About:

Crafty is a 3D object, material, model and file browsing utility targeted towards Half-Life modders or enthusiasts looking for a Steam Independent application for quick previews. It currently supports Half-Life 2 .bsp, .mdl, .vmf and .gl formats along with Half-Life .bsp, .mdl, .map and .rmf formats in a variety of render modes.

Screenshots:

Features:

• View Half-Life 2 .bsp, .gl, .mdl and .vmf files.
• View Half-Life 1 .bsp, .map, .mdl and .rmf files.
• View .obj and .skp files.
• Textured, solid, x-ray, wireframe and point render modes.
• Toggle occlusion, frustum and backface culling.
• Scene freezing.
• Export all formats and materials to .obj.
• Browse and export from GCF and other package formats.
• Browse and export materials.
• Browse and export models.
• Quick and easy setup.
• 100% free.

Hidden Features:

Crafty is designed foremost as an object viewer, but it also contains several useful features that can be invoked externally. For example, Crafty's File System Browser, Material Browser and Model Browser can all be invoked with special command arguments. To view one or more packages in File System Browser simply use: Crafty.exe -fsb -mount [package 1] -mount [package 2] ... . To view one or more packages in Material Browser simply use: Crafty.exe -msb -mount [package 1] -mount [package 2] ... . To view one or more packages in Model Browser simply use: Crafty.exe -mb -mount [package 1] -mount [package 2] ... . For example, if you wanted to view thumbnails of the materials in source materials.gcf you would use Crafty.exe -msb -mount "source materials.gcf". If you are familiar with Windows you can also add shortcuts to these features in the system context menu.

This seems like a cool tool, but when I try to load a HL2 bsp it pops up an error:

"Error loading file:

Error: Unknown file extension."

So at the moment it doesn't seem to work at all.

Also it says "Object Viewer" on the windows and icons, perhaps "Crafty" would make more sense.

Tanks for the tools!

Fire.

How are you trying to load the .bsp files? Double click? Do they work from within Object Viewer? The error message should have the file name after the ":" so something odd may be going on.

I'm on another vacation at the moment so I can't really test it, I'll have a look when get back.

What?? Filetype is *.xzp, what is that??

I do not lknow that new filetype.

Gb SnakeMedia

.xzp (XZip) is the file format for the XBox equivalent of a .gcf files. If you own the XBox version of the game, and you stick it in your computer's DVD-Rom, you will find .xzp files. There are also source and header files in the Source SDK that relate to it.

Thanks, I know that new filertype...

Thanks Nerm!

Gb SnakeMedia

The error seems to be specific to one of the machines I was using. Must be a windows issue. So I have it working now on another computer.

Next question:

I am trying to create some cinematics for a cut sequence of my level. To get the same 'look' as in game I have altred vrad to output the lightmaps as tga files. I have exported the set as obj from crafty (hammer dxf does not have texture param). However, the parameterization of the surfaces that come out of craft don't match to the lightmaps, and there is only one texture coordinate set. Any ideas on how to get the lightmap coordinates?

Thanks,
fire

Lightmaps require an additional UV set which is generated off the the vertices of each face using a linear combination of the vertices in the face and the lightmap's texture axis (then normalized by the lightmap's size and minimums).

.obj files only support one UV set so it's kinda hard to export these.

Any chance that you could put in a flag, that allows crafty to output the lightmap uv set instead of the texture uv set, in the obj? I can combine them in maya procedurally after the fact.

Thanks,
fire

Maybe something like this?

My favorite tool is the File System Browser.
It crashes when i try to extract multiple (big) mounted GCFs at the same time though. (Right after extracting the first GCFs successfully)

I tried it with Source Engine 2, Counter-Strike Source Shared, Client and Source Materials, Models and Sounds.
When i try to extract smaller Gcfs it works.

But still a really good job Nem :)

Thanks for the info Bluntman (nice name). The next time it does this, can you post the details of the error message? This will help me track the bug down.

I've also almost completed v2.0.0 of HLLib (the library that opens GCF files) so the File System Browser will see a big face lift to it's internals in the next few weeks.

> Maybe something like this?

Percicely. Like I said, I've got the light maps. I'll see if I can't hook the guy up on the link with how to get them to export from vrad.

So if you can put that feature in it would be *very* helpful. It's the last piece that will allow is to create a compleatly ingame look in a 3d package.

Alternatly, you might could give me a hent as to were in one of the valve mod kit apps I might just find the reading or writing of the lightmap UV set (or a procedure that computes them). And I could handle the rest myself.

I'll start looking myself, but so far I haven't see anything obvious.

you can find me at: joshua at crackcreative dot com


Thanks again for the tools!
fire

Exporting the lightmaps and the lightmap UVs as a separate mesh isn't to troublesome (that is to say, the way the code is, exporting the lightmaps can be done in a line or two), the reason the next release is going to take about two weeks is because I'm converting it over to HLLib v2.0.0 and I have still to implement the .map <-> .vmf conversion I promised someone else.

HLLib v2.0.0 is sitting at a healthy 8000+ lines and is just undergoing some final tweaking, and GCFScape v1.5.0 is ready (minus the validation feature I added to HLLib v2.0.0). But as you can imagine all these things take up a lot of my spare time and I have to prioritize feature requests.

I'll try to lookup the formulas for the UVs this weekend and post them (they weren't anywhere obvious in the source code, I had to figure them out for myself).

you got mail concerning the bugs, sir ;)

As long as we're on the subject. It would also be very nice if you could preserve the materials assignments. In the obj file, I get a few objects, one of which is the entire bsp model, the others are trigger zones that I don't need. However, when I break it apart every single poly is seperate, and they all have the same material. To rebuild I'm manually going through grouping, and assigning materals based on the same bsp loaded in hammer (good thing I have two monitors). It sure would save a good deal of time if I could have the materal assignments.

(I know, this is a request for later, and the light maps are much more important to me - sence there is no workaround)

Thanks,
j