2014-02-14 - Modelling

When I was younger I played around with modelling for a bit. I made a plane, a canyon, but what I really got into was porting models. Taking models from one game and converting them so that they could be used by another game. To port a model you need to find a way to extract the models out of the container format the first game uses and then find a program or series of programs that will allow you to get it into a format that the second game uses. It was a puzzle. You knew the start and end points but you had to figure out what lay between them.

I converted models from a few games but the two big ones were Homeworld and Aliens vs. Predator 2. They are two of my favourite games and they also happened to have interesting models. I ported all of the strike craft in Homeworld as well as all of the Turanic Raider ships. I ported a bunch of weapons from AvP2 as well as some helmets and masks. I also ported a couple alien eggs, a Chestburster, a Facehugger and an Alien. You can see some of them here. I rigged the Chestburster to have a skeleton but someone else did the Alien. All of these models were ported to the source engine and G-Mod since its sandbox nature made it really easy to spawn and use the ported models.

Ported Homeworld Carrier

Skeletons were actually one of the reasons I stopped porting the Homeworld models. A lot of the bigger ships (corvettes, frigates, and capital ships) have turrets and other moveable parts. To port these models properly those parts should be rigged and I never got around learning how to do that for non-humanoid models. I’d go to port some more models, remember I needed to learn how to rig the turrets, then get discouraged and stop. I had already solved the puzzle anyway.