Blender

crucial

Side quest: From here you could go into pose mode and check to make sure the weights are acting as expected. Not necessary for this tutorial. If you want to, go to Object mode and select the armature. Go to Pose mode, and select some bones and move/rotate them around. When done, reset the pose. From pose mode, press A, A (so that all bones are selected), Pose > Clear Transform > All.

Side Quest: observe the UV by changing the Editor Type to "UV Editor"

Tips:



Blender terminology: Mesh - the collection of 2d faces combined to make a 3d object. Armature - the collection of bones that move the mesh. Try not to call this a skeleton. It's confsing because sometimes your mesh will be the shape of an actual skeleton. Try not to call the mesh a body, because body is a very important term that means something else in Blender. Conversely, bones in the armature are called "bones" .. not confusing at all.



It's easy to end up with duplicated vertices and faces that end up the wrong way. An easy way to fix that is to use Mesh > Normals > Recalculate Outside and then Mesh > Clean Up > Merge By Distance (like everything Blender, those commands are worth studying)



From Object mode select the armature, click the 'running man' icon on the right > Viewport Display > select 'Names' to see the bones' names. It's kind of messy so you won't want this on all the time.



Get used to hitting ALT+A to deselect everything before selecting in Blender. It is extremely easy to assign vertices and weight where you didn't meant to.



You can delete unnecessary vertex groups (like Fingers, in the case of this tutorial) and reorder them. Don't rename them!



Most tutorials will have you parent with automatic weights. This works will in most cases. But if your model isn't quite human looking, or is extremely simple, empty Weights will save you time.



Personally I advise working with empty weights if your character isn't very humanoid.



Even pro animators struggle with weight painting. However, because our model has extremely few vertices it will be ultra simple.



Blender pays attention to where you hover the mouse.



UV does not mean Ultraviolet. U and V are the coordinates that images are mapped to on each face of your mesh. Still, you probably should put on sunscreen.



Blender offers tools amazing for making materials and textures.



If you open an .smd file with Notepad++ it will show you all the faces, and the material assigned to each.

Full video here:In Blender delete the cube, light and camera. From the "Gmod_PM_tut" folder, import 'male_09_reference_less_materials.smd' This is a model from Half Life 2 , from which I removed things not needed for this tutorial. Delete the mesh so you are left with the skeleton. Save your Blender file as 'sm' (short for 'stickman') in "Gmod_PM_tut/sm"Create a mesh to outline the bones of the skeleton. If you are comfortable with Blender this will be easy. Otherwise, it's worth taking the time to learn. When doing the hand area, pay attention to the bones. One of them is for the weapon attachment. Encompass that with your model.Name the collection "reference". This isfor this tutorial.From object mode, parent the mesh to the armature. This allows the skeleton to control the movement of the body. Parent with empty weights.In object mode, select the mesh. In the properties window > Object Data Properties, you can see something called Vertex Groups. This is a list of the vertices that each bone will control. Currently the bones do not control the movement of any vertices. Weight Painting is the process of assigning vertices to the bones, and how much influence the bones have over their vertices.From Object mode, select the mesh, and select Weight Paint.Using the Vertex groups window on the right, we will select the vertex groups one at a time and assign the verticies' weight. Every weight will be set to 100%. This normally done with the paint brush, but for this tutorial select the verticies and using SHIFT+K assign full (1.0) weight.When finished weight painting, go over it one vertex group at a time. Go to the Vertex Groups list and click on the top one (probably ValveBiped.Bip01_Pelvis) Go down the list (possible to use arrow keys as long as mouse is hovering in that box) and check to make the weight painting is ok. Turn the model around and check the different sides.From Pose Mode press A, A (so that all bones are selected), CTRL+A > Apply Pose as Rest PoseBreak time. Getting to this point is an accomplishment.Our player model will look pink and black unless we give it material and texture. On the right side of the screen, click on Material Properties and then New. Change the name of the material to 'sm'Change the Editor Type to "Image Editor" Click "New", name it "sm", 2048x2048, select a colour, and select 32bit float. Where it says Untitled, change it to "sm" Then go to Image > Save As and save it as "sm.png" in Gmod_PM_tut/Blender_files.It's important to save textures/images in this way. Otherwise they will disappear from your Blender file when you exit.On the right side of the screen (in the Material Tab) use the dropdown menu to select "sm"Change the Editor Type back to "3D Viewport", select the mesh, and go to Edit Mode. Press A to select all faces. Go to UV > Smart UV Project. This takes your 3d collection of faces ("mesh") and divides them up so they can fit flat on a 2d plane.Assign the texture (or image) sm.png to the base colour of the Material.From the Materials Properties tab on the right of the screen, click "Assign"Now we have a mesh with an assigned armature and material. This is all we need for a player model.From Object Mode select the mesh. On the right side, go to Scenes > Source Engine Export > and change Export Path to "Gmod_PM_tut\for_crowbar"Export Format: SMDTarget Up Axis: ZEngine Path: Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\GarrysMod\bin\ (or wherever your GarrysMod\bin\" is)Target Engine: SourceUnderneath "Source Engine Exportables" it will show the name of the .smd file you will export. It should be reference.smdExport "reference.smd"This creates an .smd file, one of 4 files that Crowbar will need to compile our player model.