console. Then give yourself the weapon to view the skin.

If your happy with the skin, its time to publish it.

Open up Left 4 Dead 2 authoring tools. Click the «Workshop Manager» then click the «+» sign.
Drag the the VPK file into the «file» section then fill out the remainder of the addons info.

Press «Upload» and this should show up, and you are done!

Источник

Left 4 dead 2 как сделать мод

Select your preferred language/Wähle deine bevorzugt Sprache aus!

If you understand this you are right with this version.

(Zur deutschen Variante kommt ihr über den folgenden Link)

Download in Steam Tools Section:
Left 4 Dead 2 Authoring Tools
Source SDK
Source SDK Base 2007

I recommend that you download, install and make shortcuts of every program before we continue here.

Exporting the model

I will explain this tutorial, based on my Lara 2013 mod, it’s nearly the same process for every mod, only the names will be different.

Let’s start to extract the base model, in this case it’s Rochelle.
To do this, we need the program GCFScape which you should have downloaded already.
So start the program, and load the model file.
Click on the folder icon and navigate to this path.(May be different on your system)

C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\Left 4 Dead 2\left4dead2\pak01_dir.vpk

If you found the file open it, then you should see something like in the image below

But we only need the model files of Rochelle so we navigate to models → survivors → then select all four producer files and press the right mouse button and select Extract

Now a new window should appear where you have to select the path where you want to save it.
So choose Desktop and create the following folder structure Lara2013 → models → survivors
now save the files and close GCFScape.

I hope you really downloaded version 0.4.1 and not 0.5 of the MDL Decompiler, otherwise you will get in trouble 😀
So start the MDLDecompiler and untick Use Steam File Access.

Before we continue, navigate to the folder structure we created a few seconds before, select survivor_producer.mdl and hit the right mouse button → Edit with Notepad ++
When it opens up it should look like this

Click on the three dots near Choose Model File and choose the MDL file we edited previously.
Now we select the Output Directory, which will be our decompile folder we created before.
After you have set everything correctly hit the Extract button.
Should look similar to this.

The decompile folder should look like this now

Delete all files with the beginning lod which we don’t need.

We continue now in Blender.
Before we start with the editing of the file we have to install a script for import/export of SMD files. Download following file, but DON’T EXTRACT it.
http://steamreview.org/BlenderSourceTools/

After the download, start Blender and go to File → User Preferences
Now click the Install from File button and go to your downloaded file and select it.
After you did that, it should look like in the following image. It’s important that the box is ticked. If everything looks fine select Save User Settings.

Now select all objects with the A key → objects turn into orange → X key to delete → Enter key to confirm.
After that we import our base model: File → Import → Source Engine
Go to your decompile folder and open producer_model_merged.dmx.smd

If you’re done with that, do the same thing again but now select Wavefront (.obj) and select your Lara model.

In the 3D area, you should see the huge Rochelle model and a small Lara between her shoes

At this point I will teach you some shortcuts, which you will often need. As shown in the image you have to select Object Mode in the Mode Selection (MS).

A= select all/unselect all
B + draw area with the mouse = everything in the marked area will be selected
S + move mouse = scale the selected object
R + move mouse = rotate objects (in Pose Mode) double tap R to have 3D rotation, very helpful
STRG + P = addict objects (create parent)
ALT + P = clear addiction of objects
STRG + Z = Undo the last step
G = move selected object
STRG + J = connect single mesh parts to one
SHIFT + right mouse button = select more objects

In Weight Paint Mode:
F + move mouse = change brush size
STRG + left mouse button on a painted area = get this tint

Now we continue with editing the mesh file. To scale Lara to the size of Rochelle, select her and press S and move your mouse to scale her up.
IMPORTANT: When scaling it’s important that the shoulder height is matching.
If your mesh contains multiple parts, select all of them and press STRG + J to connect them to one.
Now change to the Pose Mode in the MS
In the mesh structure untick the visibility of the Rochelle model like in the image below.

Now try to match the skeleton as close to the mesh of Lara as you can. The shortcuts above will help you to do so 😉
Don’t hurry, and really try to work accurate.
If you’re finished select the button left of the MS: Pose → Apply → Apply Pose as Rest Pose
After that activate the visibility of Rochelle again and don’t be shocked if the mesh looks weird now 😀

If the skeleton part is done we go on to the next step, assign of the Weight Paint. It’s important because otherwise your model won’t move in game. For doing so, select FIRST the source(Rochelle) and then the target(Lara). Change to Weight Paint Mode and choose Transfer Weights in the left Toolbar. Should be similar to the image below.

After that you can delete the mesh of Rochelle. Select it → press X → confirm with Enter
Now we have to connect the mesh of Lara with the skeleton.
Select the mesh → select the skeleton → change to Object Mode → press STRG + P → with Empty Groups → Lara and skeleton are connected 🙂

Maybe you’re lucky and anything is fine now with your weight paint, if not we have to edit it now.
Select the mesh of Lara → Change to Weight Paint Mode
The easiest way to learn how weight painting is working is to open Rochelle in another Blender instance and compare every single body part with Lara.
Weight 1 = red color = very movable body area
Weight 0 = blue color = non movable body area
Every shading between (orange to light blue) changes the effect a bit more → learning by doing 😉
If Weight Painting is finished the part of Blender is nearly complete.

If you have fixed all texture links it should look like this.

Save it in your decompile folder as Lara2013_mdldecompiler.qc and quit the program.

To compile your hard work open Crowbar and follow the instructions of the following images

Источник

Left 4 dead 2 как сделать мод

Hello fellow modder =), since I like the modding community, I took some time to put this Guide together. Here, I am planning to prodive you some information about modding the VMT files. If you don’t know that this is, I think this guide isn’t for you :D.

In this guide, the software I’ll sometimes use to present things is Adobe Photoshop CS5. Everything can also be done in GIMP or PAINT.NET, but I think that Adobe Photoshop is easier to use for most things 🙂

Yeah. that’s that simple. and it works with almost anything (unlike the next method).

How to [2] : Partial Glowing texture : (If you want some parts to glow)
Basically, what you need to do is to create a new greyscale texture of your initial texture that you want to make glow, and paint in black the parts you don’t want to make glow, and in white the ones that you want to make glow (Black = No Glow, White = Max Glow).
Beware : White makes the texture glow a LOT, most of the time you’ll only need dark or very dark grey. Here’s an example below :

The «Glow-Mask» texture : the parts in dark grey will make the same parts of the original texture glow.

The «original» texture that will have this mask applied to, you can see the arrows indicate the Display and the Soda Selection, you can see recognise them in the previous picture.

DESCRIPTION : Allows you to make a texture scroll in any direction. This method will give bad results on textures that contains multiple little «parts» of the model. It can be used to make conveyors belt or sometimes revoving objects.

DESCRIPTION : Allows you to create a texture that is different depending if you’re playing as an Infected or a Surviror in Versus Mod.

Источник

Пользовательские модели

В последнее время всё большее кол-во игроков стали привлекать пользовательские модели.
Многие администраторы не знают как поставить на сервер свои собственные.
В данной теме Вы найдёте ответы на вопросы.

[L4D2] Custom Survivors (sp):

Помогал: dr_lex (fix case)
Частично использовал код «L4D2 Model Changer» автор Lux

Описание: Плагин заменяет модели выживших (только от 3 лица).
Переменные: отсутствуют.
Настройка:

Появилось свободное время, скидываем ссылки на модели из workshop
https://steamcommuni. end&p=1&days=-1
Позже выложу готовые (скомпилированные)
В пределах разумного, возьмусь за первые 3 работы.

Внимание! Только «Pack» (Все 4 выживших) Модели не более 40-50мб.

Конвертировать не умею, когда тестировал многие модели работали (TRS Survivors) W model
Руки работать не будут, так как v model (руки с оружием) сделана по другому.
На данный момент думаю сделать новогоднюю сборку (модели заражённых работают стабильно в обеих частях)
Santa Tank, вместо зомби эльфы и тгд.

Подскажи, есть ли способ убрать черный экран при загрузке моделек с хоста, не используя команду allow_lobby_connect_only (вроде так), иначе с этой командой нельзя зайти на серв, если кто то уже играет.

Ну мне хотелось бы проверенный способ, а не так)

Не работает эта связка. Пишет Этот сеанс игры теперь недоступен

Ну мне хотелось бы проверенный способ, а не так)

Не работает эта связка. Пишет Этот сеанс игры теперь недоступен

Если не ошибаюсь лобби заполняется до 4 игроков (стандарт)
4+ уже не смогут подключиться
При выходе игроков (1-4) подкл к серверу должно быть доступно через браузер и консоль
Способы для 4+ никогда не рассматривал
Возможно для пиратов этот способ так же не рабочий так как лобби должно работать только для steam игроков

Плагин я сам напишу.

Насчёт моделей. Хорошо, спасибо

Для отображения пользовательских моделей

Спасибо огромное за руководство.

Поэтому хочу свериться на любом примере.

Также, не могли бы вы подсказать или посмотреть: у меня есть несколько готовых кастомных моделей,

но при их установке есть такая странность:

1) Если их скопировать клиенту и на сервер (папки models + materials/models), то при смене скина персонаж становится невидимым.

P.S. Character Select Menu 2.5 b, SM 1.8, L4D1. Функция прекеширования нормально возвращает хендл entity в обоих случаях. Что может быть не так?

И вдогонку вопрос: модели для 2 части Left4dead, которые выкладывают в магазине стим, они полностью совместимы с 1-й частью?

Источник

Left 4 dead 2 как сделать мод

If you’re here clueless let me fill you in. On this page you will be educated on how to do a model replacement for L4D2 survivors. This tutorial will have the steps you need to know how to set up, start, finish a custom survivor replacement.

If you’re running into issues feel free to leave a comment on this page
or join the Dead4Mods Discord locacted at
https://discord.gg/4qtmzBP

For those that would like a VIDEO alternative to making a survivor mod please give SFM TURK’s tutorial series a look
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8VmA1tYpUQ&list=PLc10aNZGuuqMd9nVg0MsW8a31GBX4cABc

Ok, so let’s start with the basics. You are obviously going to need to have Steam installed as well as Left 4 Dead 2. In addition to this I like to have these other things installed too: Left 4 Dead 2 Authoring Tools and the Source SDK. You can install those by right clicking the Steam icon, selecting Library, then from the Library panel click just to the right of Search and select Tools(this will display all the available tools in case you are not showing them by default).

Now right click on each item you want (Left 4 Dead 2 Authoring Tools and Source SDK) and choose Install Game. Follow the on-screen prompts and allow each to install fully. While you do that, ima go get a doughnut (because doughnuts are awesome). I will meet you back here when you’re done.

Ok, so now we’re back, drunk on doughnuts and we have the basic components set up. Let’s start each program once now so they can do their initial setup things that they like to do. If you didn’t have shortcuts created you can right click the Steam icon and start them from there or go back into your games library and start them that way too. Let’s start with the Authoring Tools…It should start up without any questions. You will see on your basic screen something like this:

Note that you now have Face Poser and Model Viewer installed too. That’s not all that important to you right now, but later on it probably will be so just take my word that it’s a good thing.
Now, let’s close this out and start up the Source SDK. On first start you should get a “copying files please wait…” box come up, so just be patient for a bit while it does its thing. Once it’s done it will probably open a browser window with some release note we don’t really care about, so let’s close that crap out…now we should see something very similar to the Authoring Tools…it should look something like this:

Please note that the model viewer and face poser in the source sdk are not *exactly* the same as those in the Authoring Tools. That’s another one of those things you’ll care more about later on. For now, just make a mental note of it. Ok, now that we know everything is installed and working properly, let’s move on.

Ok, so if we want to do mods then we need to be able to deal with the models and the various formats they come in. We also need to get them in and out of our game. So, let’s start by extracting Ellis from Left 4 Dead 2.

First thing we will need is a program called GCFScape.
Here is the link to the download: http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/files/files/gcfscape183.exe

Yes, I know it’s an exe file, but it’s not a virus, I promise. If you don’t trust me you can go Google the bloody link yourself Captain Paranoia. Run the installer and let the program install with all the default options(it’s easier for everyone if we all do things the same way and put them in the same place, so don’t come crying to me when something doesn’t work because you wanted to be cute and install it in the “FudgePuddles” folder on your computer).

Once it’s installed you can run it by going to Start->All Programs->Nem’s Tools->GCFScape.
You should see something like this:

Ok, let’s go catch us a redneck! Go to the File->Open or click the folder icon in the top left. We need to browse to the VPK folder that Left 4 Dead 2 keeps the survivor models inside(think of VPK files kind of like ZIP files).

The location of this file is as follows:
C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\left4dead2\left4dead2\pak01_dir.vpk
You can see it in the pic below

So select the file and hit OK and you should get this:

This is all the stuff that’s contained inside that VPK file. Here you can find all sorts of goodies from models to maps and textures to scripts and so on. It is here that we’ll be grabbing Ellis. This is also important because it shows you the correct structure for making your own VPK addons later. We’ll get into that later, just note that if you ever have a question about the proper folder structure, check back here to see the correct structure.

Now that we have all the model files, we are going to need to convert them into a format we can work with. That means we will need to decompile them. Specifically we will decompile the survivor_mechanic.mdl file as this one contains the actual mesh data we need.

======
ZeqMacaw here again. I have updated some of the screenshots, some file names, and some of the wording to better reflect the use of Crowbar in this section.
======

You can keep Crowbar open, because we’ll be using it later. Now open up our survivor_ellis folder and go to the models\survivors\decompile folder. You should see something like this:

Those are all our decompiled files for the Ellis model.

SMD files are the actual mesh data.

The ones that say lod1, lod2, lod3 at the end are for more advanced things(like how detailed the model will be at certain distances-games do this to save on memory.

After all if the character is so far away you can see the detail, then it’s pointless to use a mesh that has all that detail on it. So they might use a lower poly mesh for further away and a higher poly mesh for closer distances.). You don’t need to worry about these for right now. Later on, when you’re really good at the basics you can come back and play with those.

Next we have the survivor_mechanic.qc file-this is the compile sheet. It tells the compiler program how to build the MDL file.

We will edit this later in Notepad++ to make our mod, but always keep a backup of the untouched original file just in case.

The VTA file is for facial anims.

And such-that’s another advanced topic we’re not going to cover right now because it’s beyond the scope of what we’re trying to accomplish here. Just know that’s what it is for and that, generally speaking, the VTA you get from decompiling is corrupt anyways so it’s probably worthless to you regardless(although there are ways to get good ones, but again, that’s way beyond the scope of what we’re doing here so once more just make a mental note of it).

Ok, the survivor_mechanic_physics.smd is the physics mesh and the survivor_mechanic_anims/ragdoll.smd is the ragdoll animation.

And we’re going to want to keep backups of those handy too (often I will change the physics mesh, but you’ll probably never change the ragdoll unless you’re a glutton for punishment hehe).

Finally that leaves us with survivor_mechanic_reference.smd which is our Holy Grail. That’s the main survivor mesh data that we will use as the foundation for our Ellis mods. So let’s get that mother*&^ loaded up and see what we’re dealing with.
======
ZeqMacaw’s NOTE: The reference SMD file might NOT have «reference» in the name, due to Crowbar changing how it names decompiled files. Just notice that the biggest SMD file is likely the main mesh file you want. Do not get hung up by the different name. You can find out exactly which one is the main mesh file by looking in the QC file; for the survivor models, it should be the SMD file name indicated in a line like this:

I know, I know…3DSMAX isn’t free. But it’s what I use and what I know so it’s what I’m teaching you.

You can download a free 30-day trial from Autodesk or if you’re A student you can have a full Student version which is capable of doing these mods if this is all you plan on using this program for

NOTE however that I have been told the import and export plugins no longer work in 3dsmax 2013(the current version) so you will probably need to locate and install an older version(I use version 2010). Unfortunately I do not know how to tell you to locate an older version of the demo so you’re on your own for that. I’m really sorry about that, truly I am. I did a little quick Google search and I was able to locate a download for the 2012 demo, which they do have plugins for, so I would say just be resourceful and you should probably manage. I can’t offer any direct links for legal reasons I’m afraid. Anyways, get it and install it then we’ll move on from there.
Ok, so now that we’ve wasted 20-30 minutes on all that crap, we should now have 3dsmax installed finally. Let’s start it up once real quick just to have a look around…It should look a lot like this:

Hit close on the opening dialogue box(if you get it) then click the green box in the upper left…you will see your basic functions like loading files and such there. They wanted to be cute and make it like their own little start button instead of just calling it the file menu like a normal person but whatever…moving on. Let’s exit out of 3dsmax because we’re going to need a couple of plugins before we can load our smd file. SMD files are not native to 3dsmax, so in order to use them we will need to download some SMD import\export filters to give 3dsmax that functionality. You can find the import filter here:
http://www.wunderboy.org/download.php?file=3dsmax_smd_importer_v1.0.zip&s=2 and the export filter here: http://www.wunderboy.org/download.php?file=3dsmax_smd_exporter_v1.6.zip&s=2
Download those files somewhere convenient and we’ll start with the import filter. Extract the files from the ZIP. Now go into the Max 2012 folder then into the 32 or 64 bit folder depending on the version of 3dsmax you installed. Let’s assume you’re using the 32-bit version for now. So go into the 32-bit folder and copy the file SMDImporter.dli. Now browse to this folder:
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2012\plugins\
Now paste your file there. Do the same thing for the SMD export plugin. Now restart 3dsmax and let’s get that damn smd loaded(finally). Once 3dsmax loads up, click their little green box in the upper left then select Import. At the bottom of the window that comes up, where it says “Files of type” make sure you have All Formats selected then browse to your decompile folder and select survivor_mechanic_reference.smd and click Open. The Pre-Parse Options come up-just hit OK. The main import filter options come next…check the boxes as shown below and hit OK.

Finally, after the model loads you get one last dialogue box. Just hit OK there too. If you get any texture errors or warning just ignore them for now and click OK or whatever to get past them(doubt you’ll see any at this point though). BINGO! We now have our Ellis mesh loaded into 3dsmax. Well, that took some effort didn’t it. Don’t worry, it always seems bad the first few times. Once you get the hang of it it won’t take you any longer than about 10 minutes to get the file from the game into 3dsmax. Anyways, now we want to save this file as a template or base file for us to always use in the future to build Ellis mods. So let’s click on the green button and choose “Save As” and let’s name this one Ellis_BASE and click OK. We now saved our default Ellis as a 3dsmax file so we’ll have easy access to him in the future. Cool!

At this point you could add or remove elements from the mesh if you wanted. To do that you would probably need to familiarize yourself both with basic concepts of 3d modeling and 3dsmax usage as well. For the sake of this tutorial we’re not going to cross that bridge just yet. What we’re going to so is port a model from another game because it’s a little easier, in principle, to deal with for now. Where you get the model doesn’t really matter ultimately…basically any format 3dsmax can read is OK. There are LOTS of free model sites out there that will let you download models already in a format 3dsmax can read.

To find models just google «Xnalara models» or visit two of the following sites
xnalara customized [xnalara-customized.deviantart.com]
tombraiderforums [www.tombraiderforums.com]

These models must be extracted with a specific program/s tho.
XNALARA: Link [www.tombraiderforums.com]
XNALARA XPS: Link [xnalara.home-forum.com]

Back in 3dsmax, let’s start a new document by clicking the New Scene icon right next to the green button. Select New All on the options panel and then click OK to load a new scene. Go to where you downloaded Spidey and extract the RAR file you downloaded. You should get a new folder with 6 files. The 3 TGA files are your textures, and the OBJ is your mesh. In 3dsmax click the green button, select Import, then select your spiderman.obj file and click OK to open. You can see my import settings in the following pic:

Match up with my settings then click the Import button to load up spidey. You’ll probably get a texture warning or material warning-just ignore it and continue. Whoopee!! Spidey is loaded into 3dsmax! So let’s click the green button, Save As and save our file as Spidey.max. Ok…moving on.

Before we go too much further we should probably go ahead and check the textures in max while we still have a good deal of control over them. Once you’ve exported you file and compiled you’ll have to do a lot of backtracking to fix bad filenames on textures(mostly happens with foreign language models like Japanese ones) and other random issues. We’re going to attempt to nip that in the bus right here. Click on the Material Editor button to bring up the Material Editor panel as shown:

Under the 6 squares where you see Model001_Material001 in this pic, click the eye dropper tool just to the left then click on the spidey model. This ensures we have the texture for spidey loaded into Material Editor and not some other random material we were working on last time or something. You’ll recall we had 3 texture files. AMAZING.tga is the actual texture file with all the colors and such. That is the file we’re going to load in 3dsmax. dirt_null.tga is a dirt texture which we will not be using at all. In 3d it’s common practice to use dirt textures to add a note of realism to textures so they don’t look so polished and perfect. There are ways we can do that to, but we don’t need to do it in max since we’re just porting the model. The norm_null.tga is the normal map. This is a texture that creates creases or surface to an object. For example, if you wanted to add raised area to the model but didn’t want to model it, you could use a normal map to raise the area. In L4D2 these are used a lot for making the wrinkles in clothes. We are going to use this one, but not in 3dsmax. Again, we’re just porting the model and 3dsmax is just a pit stop on our way to doing that, so there’s no need to go all out and try to load and tweak everything.
Back in Materials Editor panel click the Maps button then check the box next to Diffuse Color. Now click on the button to the right of Diffuse Color where it says None. On the panel that opens, select Bitmap then browse to the AMAZING.tga in the spidey folder, select it and click Open. You should see the sphere on the top left turn red and blue to indicate we have the texture loaded. That’s what we want to see. Now click the Show Standard Map in viewport button as shown here:

And you should see the texture appear on Spidey in the viewport window as shown:

That’s perfect. No issues. Save the file. Time to get to the dirty work…

We need these models to line up as much as possible with one another. It’s clear at this point that they don’t, so we will need to do a little tweaking. Let’s start by scaling Spidey to the same size as Ellis. Click on the Select and Uniform Scale tool in 3dsmax:

Now click on Spidey to select him(he should be the only object that turns white, indicating that he’s selected but Ellis is not, as shown in the pic). Now click and drag on the yellow region in the front view to scale Spidey up to Ellis’s size. Just make sure the tops of theirs heads and shoulders roughly line up. Release the mouse button when done. You will notice Spidey’s feet are a little lower than Ellis’s feet. We can’t have that. They need to be as close as possible. Just to the left of the scale tool you will find the Select and Move tool. Click on that then click and drag the up arrow in the front viewport to line up Spidey’s feet with Ellis’s feet. We see Spidey’s head and shoudlers are a little too high now, so go back to the scale tool and scale him down slightly. His feet should stay even with Ellis’s now too. Repeat this process until you’re satisfied that they line up good. You can hit the Z key to zoom in on the selected object and you can hit Alt+w to maximize the front view(hit it again to go back into quad view). You should end up with something like this:

That’s a good start, but we are going to need for them to match up even closer. Right click on spidey and click on Freeze Selection. He should turn gray or black now and you can no longer click on him. Don’t worry, that’s what we want to happen. This will make sure he doesn’t get in the way while we move Ellis around to match Spidey’s pose.
Between the move and scale tools is the Select and Rotate tool. Click on that. If you look closely at Ellis you can see he has “bones” running through him. These are what he uses to move in the game and what we’ll use to move him here as well. Position your cursor as best you can over the bone in Ellis upper right arm and click on it to select it. If it selects Ellis instead then click again and then it will usually select the bone. With the bone selected you will see the rotate tool become active. Click on the yellow circle to rotate Ellis’s arm in to the same position as Spidey’s as shown in the pic below:

You will want to do this in each view, and for each bone so that Ellis’s arms and legs match up as closely as possible with Spidey’s. Taking your time here will make things a lot easier for you down the road, so I recommend not getting in a hurry and really lining things up good in each view. You can click on the cube in the upper right of the viewports to spin Ellis around and see how everything is looking. You can hit Shift+W to open the basic pan and zoom view functions to get a better look at areas(hit it again to turn the tool wheel off). You can use F3 and F4 to turn shading and wireframe modes on and off to make things easier to see. As with everything this will get easier with practice so play around a little and learn your way around the controls; this is a great time to do that. Here is my finished up Spidey:

As you can see(hopefully) they line up pretty well. I spent about 8 minutes doing that. I’m not bragging, I’m just pointing out that you’ll get better with practice and will thus be able to do a half ass job(like me) in little to no time at all. Don’t forget to save your progress! *runs off to save file* We’re done lining up for now, and we’ve learned about the basic zoom, scale and rotate tools, as well and panning and zooming and some basic viewport functions…that’s a pretty good start. Right click in the viewport and click on Unfreeze All to release your Spidey model from limbo. Save your file. We’re ready to move on.

The next thing we want to do is add bone weights to our Spidey mesh. Bone weights are basically areas of influence around each bone. Let’s say you have a fire…the closer you are to the fire the hotter it feels, while the farther away you are the cooler it feels. Bone weights are much the same. The closer a mesh or point is to the bone that it’s weighted to, the more influence that bone has over it, and the redder that area will appear (we’ll see that in action shortly). Likewise the further a mesh or point is from the bone it’s weighted to the more blue, or cooler, it will appear. This also means that the more read an area is the stronger the influence the selected bone has over it. So if we were to click on Ellis’s right forearm bone we would see that his forearm area was red(because the bone moves the forearm) and his bicep or upper arm would be blue(because the forearm bone doesn’t control the upper arm, the upper arm bone does). Make sense? I hope so…I’m not so great at explaining things, but I do try. Anyhoo, what we’re going to do is use a shortcut to copy the bone weights on Ellis over to Spidey. This means (hopefully) that we won’t have to do much tweaking on Spidey’s bone weights, and this is also why we wanted them to line up so closely. The closer they line up the better this technique works and the less tweaking we will have to do afterwards, which is a good thing. We are going to use a modifier called Skin Wrap. In 3dsmax modifiers are used to make certain things easier to manage. They are controlled by the modifier stack over on the right hand side of the screen under the modify tab. Let’s click that tab now. Click on Spidey to select him and you should see “Editable Mesh” show up in the Modifier Panel. Just above that you will see a drop down menu that reads “Modifier List” so let’s click on that now…Scroll down the list until you see “Skin Wrap” and select that by clicking on it.

You should now see Skin Wrap show up in the Modifier Panel just above Editable Mesh. That’s what we want to happen so good. Just beneath those two you will see the Parameters panel, which is home to the various settings for the Skin Wrap Modifier. Towards the top of that, click on the Add button now. It will stay clicked and seemingly do nothing…it’s waiting for you to do the next step. In your viewport window you want to click on Ellis 1 time…SMDImport will show up in the window just above the Add button and the program will think for a moment. Now we will click the Add button again to de-activate it. We will then go down and check the “Weight All Points” check box. After that Click the Convert To Skin button just below and you should see something like this:

At the top of the Modifier stack you should now have a Skin Modifier and you should see all your bones in the lower panel. Outstanding! We’re almost there! Highlight the Skin Wrap modifier in the stack and delete it by clicking the the little trash can icon below. We’re done with that now so we’re getting rid of it. We should be left with just Editable Mesh and Skin in the stack. Perfect. Now in the viewport window click on Ellis so he is selected(remember white means he is the selected object). Once he is selected hit the Delete key on your keyboard. Now we have just Spidey but with all of Ellis’s bones and bone weights. This would be a great time to save your progress. Your screen should look something like this:

Now we basically have what we need, we just need to do a couple more things.

Now right click in the viewport and select the Unhide All option to make spidey reappear. Save your progress.

Technically, at this point, we could just export the model and go and chances are it will mostly work. However, I feel it prudent to go ahead and show you how to check the weights and tweak them because, at the end of the day, it makes for better looking mods. So let’s work on that now…
Click on spidey to select him and you should see skin and editable mesh again in the modifier tab on the right(same place we found it before). Click on the + next to Skin to expand it, then click on Envelope. You should see the pelvis of your model change colors to red, yellow, and blue. These are the bone weights we have been talking about, which is to say the area that the pelvis bone influences, with the colors representing how strongly the area is influenced by the bone. So the red(or hotter) areas are the most influenced while the blue(or cooler) areas are less influenced. You can see what mine is looking like below:

Notice that we have some blue areas going down towards the knees. We do not want this! Think about it…does your knee bend when you move your hips? No, it probably doesn’t. Well we don’t want that happening with our spidey either. These bone weights give us a visual representation of what parts each bone is moving so we can, in addition to controlling the character, see where the flaws are going to be(or where bone weights overlap so to speak).
There really isn’t a right or wrong way to fix this per se, just different methods of the same principle. I’m going to show you my method and as you learn and grow you may or may not decide to keep doing things this way…totally up to you. At any rate…what we want to do first is make a new frame to work in. This is largely just to keep things organized. I’ve found that generally l4d2 doesn’t care what pose the model gets exported in, but I like to maintain good happens by exporting them in the default pose as much as possible. By making a new frame, we can make all our tweaks and move stuff around without destroying our original default pose.
Towards the bottom of the 3dsmax interface, just to the right of where we entered our numbers before, you’ll see a button with a key on it. Next to that(on the right) you’ll see a button that reads “Auto Key” Let’s push that Auto Key button now-it should turn red. And your viewport should be highlighted red now too. If you look at the bottom left of your screen you will see a slider that says 0/1. Click that arrow next to it and it should move to the right to 1/1. We’re now in a new frame. If we move anything around here we can always go back to frame 0(our default pose) by using the slider. Cool, that’s exactly what we want. Pic below:

Now that we’re in our “work frame” it’s time to tweak some bones, starting with the pelvis. I’m going to walk you through the pelvis and the right leg, then I’m going to let you do the rest yourself. Don’t worry it all works the same way. If you can do the pelvis and leg you can do the rest. It just takes a little time and practice to get used to the process. Let’s begin…
With Envelope selected in the modifier tab you should see Edit Envelopes in the Parameters below with your list of bones just below that. Selecting bones in this list will show you their area of influence(aka bone weights). Click a few to see that in action. When you’re done click on Pelvis again to show that bone’s weights. As we said the influence bleeds down into the knees and that’s not good so we need to fix that. In order to do that we will need to activate some bone weights tools. In the Parameters area, click the Vertices check box at top then scroll down until you see the little wrench under Weight Properties and click on that. Congrats you just activated the weight tool properly. Pic provided below. You will also notice an arrow in that pic pointing to the selection tool. Click and hold on that and select the lasso tool then release. Now we can lasso the stray points we need to modify, which is a good thing. We’re all set so let’s get to tweaking…For me, the easiest way to remove influence from an area is to assign those points to a different area. We’re going to do that to fix the pelvis.

First, select the stray points in the right thigh as shown below:

Now, in your bone list on the right scroll down and highlight ValveBiped.Bip01_R_Thigh to change to the right thigh bone. Back at the Weight Tool click on the number 1. Voila! Those stray points are now assigned to the thigh bone 100%. But notice that the thigh bone area of influence isn’t all 100%. On the Weight Tool panel you’ll also see a button called Blend. Let’s click that about 4-5 times now. You may or may not notice the weights blending as you do so. Scroll down the bone list and select ValveBiped.Bip01_R_Calf to activate the calf and click Blend a few more times. The blending changes in the points should be a lot more noticeable now. What we’re doing is literally blending the influence between the bones we’re clicking on. In this case, since the points go towards the knee we blend towards the calf. If the points were closer to the thigh we would blend with the pelvis bone instead. This part becomes a little more art than science. Go back and forth between the calf and thigh and blend things as best you can. Basically you just want to make things even. If you need to, you can select just certain points and blend those. Play around a little here a little bit and try to get a feel for it. This is a first attempt so it doesn’t have to be perfect though so bare that in mind. Once you’re satisfied meet me back here….Ok, let’s see how our tweaking worked out on the right thigh. Click on Skin again in the Modifier List to go back out of weight mode. Select the right thigh bone, the use the rotate tool to move it around a bit and see how it looks. Do the same with the right calf bone. Here’s a pic of me doing that:

As you can see, we still have some problems around the thigh and knee and we still have some influence over the left thigh, which we do not want. To fix the left thigh we do exactly as we did before. Click on Envelope, then with the lasso tool select the points in the left thigh that are being pulled on by the right thigh. Now select the left thigh in the bone list and assign those points to the left thigh. You should see the results on screen immediately. You can likewise tweak the points on the right thigh so they move with the bone better. Play around until you’re satisfied with your results. In the end everything should look smoother and more natural like this:

That’s much better. Now for the crappy part(not really, this is actually my favorite part believe it or not)… repeat this process on every major bone in the model. Well, at the very least in all the areas where you see problems. Go back into regular mode by click on Skin in the Modifier List and use the rotate tool to move the various bones around. This way you can see what areas are needing work and which areas are ok. Go through and tweak as we just did until everything moves fairly smoothly. Again, we’re not after perfection just yet. Just learning to use the tools and get something half way decent is all. Meet me back here when you’re done and we’ll continue. PROTIP: the hands and fingers are where you’re going to have the most problems in most cases. As a reminder, the closer you match everything to Ellis back at the start, the less you tweaks you will have to make here. Just take your time and be patient. You’ll get it! You can see my Derpish pose here(lol):

Now that we have all our bone weights how we like them, it’s FINALLY time to export the model. OMFG. FINALLY. So first make sure we’re out of bone weight mode by clicking on Skin in the Modifier List then let’s go back to frame 0 using the slider at the bottom of the screen. Your spidey should fall back into his default pose. Yay! Click the green button->Export and the export dialogue opens up. From the Save as type drop down menu on the bottom of it, select Source SMD(*.SMD) as your type and then give it a catch filename like Ellis_spidey.SMD and click Save. The SMD Exporter options box will open. Generally you won’t have to click anything here so just click OK. NOTE: If you model doesn’t look smooth in game, then when you export you should check the “Use explicit normal method” checkbox on the SMD export options to fix that. At this point, the export finished but I got a warning about the texture using an empty material name. Somehwere along the line I messed up the texture we fixed earlier. So open material editor and fix it exactly as we did earlier, then export again. This time I get no errors or warnings. Perfect!

Well, after a LOT of learning and tweaking we just got our new model converted to SMD. That means we’re 75% done at this point. Now all we need to do is the compile related stuff. So save your work and exit 3dsmax.

We’re almost there(whew!) but we still have a bit more grunt work to do first. Remember that decompile folder had way back at the start? Let’s go back there now. Right click on survivor_mechanic.qc and select Edit with Notepad++ to open it.

Line 5 specifies the smd names and such…ours should read:
$Model «ellis_spidey» «ellis_spidey.smd» <

Technically you could leave the first part as “Mechanic” but again, I like to keep things organized and reasonably consistent so just humor me and change it as indicated above.

Lines 6-243 are extra model info such as face animations. Delete these lines. Lines 5-6 should look like this:
$Model «Mechanic» «survivor_mechanic_reference.smd» <
>

Lines 8-20 are the lod model info code (remember we talked briefly about the lod models when we decompiled). Later on, should you choose to include them this is where the info would go. Since we are not using them now, we are going to delete these lines. Line 8 should now be:
$SurfaceProp «flesh»

Again, you could just leave this alone, but we’re trying to be consistent here so we’re going to go ahead and change ours to match all our other naming conventions. Also, this would be handy should you ever want to compile spidey into a non-l4d2 model or just a unique l4d2 model(nothing we’ll be dealing with right now just take my word for it that it can be useful to do things this way).

The first set are the regular textures and the second set are the textures for when you’re boomed and covered in ♥♥♥♥. We’re not bothering to change the 2nd set but you can later on if you want to learn about that(it’s a little beyond the basics we’re teaching here). Also back on line 4 you could technically include code for eye posing, facial anims, etc. but again, that’s a bit beyond what we’re trying to accomplish here right now, which is just to get your started.

Ok, so scroll way down the lines 146 and change them to read:
$Sequence «ellis_spidey» <
«ellis_spidey»
fadein 0.2
fadeout 0.2
fps 30
>

Save the file as Spidey.qc and exit the program. We’re all done with the compile sheet. Note that this is pretty much how you’ll edit the qc every time, the only difference being you’ll use a different smd name and different texture map names. But otherwise this sheet is interchangeable for all your future Ellis mods.

ZeqMacaw here, yet again. Instead of the nonsense we modders had to go through to use GUIStudioMDL, we can now use a brilliant tool called Crowbar. Again, no details on how to use it here, but if you really want some help on it, here is the link to the main Crowbar guide: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=791755353

In short:
Open Crowbar. Select the QC you modified. Select L4D2 game. Click Compile button.

So we have almost everything we need now to make our new VPK mod file. We just need to fix the Maps first. Luckily we only have 1 to deal with so that makes things a LOT easier. Back in our survivor_ellis folder let’s go into the materials->models->survivors and make a new folder called spidey.

Now let’s copy our AMAZING.tga and norm_null.TGA files to our new spidey folder. Now let us go back a couple folders to materials->models->survivors->mechanic and copy mechanic_body_color.vmt to our spidey folder as well. So far so good time to hang out with an old friend again…right click on the VMT file and Edit in Notepad++ as before.

On line 3 change it to our texture map “models/survivors/spidey/AMAZING”

On line 4 change it to our normal map “models/survivors/spidey/norm_null”

Leave everything else alone for now and save the file and exit.

Note you can tweak many many settings in the vmt to affect how textures appear in the game. That’s another more advanced topic for another time but just keep it in the back of your head for future reference.

Now we just need to make those TGA files into VTF files because that’s what l4d2 likes to use. To do this we need a program called VTFEdit which you can get here: http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/files/files/vtfedit125-11.exe

After you download and install it let’s start it up and see what happens.

Yay! No problems for once! Let’s fix those maps then. Go to Tools->Convert Folder and browse to your spidey texture folder(just choose the same folder for output). Make sure To VTF is checks and *.tga is in the box next to it and hit Convert.

Oh how we have grown to love it when things work right the first time. Now back in our spidey texture folder we should see AMAZING.VTF and norm_null.VTF.Erase norm_null.tga, norm_null.vmt, AMAZING.tga and AMAZING.vmt. Now rename mechanic_body_color.vmt tp AMAZING.vmt. Our textures are now good to go. Finally something easy. Lol!

At this point we have some things we no longer need in our survivor_ellis folder. Let’s clean it up a bit. In the materials folder let’s get rid of the mechanic folder(keep a backup somewhere of course). Then in the models folder, let’s remove the decompile folder as well as the other files here(everything in other words but again, make sure to have a backup). Our new textures are already fixed and in place so now we just need to get the MDL files we compiled and put them in their proper place too. You will find them in this folder:

C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead 2\left4dead2\models\survivors

You want the files you see highlighted below:

Copy those files to your model folder at:

Save that txt file in the same place that the models and materials folders are located.

Now everything is in place. And we have only the stuff we need left. Perfect. Moving on.

We’re finally ready to build and test out first mod. Hard to believe but here we are. So, let ‘s browse to the folder: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead 2\bin and locate the file vpk.exe.

Right click on vpk.exe and send to desktop as a shortcut. Now drag your entire survivor_ellis folder onto vpk.exe and let it work its magic. A few seconds later you should be greeted with survivor_ellis.vpk. Giggidy! Let’s test it out. Browse to your l4d2 addons folder located here:

C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead 2\left4dead2\addons

Copy your vpk into this folder-voila! You just installed it. Make sure there are no other mods in there that might conflict with it(like another ellis mod or something) and if all looks well start up your game. Load any random map you like…I usually open console and type map c1m2_streets and just use that but by all means use whatever area you like to test with. If all the stars aligned you should see this:

VICTORRYYY. MOTHERF(*&^ING DOUGHNUT TIME.

«I’d like to send a special shout out to da1barker-the man who started it all for me. He took the time to teach me how to do this when he didn’t know me and had no reason to, and I’ve never forgotten that. Thanks man! You inspired me!»

MrLanky

«To the man that helped and guided me when I seemed to be hitting every wall as I started out, I would like to give my thanks to MrLanky. You have been more then a help for what I do and I’m glad that I’m able to call you my friend. Thank you.»

Splinks

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