From this (http://www.halflifesource.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=2774) interview.

Half-Life Radio: Outstanding. I like the attention to quality. Question about the SDK. Is there any release date on that, or any idea when it's released to the MOD developers?

Gabe Newell: We're going to start releasing stuff incrementally, so the next release will give people the ability to build Half-Life 2 models and have a viewer for them and it'll show them what it looks like in the engine. A little bit of a problem with releasing the SDK is, in order to fully release the SDK we have to release the whole game and it's difficult for us to do that without people essentially doing a bunch of stuff that would probably spoil the game for people. So, the next big step will be happening shortly after E3 is to release something so that all the modelers and animators can get their work done and see what it's going to look like in a small run-type version for models & animation.


Oooo, have fun MaRzY :D
All the info about normal mapping and all those other maps should be in it :cool:

The model viewer for HL2 baffels me as the last version I saw was based on Metes 1.22 version. Seeing as HL2 is supposed to be a DirectX only game im confused as to why the HLMV for it is OpenGL based. Makes you wonder how much of HL2 can actually only be done with DirectX or whether there wasy some "persuasion" to go with DirectX (HL2 on XBox anyone?).

- Jed

HL2 on X-Box, I believe, was supposed to have been confirmed. Unfortunate, I think. It should be possible to use either OpenGL or DirectX, like HL1. I've never been happy with how DirectX renders.

The first HL2 movie was a DirectX 9 rendering tech demo, if I'm not mistaken. That seems to have been the first thing released on FilePlanet, anyway, according to a search I did last night. I may have misinterpreted.