Models: VVM Tutorial

Introduction

As you already know, the VVM exporter (vvmtool) takes inspiration from Valve's studiomdl in terms of usage. There are slight syntax differences, primarily because the way some features are implemented differ drastically.

For example, model events can be stacked and applied to many animation sequences at once. There is no way to do so with studiomdl.

Input files

Any .vvm consists of multiple input files. These can come in the following formats:

SMD (GoldSrc & Source)
MD5MESH and MD5ANIM (idTech 4)
FBX
IQE
OBJ (no animations)

Make sure that when you use animated files, that the bone naming and bone order is consistent among them.

Control File

This file is the head of the format. It specifies how the input files are loaded in, with additional useful commands on how to manipulate the input data. Many of these features would not be possible with an internal, modeling program specific exporter for VVM.

Here's an EXCERPT of a control file from *The Wastes:

output tommygun.vvm
materialprefix models/weapons/tommygun/

bone "Bone55" rename "Muzzleflash"

scene ref/tommygun.smd
rotate 0 -90 0

scene seq/idle.smd fps 20.0
scene seq/idle_empty.smd fps 20.0

event 0 1004 "weapons/tommygun/draw.wav 1"
    scene seq/draw.smd fps 25.0

event reset
event 0 1004 "weapons/tommygun/draw.wav 1"
    scene seq/draw_empty.smd fps 25.0

event reset
event 0 1004 "weapons/tommygun/holster.wav 1"
    scene seq/holster.smd fps 30.0

event reset
event 0 1004 "weapons/tommygun/holster.wav 1"
    scene seq/holster_empty.smd fps 30.0

origin 0 -32 0

event reset
event 14 1004 "weapons/tommygun/clipout.wav 1"
event 48 1004 "weapons/tommygun/clipin.wav 1"
    scene seq/reload_not_empty.smd fps 22.0
event 64 1004 "weapons/tommygun/bolt.wav 1"
    scene seq/reload.smd fps 22.0

origin 0 0 0

event reset
event 0 1001 "33 models/effects/muzzleflash/muzzleflash2.vvm"
event 0 1002 "3 40 0 70"
event 0 1005 "33 1"
    scene seq/shoot.smd fps 30.0
    scene seq/shoot_last.smd fps 30.0
...

That's a really complicated control file, but it highlights a few things:

You can specify as many events as you like...
and apply them to as many scenes as you want.
Creating an interface for a dedicated, in-modeling-program exporter would be unfeasible.
You can run commands to fix existing model input files after the fact, like bone renaming...
... and even rotation, scaling and origin re-adjusting (on a per-input-file basis!)
The origin command is absolute, so set it to '0 0 0' to reset

However, a model control file doesn't need to be this complicated:

    output terminal01.vvm
    materialprefix models/props/computers/
    rotate 0 -90 0
    scene ref/terminal01.smd

This is models/props/computers/terminal01.qc from The Wastes.

What each line means:

output specifies the resulting final output file name and location relative to the control file.

materialprefix just appends this string to any referenced material. Ideally it's the location where the .vvm itself is stored in your game filesystem.

rotate Simply rotates all input files by 90 degrees on the Y/Yaw axis upon importing.

scene Tells it to load one input file, which is a reference. If it was an animation it'd specify a framerate via the 'fps X' parameter.

Compiling

You grab your copy of vvmtool and you either drag and drop your control file onto it, or run it via command-line:

vvmtool.exe foobar.qc

It should be as simple as that!

Notes

Some helpful tips for your content creation journey.

vid_reload

I recommend getting a single reference, plus the animations into your game first, then adding events and other necessary commands on top.

You can use the console command vid_reload to force the engine to flush the model/texture cache and to reload an updated model from disk. Really useful when iterating over model exports.

Blender users

If you're using the Blender Source Model tools, as of 2021, it still doesn't down-mix certain animation features into the .smd format.

This is a problem with the Blender exporter, not vvmtool (as it also won't work in studiomdl).

So if your bones seem completely messed up, try .fbx instead.

If you absolutely need to use .smd, export it as .fbx in Blender, import said output back into Blender and then export as .fbx.

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