"I was challenged to get this model in to SFM and be able to animate it totally, complete with an IK rig. So, I'm uploading this GIF just to prove that no matter how complex a model maybe or how poorly a source model your working with is put together, with a little work and imagination, it can be converted to work in SFM.

This model is a combination of models. The doll is from a GMod download and the battleship was slip out of a MMD PMX and remodelled to work with the doll.

The GMod model was horribly put together, someone had hacked a MMD doll using the L4D coach. It couldn't be opened in SFM because it errored out with Checksum Errors and it couldn't be fixed by simply decompiling and recompiling (the usual fix for a model giving checksum errors.) The QC couldn't be rewritten in a manner to get a good compile because the model was so poorly hacked. I had to do some major work on it in Blender to get it to finally compile, including a complete redo of the 16 simple shapekeys for the facial flexes. I also had to reposition bones and fix weight painting.

I got the battleship pack from a MMD PMX. It had over 1400 elements (bone names, vertex groups, material names, shapekey names, etc) written in Japanese that had to be translated into english before I could even start working on it. The original model had over 600 bones that had to be trimmed to under 256 and rename them Thankfully 354 of the 612 were hairbones of the doll I cut out of the pack. I had to adjust bone positions and fix weight painting in order to get it to work. I created detailed normal maps for both models. The ship portion of the model had over 56,000 verts, 17500 were chopped from the model by searching for non-manifold mesh and removing doubles.

Total time to covert both models from their original formats export, compile, create the IK rig and produce the GIF in SFM... around 14 hours of actual working time.

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