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[RogerMooreSucks]

I was wondering if anyone knows how to export 3D mountains from cinema 4D to hammer? I really do appreciate the help.

[kraid]

The fastest and easiest way to export models from C4D is the plugin I/Ogre.
I'd also recomend Vertex Normal Tool lite to 'bake' the phong-tag smoothing into a normals Tag.

Materials should have the Name of the .vmt you're going to assign to the model.
Geometry should be triangulated before applying the Normal Tag.

If you need to know more about the structural setup of the file, just import an smd with the plugin and pay attention to the hierarchy and tags in the Object Manager Window.

Collision Models have to be assembled from convex shapes and you need to apply a phong angle of 180° to them.

Cinema is rendering the backface of the polygons by default, but you can disable that in the viewport options of the 3d viewport
or just use the polygon mode and "select all" from the selection menue.
Now the front faces will be tinted orange while the back of them is tinted blue.

You'll end up with one or several exported .smd Objects that can be compiled to a model using a .qc file.

For your Mountains you won't need any collision, so you will be fine with only one smd.
Keep in mind that there are polygon/vertex limits for source engine models.
(according to the vdc: 17,433 vertices and 2048 texture size for a single model)
Ofc. it's better to not hit these limits if it isn't absolutly necessary.

[RogerMooreSucks]

Edit: I figured it out. Thanks.

[RogerMooreSucks]

Hello. I am not having an issue converting the .SMD file to MDL. I tried countless times to make the .QC file but everytime i go to compile it gives me this error: SteamStartup() failed: SteamAPI_Init_Internal failed. I really have no idea what to do. Here is the .smd file if you want to help me create the QC file so i can compile this bloody thing. Here is the link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/guitgz8bthztdml/SnowBlind_Mountains.zip?dl=0. I have done a bunch of research and i know that this compile thing should be simple but i am wasting to much time on this. I made this mountains so damn beautiful i would hate for them to go to waste. I don't like asking for help but i feel this is necessary. Thanks if you can spare me your time. You will be credited.

[kraid]

How the hell did you create a 500MB .smd file?
Even if i go far above the triangle/vertex limits with a landscape object, i cannot even reach 1/10 of that size.

You're either doing something absolutly wrong, or trying to fool us one more time.
And i ain't got time for the second possibility.

[RogerMooreSucks]

Finally got solace on what was going on. by the way my .smd file is now only 100 megabytes now. When i dragged my QC file on the new StudioMDL.exe it told me that i had too many indices in source. My question is how would i go about fixing this error? Is my polygon count to much? I does one check the polygon count on a model?

[kraid]

Seriously, 100MB equals something arround 300.000 polygons. Far to much for source.
You can show the polycount for instance in the Object Manager (hierarchic window on the right) under Object>Object Information.

Binging down the polycount to an acceptable level is neccessary, the way of doing it depends a lot on the model itself.

Quick example:

Wireframe view:


While the mountain in front has over 2 million Quads, the one in the back only consists of 8192 triangles.
The rest is achived by the normalmap that was baked right from the highpoly sculpted object to the lowpoly one.

I seriously think that the background mountains for a map could be done with even much less polycount,
but this would also take more then 10 minutes of editing.

[RogerMooreSucks]

Thanks for the help Kraid. You were right my polygons amount was massive lol. I have reduces it to around 9,000 and it still looks great. It compiles but i check the folder where i set the model to be and it doesn't make a file?

[RogerMooreSucks]

UPDATE: I figured it all out. I had to do some major tweaking. Thanks for all your help Kraid.

[RogerMooreSucks]

I just have one finally question. How i do i export the textures I  used for the snow mountain? The textures were within cinema 4D. I tried to locate the folder for their textures but i couldn't find it. Or is there another way to get the textures on the actual prop so you don't have to use VTFedit to put custom textures...

[kraid]

Are we taking about bitmap textures or shader Materials from the content browser?

If your Material has bitmaps assigned, they can be found under the path that is referenced in the Material.
But i bet that you are using a Multilayered shader from the Content Browser.

These often consist of procedural noise paterns and effects.
They are no Texture, they won't work outside C4D, but...

C4D has a feature called "bake texture", which is able to render most of these effects to a bitmap texture
that can be exported.

In Object Manager, right Click on your Model, from the pull down menu select Cinema 4D tags>bake texture.
Now your model has a new Tag that allowes you to bake all the nice effects to a texture.
Your model needs to be UV mapped for this to work.

[RogerMooreSucks]

Hey Kraid. I am having an issue texturing the mountains. I know how to texture custom models and i made the necessary vmt and vmf files and linked it to the model but when i launch SDK and add the it the prop is invisible. I double checked everything to make sure but nothing seems to work. i checked the collison model and the lines are there but no model. Any suggestions? I just baked all the textures into one so what do i do now?

[kraid]

The Model is invisible in Editor/Model Viewer or ingame?
Is the prop visible without textures?

In the first case, it might be related to the face normals.
Make sure that the polygons face normals are pointing in the right direction.
In C4D select all polygons in Polygon mode, orange tint means frontside, blue tint is the backface.
Right click on the selection to bring up the context-menue where you have "align normals" and "reverse normals" commands.
Make sure all faces on the frontside are tinted orange.

Second case would point towards a missmatching prop type (e.g. a prop compiled as prop_physics used with a prop_static entity).

Third case would be an issue with the material settings, e.g. translucence or alpha enabled with a black alphachannel or wrong shader.
(please post your vmt in that case)

On a sidenote, a mountain prop that is used in the skybox won't need a collision model at all, you'll never physically interact with it anyway.

Just to rule out a few more common mistakes:

- make sure that the pivot of the mesh is reset to the world origin (in Axis modify mode (press L), set position to x=0 y=0 z=0)
- make sure the scale of the object is right.
- if you scaled the object in the coordinate manager (any other value then 1 in size xyz), make sure to freeze the transformations.

[RogerMooreSucks]

I did everything you told me to do but this is what happens http://i.imgur.com/eNuhu2w.png. Here are the vmf's you requested with the location of the files https://www.dropbox.com/s/kijr3gag34nfzwb/Snowblind%20MountainsTexture%20with%20File%20Locations.zip?dl=0

[kraid]

You have to use the VertexLitGeneric shader for Props not the LightmappedGeneric.
Right now you might be able to see it in wireframe mode only.
After changing the shader to an appropriate format, it should show up.