I got back on the musical magical blender again and started on a project for tf2. Mostly I am doing this because I get the graveyard shift at my new job, just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. I am currently making an all class weapon, and as of right now I have a model in blender, a diffuse map, and a rough normal/bump map. The issue I am having is that I am not sure what pieces I need to get this thing in game for testing. I also can't find anything about doing a specular map or the source engine equivlent. I found some stuff but none of it makes sense to me. At my desk I do have access to wifi, but its very limited and kinda buggy so I can't really do much searching. So here is what I am asking: If you know of any good guides and links post them here. If you are experienced with source engine stuff and UE3 stuff, and can help bridge the gaps for me, please let me know. If you can think of anything that would help just say so. I thank you all for helping. Also I had a thought: If I created something and it gets in tf2, would there be any issues preventing me form modifying it and submitting it for another game? For instance my current weapon gets into tf2, would I get in trouble if I changed it and send it to uber for something? (I am talking about something original here, not megamilk or anything I have done before.)
Since I actually started out with TF2, this seems to be my area of expertise. To be brutally honest, making a weapon is a terrible way to start modding TF2, especially an all class weapon. It would be much better for your learning process to start with a hat, since the in-game importer currently only supports weapons. Basically, for testing purposes, just a model without any UVs is enough (I would even say recommended). This way you can see how your model looks, if it doesn't clip, if there's any small details you can delete because they don't work out, etc. When you are happy with your model, start UVing it. Make sure to make a LOD (level of detail, basically a version of your model with a lower polycount to be used when the model is far away, to reduce unnecessairy rendering). You didn't find anything about specular maps for Team Fortress 2 for the simple reason that it doesn't use one; it uses a thing called phong instead. Every model has at least one texture, which is the .vtf file. This is basically your diffuse. Your Alpha can either be two things: your phong (white is shiny, black is not, or inverse, I can't remember), translucency (you can forget that) or your paint map (white is paintable, black is not). Recently, most items have another .vtf, which is your normal map, and your alpha is your phong mask. Every .vtf is accompanied by a .vtm. I'm not going into detail here, but a .vtm decides what .vtf is shown, along with a lot of other factors. Rigging is incredibly easy in TF2, you can just look that up. The part about resubmitting content to other games: it's allowed, but http://www.teamfortress.com/contribute/legal.php]under certain restrictions[/url]. So my tip: start with a simple hat, UV it, texture it, rig it. Stay away from the weapons until you are comfortable with TF2's art style.
If you do end up submitting it, or coming close to submitting it, you should probably get critiques from pretty much anywhere other than Uber forums.
The reason for me doing a weapon is that I cannot think of any idea for a hat or misc item that wasn't already done. So I switched to my backup idea, which is an all class weapon like the protest sign or the freedom staff. Right now my main problem is that every guide, tool, and everything else is just out of date or broken. Most of the stuff I am finding was built for older versions of blender or predates the itemtest system. Thank you, we will be talking As for testing I know I am very close, I just need to export from blender into item test. Phong: now I have a lead. Rigging: I saw a bit of helljumper's videos and its pretty straight forward. of course
