I'm curious as to what the trick is to getting the "smooth all" function to work... Here's the scenario:

I've got a project model that needs a gun holstered to his right thigh.. I will call him "Duke" ... Duke is currently saved as a *.ms3d file... After browsing through endless possible candidates for said gun & holster I come across one that is suitable for my use given sufficient tweaking to get the look closer to what I want... I decompile the host model, import the reference .smd, delete everything that is unneeded, and finally export the remaining model as Gun.smd... Next I start with a clean slate, and open my Duke project... I then import the gun.smd into the project... At this point everything looks good, but obviously the gun/holster need to be moved around, scaled, etc to get the desired effect... As soon as I select the gun/holster, and move it around the smoothing disappears, and it reverts to flat shaded... No matter what I try I can't get that grouping to go back to being smooth shaded... I've tried regrouping, renaming, reassigning smoothing groups, etc, etc...

Can anyone throw me a bone, and enlighten me on the dynamics of Smoothing... ???


Thanks...

Try welding it's vertices again? Or just hitting Ctrl+M? Either way, I wouldn't worry overmuch about it for 2 reasons: it's a detail and Half-Life disregards almost all of the smoothing group info anyways.

Did you make sure to uncheck the autosmooth option?

Actually Half-Life does use smoothing groups - its gets translated into the angles for the polygons normals.

Thing with smoothing is that it needs a nice continuous string of faces to be able to work out whats is connected to what.

When you edit part of a model, more often than not the vertices get unwelded and therefore those faces technically aren't connected and the smoothing goes pop.

What I do, and to might save you frustration is to not even think about the smoothing groups until you model is made, UVMapped and textured. You'll find that if you try to UV map welded vertices that moving a polygon on one part of the UV map forces another part of your UV map to move to.

Keeping it unwelded means that every polygon has its own 3 unique vertices and you can therefore manipulate each one either in XYZ or UVW without borking another.

When your models done, select all the faces that make up that smoothing group (and use a single texture), weld them together and then assign the smoothing group.

You may also find in Milkshape that using "Clear All" wipes things clean and help you set smoothing groups - I've found without clearing the old ones the new assignment wont stick.

- Jed

I hardly bother with smoothing groups anymore in milkshape, this is because i model in lightwave, and you deal with smoothing groups in lightwave, by cutting and pasting the polys you wish to share the same smoothing group back again. The model is then saved out as a lightwave object, and imported into Milkshape. This then keeps the model looking just as it was in lightwave. I don't know if this works the same for 3dmax and other programs, but it maybe worth you taking a look, as it's easy and saves alot of time and messing around.

Thanks gents... I'll mess with it some more and try your advice... It's always good to get different fresh views on an idea..


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