Ultimate Game Host. Creating a basic model for garrysmod 13 using Blender 2.69 PDF Guide. Visit Us At:

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1 Ultimate Game Host Creating a basic model for garrysmod 13 using Blender 2.69 PDF Guide Visit Us At:

2 Creating A Basic Model for GarrysMod 13 using Blender 2.69 Overview: This document will relay step by step how to create a simple one model addon (the example ball for Garrysmod in Blender 2.69 from scratch. You need some software downloaded before you start (this will be covered in Sections 1, 2 and 3). There is also some setup needed on steam and we will cover that as well. This guide is for extreme beginners with no knowledge of how to model for GarrysMod 13. The only assumption this guide makes is that you have Steam and GarrysMod 13 installed. This document was written using Windows 7 64 bit as the base system. If you are on 32 bit OS then make sure to replace Program Files (x86) with just Program Files when you are working with paths below. Section 1 Download the Needed Software This is the list of needed programs (make a folder on your desktop called software to save them in) when ready, download them from these sources: Blender Blender Source Tools this guide uses version zip file CannonFodder's StudioCompiler this guide uses version 0.4a setup program=studiocompiler Nem's VTFEdit this guide uses version full installer The Gimp (you can choose another photo editor if more comfortable) for this guide we used installer for windows. Prerequisites: Download and Install.net framework and Visual C++ items below (these are needed for VTFEdit and StudioCompiler respectively. Microsoft.NET Framework 4 Extended Standalone Installer Microsoft Visual C Feature Pack Redistributable Package When you are done downloading this is a screenshot of what you should have in the software folder on the desktop (your file names may vary depending on what version you retrieved.

3 We also need some more software from steam, specifically the newer SDK that allows us to work well with Gmod 13. Follow the steps below to install this important piece: 1) Open Steam 2) Hover over Library and select Tools 3) Look for Source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer in the list and right click and install it. 4) When it is installed (it might be a while as it's over 8 GB), run it. When the game launches simply close it out. Section 2 Install the Needed Software 1) Blender Accept the defaults when installing blender 2) VTFEdit Elect to add a desktop icon during the install, otherwise use the defaults, you can also associate it with.vmt files in addition to the.vtf association that it comes with. 3) StudioCompiler Run the setup, choose all defaults. 4) Blender Source Tools Extract them to a folder of the same name, you should see a folder and a file inside, both names begin with io. Copy this folder and the file directly into your blender addons folder, in this example it is here: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.69\scripts\addons Section 3 Configure The Needed Software 1) Blender Launch blender from the desktop icon. When it is open, click on File - > User Preferences. Click on the Addons tab at the top and then in the search box on the left side type in Blender Source Tools. The result should show up in the window, if it doesn't, double check that you followed step 4 in section 2. Check the box next on the right side of the addon to activate it, then click on Save User Settings near the bottom left. See below for a screenshot showing the addon checked properly. Once you've done this you can close out blender and get to the next program.

4 2) StudioCompiler Run StudioCompiler from the desktop. Click on the Configure button in the program and fill it out with these values (copy/paste them, I found that browsing to these folders and trying to select always resulted in the program crashing, but typing them in kept it running). Here they are for easy copy/paste, make sure to modify them if you keep steam/these items in a different place on your computer. 1. Note If you get the error about side-by-side configuration being wrong, you need to download the 2008 Visual C++ Redistributable and install it. You can get that here: Steam Game Directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\garrysmod\garrysmod SDK Tools Directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer\bin Click on OK and then close out StudioCompiler for now. 3) The Gimp Run the downloaded installer for gimp and accept the defaults. Section 4 Set Up Your Working Area and Directories We're going to create our addon on the desktop for simplicity's sake. Some files will end up created in the GarrysMod folder by StudioCompiler but that is by design we will simply move them back out later. You now need to create a number of folders on the desktop to house the project. Here is a screenshot of the folders showing how they are nested together. Create the folder structure on your machine the same way I have it here manually, or...

5 If you prefer to avoid all that typing and would rather just do this from the run box then you can do Start > Run and copy and paste the text below to create these folders: cmd.exe /c mkdir %USERPROFILE %\Desktop\exampleball\addons\exampleball\materials\models\exampleball; %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\exampleball\addons\exampleball\models\exampleball; mkdir %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\exampleball\compile Section 5 Create the Texture in Gimp Now we will create the example ball texture. Start up the Gimp and follow along. 1) Choose File > New 2) Enter an Image Size of 512x512 pixels (px) 3) Under advanced options select Fill With > Foreground Color 4) Click Ok 5) You should now have a black square on the screen. 6) Lock the black square in place by clicking on the lock area for the layer on the right hand side, when the chain appears it is all set. If you don't see the chain, click where the chain would be and it will appear: 7) 8) Click on the arrows next to the black and white squares to switch primary colors, pictured below: 9) Now the color selector should look like this:

6 10)Click on the large capital A to use the text tool. (Or press T on the keyboard) 11) In the text toolbar, set font size to 48 and justify to center, like this: 12) With the text tool, click in the image a little above and to the left of center and type in EXAMPLE BALL. You should now see it written on the image. 13) Select the move tool by clicking on the cross with arrows on each line. (Or press M on the keyboard). 14) Hover directly over a part of the white text and left click and drag to move the text layer. Try to get it centered as best you can. 15) It should look something like this:

7 Section 6 Output The Texture for Use (From Gimp) 1) In Gimp click on File > Save As... set the name to exampleball_texture.xcf and save in folder to the exampleball folder on your desktop. This way we have a copy of the gimp file to go back to edit in case we want to make changes later. 2) Now, click on Save to save the file as specified above. 3) Click on File > Export..., Set the name to exampleball_texture.tga. Select Export, and then Export again on the next box when doing this. 4) Close Gimp Section 7 Create the VTF File from Our Gimp Work (VTFEdit) 1) Open VTFEdit from the desktop icon. 2) Click File > Import... and choose the exampleball_texture.tga file that we made earlier. 3) Click File > Save As... and navigate to the addons\exampleball\materials\models\exampleball folder on the desktop. Name it exampleball_texture 4) Close VTFEdit Section 8 Create our VMT File (Notepad) 1) The VMT file specifies the texture itself as well as the properties of the material relative to the source engine. Since this is a ball we want it to bounce. We need to create a file called exampleball_texture.vmt in the same folder as the.vtf we just created in Section 7 and put the following in the file: Code Box: "VertexlitGeneric" { "$basetexture" "models/exampleball/exampleball_texture.vtf "$surfaceprop" "metal_bouncy" "$model" 1 } Section 9 Create the Ball Itself and Texture it (Blender) 1) Open Blender 2) Press A to deselect the default cube. 3) Hold Shift and Right-Click on the Camera and then the Lamp in the scene. Press X and delete them. This screen shows the two items we want to get rid of selected just before deleting them. Both have been circled in red for clarity:

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12 4) Right-Click on the cube in the center and press TAB to go into edit mode. 5) Press W on the keyboard and then U to Subdivide Smooth once. 6) Press W on the keyboard and then U to Subdivide Smooth again. 7) You should now have a sphere that looks something like this:

13 8) Make sure your Num Lock is on and then press 1 on the numberpad. 9) Press 5 on the numberpad, you are now looking at the object from the front in orthographic view. 10)Press G on the keyboard, followed by Z and then type in 1.6 and hit enter. Now the ball should be resting on the red line as shown: 11) Click and drag the edge of the main window to split the view into two windows. The part to click and drag is shown in this screenshot, drag it to the left:

14 12) With your mouse cursor in the new window area press T on the keyboard to move the mesh tools out of the way. 13) Now, click on the Current Editor Type box and select UV/Image Editor as shown: 14) On your left window change the Viewport Shading to texture view, as shown:

15 15) Now, in the right window click on Image > Open Image Choose exampleball_texture.tga from our exampleball folder on the desktop and open it. 16) In the left window press Z twice to go into wireframe view. 17) We now need to mark a seam for the UV unwrap when texturing. 18) Alt+ Right Click on the outside ring to select it. It should now look like this: 19) Press Ctr+E and then click on Mark Seam the outer ring will now have a reddish tint to it. 20) Press A twice to select all the vertices. 21) Press U and then select Project from View, the right window should now look like this:

16 22) Click on the left hand view and press Number Pad 3 to go into side view. 23) Hold shift and right click drag a box around the back side vertices, as shown, the UV map will change slightly as well: 24) Now, on the right window, press S to scale the UV map, move the mouse to make it match the size of the text and then left click when done. When the size looks right, press G to move the vertices so that the text is inside. You may need to resize them again with S or move with G. When done it should look something like this:

17 25) Since this is the back side of the ball, we need to mirror the UV map on the X-Axis. In that right hand window click on UVs > Mirror > X Axis 26) Now on the left side press A to deselect and then use Shift+B to drag a box around the front vertices, on the left side of ball. Resize and move them on the right window until they line up with the text. 27) We just have one more thing to fix and then we are done with the texturing part. Drag select the middle and next to middle vertices on the left side wireframe with Shift+B click. On the UV map window press G to move this ring down off the words, otherwise we get some strange results. 28) On the left window switch the viewport shading to texture:

18 29) In the box next to it, Change the pivot point to 3d Cursor : 30) Press TAB to leave edit mode. You should now see the textured example ball. It would be quite small in game without some resizing so let's bump it up some. 31) Press S to scale and then hit 8 and then Enter, the ball is now 8 times bigger. 32) You may need to scroll backwards on the mouse to see the whole ball, but now it is created and textured. Here is an example of the finished example ball: 33) We need to tweak a couple more things about this to get it ready for SMD export. Click on the object tab on the left and change it's name from cube to exampleball as shown:

19 34) Now we rename the material to exampleball_texture as shown: 35) Lastly, rename the texture itself: 36) Go to File > Save As and save it to the desktop\exampleball folder as exampleball.blend. 37) Click on the scene button and then scroll down to Source Engine Export, set the export path to // and the Format to SMD as shown. Then click on exampleball.smd to export. This step is illustrated below:

20 38) We are done in Blender, now on the desktop in the exampleball folder you should have a file called exampleball.smd, this is your source model, now ready for compiling. Section 10 Get Ready to Compile 1) We need a collision object for our example ball, fortunately we can simply duplicate what we have and rename it. Create a copy of exampleball.smd and name it exampleball_collision.smd. Once done, copy both of these smd files into your exampleball\compile folder. 2) We now need to make a qc document which tells our compiler what sort of result we are looking for. We will save this file inside the compile folder and call it compile.qc. Here are the contents we are looking for: Code Box: $modelname "exampleball/exampleball.mdl" $cdmaterials "models/exampleball" $scale 1.0 $surfaceprop "metal_bouncy" $body "Body" "exampleball.smd" $sequence "idle" "exampleball.smd" fps 30 $collisionmodel "exampleball_collision.smd" {

21 $mass 40 } Section 11 Compile The Model 1) Now we compile the model, open up StudioCompiler 2) Click on Compile w/existing QC 3) Browse to our qc file we just made and select it. 4) Click on Compile 5) You should get a result something like this: C:/Program Files (x86)/steam/steamapps/common/source SDK Base 2013 Singleplayer/bin/studiomdl.exe -game "C:\Program Files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\garrysmod\garrysmod" "C:\Users\user\Desktop\exampleball\compile\compile.qc" WARNING: AppFramework : Unable to load module p4lib.dll! qdir: "c:\users\user\desktop\exampleball\compile\" gamedir: "C:\Program Files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\garrysmod\garrysmod\" g_path: "C:\Users\user\Desktop\exampleball\compile\compile.qc" Building binary model files... Working on "compile.qc" SMD MODEL exampleball.smd SMD MODEL exampleball_collision.smd Model has 1 convex sub-parts Collision model completed writing C:\Program Files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\garrysmod\garrysmod\models/exampleball/exampleball.m dl: bones 964 bytes (1) animations 124 bytes (1 anims) (1 frames) [0:00] sequences 220 bytes (1 seq) ik/pose 164 bytes eyeballs 0 bytes (0 eyeballs) flexes 0 bytes (0 flexes) textures 72 bytes keyvalues 0 bytes bone transforms 0 bytes Collision model volume in^3 collision 0

22 bytes total writing C:\Program Files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\garrysmod\garrysmod\models/exampleball/exampleball.v vd: vertices bytes (384 vertices) tangents 6144 bytes (384 vertices) total bytes Generating optimized mesh "C:\Program Files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\garrysmod\garrysmod\models/exampleball/exampleball.s w.vtx": body parts: 8 bytes models: 20 bytes model LODs: 12 bytes meshes: 9 bytes strip groups: 25 bytes strips: 27 bytes verts: 3456 bytes indices: 1152 bytes bone changes: 8 bytes everything: 4741 bytes Generating optimized mesh "C:\Program Files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\garrysmod\garrysmod\models/exampleball/exampleball.d x80.vtx": body parts: 8 bytes models: 20 bytes model LODs: 12 bytes meshes: 9 bytes strip groups: 25 bytes strips: 27 bytes verts: 3456 bytes indices: 1152 bytes bone changes: 16 bytes everything:

23 4749 bytes Generating optimized mesh "C:\Program Files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\garrysmod\garrysmod\models/exampleball/exampleball.d x90.vtx": body parts: 8 bytes models: 20 bytes model LODs: 12 bytes meshes: 9 bytes strip groups: 25 bytes strips: 27 bytes verts: 3456 bytes indices: 1152 bytes bone changes: 16 bytes everything: 4749 bytes Completed "compile.qc" StudioMDL Thread complete If your output matches this then you are all set and have compiled the model. We're almost done. Go ahead and exit StudioCompiler Section 12 Package Everything Together Now we just have to put all these pieces together so that we have an Addon ready to load in GarrysMod 13. Just follow these steps and we are on our way: 1) Navigate to: C:\Program Files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\garrysmod\garrysmod\models\exampleball 2) Copy everything inside this folder to your desktop exampleball folder in this path: Desktop\exampleball\addons\exampleball\models\exampleball 3) Delete the C:\Program Files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\garrysmod\garrysmod\models\exampleball folder. 4) Copy your exampleball\addons folder to C:\Program Files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\garrysmod\garrysmod\ 5) In Game, select the Q menu and then all games and you can spawn the exampleball from within there.