How-Tos¶
How do I …¶
… get my model into Cafu?¶
See this video for details.
Additional notes:
- When watching the video, change the playback quality to “720p HD” if possible.
- There is no audio track in this video.
- Use the New Entity tool for placing the
newly created
.cmdl
model into a map. Watch the Placing a Model tutorial for related information. - If you want to make adjustments later, both the
.cmdl
model as well as the material definitions can be edited as shown above also after the model has been placed into a map or world file. The changes will take effect when the program is next restarted. - In the video, why did we close the model window before editing the
material definitions?
When you save a model file, the Model Editor overwrites the
_editor.cmat
file as explained at Model Files Explained. In fact, we should never have hand-edited the_editor.cmat
file, but do all edits in.cmat
(without the_editor
part) instead, but we thought it’s too difficult to explain that in the video. 😉 Additionally, the Model Editor had to re-read the new material definitions anyway, so even if our edits were made in the right file, we had to close and reopen the model.
… scale my model?¶
There are two main methods for scaling a model:
- via the Skeleton / the Joint Inspector
- via the Transform dialog
The Joint Inspector can transform individual joints of the model, but only for the bind pose. It is mostly useful for static, non-animated models, but even then only if there is a special requirement that the Transform dialog cannot handle.
The Transform dialog is much easier to use, as it transforms the entire model (the whole skeleton): the transformation is applied to all currently selected animation sequences. If no animation sequence is selected at all, the “bind pose” is transformed.
… import animations from other models?¶
In some cases, importing animations is very easy: Use the “+” button in the Animations pane as demonstrated in the above video.
However, this works only if the animations are stored in separate files
that are compatible with the already loaded mesh. This is specifically
the case with md5anim
s for their related md5mesh
file.
We will extend this functionality in the future. Until then and for all other cases, see the next How-To about generically sharing and re-using elements.