Half-Life Tutorials

Making a World model for Half-Life - by Rat

 

We will be deleting the bottom of this "box" so that we can continue the handle and not have extra faces in out knife. Select the "Bottom" viewport selection in a viewport from its viewport selections drop down list. You might have to right click in this viewport window and select "Reset View" from the menu selection to get the wireframe to show up in this view, and also zoom in a bit. In the the "Left" viewport you will be using the "Select" tool set to the "Face" option and selecting all but the "box" that you just created. Hide these faces. Next, turn on the "Ignore Backfaces" option by clicking in the check box. Click in a blank area to unselect all faces or vertices. Click inside of the box in the "Bottom" viewport of the "box" so that only two of the bottom "faces" are selected. Press the "Delete" button on your keyboard, and those unwanted faces disappear magically!

In order to help us to create the handle portion better, we are going to make the viewport bigger. Right click in the "Left" viewport window and click on the "Maximize" menu selection as shown in Figure 1.41. Your viewport will resize to full screen to you client window of Milkshape3D. This works as a toggle, which means that in order to see all your viewports again, you just do the same step as before.

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Figure 1.41 Selecting the Maximize viewport selection

Zoom the viewport window in until you can see the extremities of the knife handle for better creation of the vertices. The creation process will be exactly the same as when we first made one side of the knife blade, only this time it will be totally flat. I told you it would be easier now! You may want to review the procedures in for the creation of the faces. I am going to get you started by telling you that you will create the outline of vertices. I will also give you a tip: 4 of the vertices on each side of the knife handle have also been created for us from the box that we created earlier. So you will have to align the vertices that you have created to complete the outline  to the left side of the "box" in the "Front" viewport. Figure 1.42 illustrates what you should have when done. Again review the steps from the knife blades creation to accomplish this step.

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Figure 1.42 Completed faces of knife handle

The next step is to Texture this side. Your on your own here as well as you can review the steps that was involved in the the texturing of the knife blade. You will also have to remember to make a new "group" of faces in the "Group" rollout. Figure 1.43 illustrates what it will look like when you have completed this operation.

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Figure 1.43 Textured "Group"

Wow! Looking good! Do you remember the trick of duplicating one side and mirroring it to the other side. Also remember to weld the puppy to the other side and texture it in the same way we did the left and right blade mirror. You will then sew it up just like we did on the knife blade. Please review these steps if necessary to refresh your memory. I would like to explain that you will have to delete two faces on the other side of the knife handle that formed part of the "box," as they will get in the way of our duplication. Please refer to Figure 1.44 to see the selected faces to be deleted. Make sure you have the "Right" viewport available to work in to do this and have the

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Figure 1.44 Selected faces for deletion

The last thing that should be done is to fix the textures of you handle. You might not realize this, but the top portion of the "box" that you created earlier, has no texture assigned to it and the new groups that you have created will need texture added to them. First select the "box" top, and fake a texture for it by making a region in the "Top" view of the "Texture Coordinate Editor" like we did before. It should have a metal look. The knife handle's "Front" and "Back" texture groups can be faked as well. (Some of the more particular texture artist may take extra time to "paint" the sides of the weapon, but we are just going to fake because we can!) When your finished with the creation of the handle and textured it, unhide everything by clicking the"Edit->Unhide All" in the  menu selections.