Can't export VTA files.

[Oisín]

Hey, I've recently got into modding for Left 4 Dead 2, just making skins and what not. I've decided to try do a bit of modeling so my friend gave me the idea of making a 'JoeysWorldTour' boomer, by simply putting on a mickey mouse hat.
I'm fairly new to blender but I made a mickey mouse hat and done all the UV and this is what I've gotten; https://imgur.com/1RkShrC

I've went to export it, and once done tried to compile it. It doesn't work so I looked at the logs and saw this;

      SMD MODEL boomer_reference.smd
      ERROR: c:\user\desktop\joey-the-boomer\models\infected\boomer.qc(9): - could not load file 
      'boomer_01.vta'
      ERROR: Aborted Processing on 'infected/boomer.mdl'

I went to look at the VTA in blender and everytime I go to export it, it says

'ERROR: Object VTA verticies has no polygons, skipping'

How do I export it as a VTA? Every time I try to export it, it will only export as a .SMD and even at that it doesn't export.

[Zappy]

It sounds like you're thinking that the object with lots of little dots/vertices is the VTA object. This is wrong.



When you import a VTA file using the Blender Source Tools, it will try to match the VTA file's "reference" vertice positions to the mesh object you have selected or such. Then any of the "reference" vertices that are close enough to vertices of the mesh object will affect those vertices for the flexes.

But if any "reference" vertices are not close enough to vertices of the mesh object, the Blender Source Tools will create an object with vertices in the "reference" vertice positions, for no purpose other than to help you manually identify where any unaffected vertices of the mesh object are supposed to be for the flex(es) to be imported correctly.

Again, the vertice-only object has nothing to do with exporting VTA files, only being able to identify where vertices should be for importing a VTA file properly.



As for exporting VTA files, this happens automatically when you export an SMD file with an object that has shape keys in Blender (which should be the mesh object that has polygons everywhere, not a vertice-only object).



It might be worth considering using DMX instead of SMD, as then the flexes will be embedded within the DMX mesh export while not requiring you to do any flex-related stuff in the QC file, as opposed to being in a VTA flex export, requiring flex-related stuff in QCs, separate from an SMD mesh object.

[Oisín]

Originally posted by Zappy:

It sounds like you're thinking that the object with lots of little dots/vertices is the VTA object. This is wrong.



When you import a VTA file using the Blender Source Tools, it will try to match the VTA file's "reference" vertice positions to the mesh object you have selected or such. Then any of the "reference" vertices that are close enough to vertices of the mesh object will affect those vertices for the flexes.

But if any "reference" vertices are not close enough to vertices of the mesh object, the Blender Source Tools will create an object with vertices in the "reference" vertice positions, for no purpose other than to help you manually identify where any unaffected vertices of the mesh object are supposed to be for the flex(es) to be imported correctly.

Again, the vertice-only object has nothing to do with exporting VTA files, only being able to identify where vertices should be for importing a VTA file properly.



As for exporting VTA files, this happens automatically when you export an SMD file with an object that has shape keys in Blender (which should be the mesh object that has polygons everywhere, not a vertice-only object).



It might be worth considering using DMX instead of SMD, as then the flexes will be embedded within the DMX mesh export while not requiring you to do any flex-related stuff in the QC file, as opposed to being in a VTA flex export, requiring flex-related stuff in QCs, separate from an SMD mesh object.

Thanks for your reply, I'll give it a go and see!