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.

Download

Crafty exports a texture per material even though some materials use the same texture. It just occurred to me that the problem is probably exaggerated by VBSP which modifies existing materials, creating several new ones with different environment maps (which are stored in the BSP). This is probably what's causing what you've described.

To remedy this I can add an option to export only textures as materials, or force the materials to reference the same texture. If you're using .vtf files in your modeling package, I can also add the ability to export these (instead of .tga etc.).

FYI, if you open the .mtl file Crafty exports in Notepad, you can see the full path to the original material that the exported material was generated off of in the comments.

well, i have mounted my source materials.gcf, so its much easier if it references to the materials/folder/material.vtf, than to tga files, wich are only diffuse maps and vtf is much more, and its easier to find the corresponding normalmaps, spectacular masks, ... (or maybe this could also be scripted into the exporter? if the wavefront material library supports it of course :D) it whould help a lot if you want to create a high detail cinematic of your level.

or a little easier, max can find files on your computer if he knows the filename, but at the moment that's even unknown to max


that multiple material exists only on world geometry, and indeed, occurs only on levels where buildcubemaps is executed :D


(every material that has been set to None was a duplicate)

I'll see what I can do to improve material exportation for the next release, but the MTL format is still the main limiter. OBJ is well supported (which is why I use it) but not very flexible. As I said before I'll add support for more flexible formats when I get Crafty to an appropriate state (suggestions are always welcome).

Also, VTF files are just diffuse maps, nothing more.

Export .map and .vmf doesn't work for me. Any idea how i can fix this?

Export .map and .vmf only export brush objects, as such it is only for converting .map to .vmf and vice versa. If you want to decompile a .bsp you'll need another tool.

Heyo guys.

I tried this nice app and it works fine with loading maps and so on..but if I load a .bsp file and export it as a .vmf file, then i get an empty .vmf o.O....what am I doing wrong? Should i decompile the hl1 map and load the .map file and then re-export it with Crafty as a .vmf?

Greetz,

Maxunit

The .vmf exportation is for converting .map files to .vmf and vice versa. If you want to decompile Source .bsp files, try VMEX. There are also a couple of tools for decompiling Half-Life 1 .bsp files listed on Valve's Wiki.

I had a question:

I'm playing Dark Messiah right now what is a masterlijk game
but I want to export the .MDL files from Dark messiah into
3Dsmax8 and convert it toe .NIF for use in the game
TES4 Oblivion is this posible

becouse I had a problem befor with a simmular program
with told me Halflife 2 uses .MDL v37 and I need
.MDL v44 for Dark Messiah .MDL files

Dose Crafty suport .MDL v44 Files

No, Crafty does not support Dark Messiah .bsp or .mdl files currently. Arkane Studios made several changes to both formats.

Hi,

i have a little problem with crafty,

i have already exported cs 1.6 maps and used them in c4d, but when i try to export a cs 1.6 model, i get the error

Error: CModel::GetPrimitive() not implemented.

PS: Sry if my english sucks, i'm from austria^^

I haven't completed Half-Life 1 .mdl support yet, so .mdl exportation hasn't been implemented. There is an old Half-Life 1 tool called MDLDec that can decompile .mdl files for you. It's hard to find, but I found a working download here.

mhmm, this mdldec is no more on there servers, i can't download it, are there any ways to get the models as 3ds or obj files.
I don't need even the bones, only textures!

I have also used milkshape, but i cant save it as 3ds, i get the error, no model empty!!

sry, the error is, the model is empty

This link (from the site I posted) works for me. Crafty doesn't yet support animations which are necessary for Half-Life 1 .mdl exporting. I will add this eventually, but right now there are just too many other things on my plate.

their alpha maps are very important since you don't export them to tga's :D
and its easier to find a corresponding normalmap when you know the vtf's name instaid of just knowing the material number :D

Humm, the alpha channels should be in the .tga files, if they're not I'll check that when I get back from vacation. BTW, I have implemented most of your requests; the reason everything is taking soo long is because there are several other major features I'm working on for the next release.

F:\Sierra\steam\SteamApps\half-life 2 content.gcf mounted.
F:\Sierra\steam\SteamApps\source models.gcf mounted.
Building source model references for half-life 2...
Initializing engine...
GL_MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE: 4096
GL_MAX_TEXTURE_UNITS_ARB: 8
GL_ARB_multitexture support: True
GL_ARB_texture_env_combine support: True
GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3 support: True
Initializing text (courier new)...
Engine initialized.
Loading Combine_Room\combine_monitor001temp.mdl...
Building source game references for half-life 2...
Versions: MDL: 44; VVD: 4; VTX: 7.
Material models\combine_room/combine_monitor001 not found.
Material combine_monitor001 not found.
Model Info: 1 Body Part(s); 1 Model(s); 1 Mesh(es); 7460 Vertices; 1 Material(s); 5 LOD(s).
Loading Combine_Room\combine_monitor003a.mdl...
Versions: MDL: 44; VVD: 4; VTX: 7.
Material models\combine_room/combine_monitor002 not found.
Material combine_monitor002 not found.
Model Info: 1 Body Part(s); 1 Model(s); 1 Mesh(es); 2833 Vertices; 1 Material(s); 5 LOD(s).

why is the materials gcf mounted in file system browser and not in model viewer? i get all the models white :s

Could you make it so crafty checks pak files and fall_back dir? As in:


<gamedir>\maps\
.. \sprites\ etc
<gamedir>\pakX.pak

<game_fallback_dir>\map\ etc
<fallback>\pakX.pak

<valve>\map\ etc
<valve>\pakX.pak

<gcfs>

I have natural selection installed in \ns\ and in pak0.pak
and all my custom maps/downloads in \ns base\, it works if i define \ns base\ as an extra searchpath but it doesnt read paks atm.

could it possibly pharse the liblist.gam for fallback_dir's?

highlited points

ok ignore that last comment, just found how to manually mount paks, but the current available version still uses the hllib that has the bug in reading pak files

The active profile (and resources loaded in FSB) are global. There must be some other reason Crafty can't find them. (Can you see them in the Material Browser?)


You seem to have figured it mostly out, but to elaborate: Crafty only supports automatic configuration for Steam games. This is primarily due to the fact that no one has really offered to provide me with enough information to add automatic configuration support for other non-steam distributions and to test the support.

Manual configuration is still possible by selecting a profile then manually mounting the required resources (as you've done). The profiles are also stored in text (.csf) files which can manually be edited in most text editing programs to add additional search paths (again as you've done). I will add an interface for this soon.

I think I'm going to try to release alpha 13 by next weekend (even though it wont be complete) because it has a tonne of improvements. I'll just disable the incomplete features.

Pleas help me, i cant open .gcf files with crafty, i have shutted down steam and i have the newest .net framework or something, anything i can do?

Pleas help me!

What error message do you get?

Hi,
I like the tool, we are creating a game with a group of amateur, and I would like to be able to use crafty on programmers machines to check the artists' work quickly. most of us own a copy of HL2 but we have uninstalled steam... cause it was too annoying.
The artist creates some textures, he creates a map with hammer and give us all the files, including the bsp. we are processing the bsp and the material files to extract lightmaps, geometry and material information.

Our problem is that we can't see the bsp textures in crafty.
I tried to mount using the filesystem tool this material folder right below root, I tried to put the material folder next to the bsp, I tried to imitate the HL2 strcuture, nothing seems to work.

here are the resources files I have:
- 1 bsp -> the bsp references the materials like that "myMap/mat0", but doesn't contain the textures themselves for size reason
- vmt files, I have a folder myMap with inside mat0.vmt
- gta files: I have a folder myMap with inside mat0.gta

how can I have my textures correctly found by crafty, which file hierarchy should I use, what's the configuration of crafty and of the file system tool necessary ?
or is it just impossible to do ? :)

Our artist with all the tools installed confirm that he can't view the textures either.

thanks for the great tool !
Cedric

If you want to add support to Crafty for a custom mod, you need to tell Crafty where to look. To do so, add your mod to Crafty's Specifications\GameInfoCustom.csf file (which is similar to the GameInfo.txt file Hammer requires).

The Root and MountPoints are irrelevant (since you don't have Steam), but you'll need to add any SearchPaths you use. SearchPaths are the names of the folders to look in (e.g. whatever the name of the folder above materials is). Once you've done that, start Crafty, select your profile, then mount all the resources your require in the File System Browser (no higher up than the search path).

getting there.
It seems that now we have our vmt files correctly found. however the textures still can't be found:

"Error loading material HUMAN_LEVEL001_ZONE002/PIERREMUR_001C: Texture human_level001_zone002\pierreMur_001c not found."

in the folder human_level001_zone002 I have both the vmt file and the tga file. it seems to be the case, if I put a dummy vtf file instead of my tga: the error message changes to

"Error loading material HUMAN_LEVEL001_ZONE002/PIERREMUR_001C: Error: File signature does not match 'VTF'."

Other than that, if I convert all my tga to gtf everything works fine without steam, it's definitely a great tool.

One little precision that can be usefull to give to people who try to do the same.
In GameInfoCustom.csf, the SearchPath is the name of the folder that will be mounted from the File System Browser tool, and below which the folder /materials can be found. it's not an absolute path to a real file system folder.

so here is a feature request , support for tga files ( and optionnaly png )

Didn't know textures could be anything other than .vtf files. Hammer falls back to .tga?

our artists are exporting the textures in tga from hammer. it's easier for the programmers to manipulate them. I didn't know it wasn't a native feature. it's ok, it's not a big deal, it shouldn't be added, the goal of the tool is to manipulate HL maps, so no need for that.

Hello Nem!

First of all, LOVE crafty! I've tried importing and converting bsp files in several tricky ways, and they always came out sketchy at best in 3dsmax, this one does the trick!

The only problem I have is when I'm importing the obj files into 3dsmax that I export from Crafty. If I choose "Single" and apply the settings that you supplied, it works just fine. But I want more control of the models, so I tried importing with "Multiple" selected, so that I could manipulate every single model. 3DsMax starts importing each model, but crashes when it comes to garbage_plasticbottle001a, or something like that.

Error message: "An error has occured and the application will now close"

I'm not sure if you know the root of the problem, but cant hurt to ask =)



Thanks in advance
/Jacob

The 3DS .obj importer is a bit of a joke, I suspect it's crashing because the .obj files Crafty exports are simply to large. You may try importing them in another package and exporting them to a different format.

Hmm.. ok, I got it to work, but please dont ask me how, or I'll have to kill you :P

When you import the obj file, you use the given settings(those nem showed earlier), then you get a second window pop-up where you have:

Geometry

identical vertex index in face: 0
identical points in face: something

Now, I'm not too sure what this means, but when I changed the first one to 10(my second one was 20), it worked.. I could import the obj file with "multiple" selected.. Then just to check I imported it again in a new 3dmax project, without setting "vertex index in face" to 10( I left it at 0 ), and this worked as well all of a sudden :S

Dont ask, I've got no idea

EDIT:
The obj file I imported was Dust2 from CS:Source

Sounds like some sort of internal memory corruption in 3DS or *possibly* and unstable system on your side (though like I said before, the 3DS .obj importer is known to have problems).

Either way, glad you've got it working. I'm not sure what either of those settings do.

Yeah, Im glad it working too.. Might be my system, Im not exactly a system wizard

Now to rig the CS characters *sigh*

Hi, I am also trying write a program to render HL2 bsp. I read the page "The Source Engine BSP File Format", and succeed to extract geometry, textures, and lightmaps for rendering.

Here is a shot

However it is abviously darker than the render result of Crafty and Source engine for the same bsp map (Crafty and Source engien are almost the same).

I compared the lightmaps exported by crafty and that I extracted from bsp lighting lumps by the formula
"(r,g,b)*(2^exponent)".
My lightmaps are really too dark (Although the bright area seems ok).

Could Nem or anyone help me?

The code you are looking for is in the SDK (spread out over several files), but essentially you don't need to do anything other than gamma correct the lightmaps by 2.2 then normalize to 0..255 (or whatever your textures use).

Thanks for this valuable suggestion.
Next I may try to render radiosity normal map.

Hi,

I'm also writing an HL2 bsp viewer but i can't find any documentation about mdl/vvd/vtx files formats :(

Do you know where I can find some doc or specs of these files ?

I have this problem, too...
It seems that we have to trace StudioMDL.

The .mdl, .vvd and .vtx file formats are all documented in the Source SDK. .mdl, for example, can be found in the studio.h file, and .vtx in the optimize.h file (can't remember the third one off the top of my head). I haven't found .phy yet.

Rendering the .mdls is pretty straight forward after the necessary files have been read, the format is quite intuitive.

Ok, I really don't work enought with the Source SDK...It's time to do it now ;)

Thank Nem !

Hum, I think it's because a lot of exponent in bsp file are negative...(2^x = 0 if x<0). And I can't figure out how to use this exponent...

Anyway...my lightmap are worse, just with RGB color...it's seems there is a problem somewhere... (red line is not the pb^^) =>image

Again the Source SDK should contain all the information you need. VRAD has a switch that allows you to export lightmaps (-exportLightmaps), I strongly recommend you take a look at it.

Crafty should check the game folder for customized files before searching the gcf. otherwise custom contend will not be loaded.

But non the less it is a great program and I like it

Any chance that Crafty will work with Insurgency? I tried loading some maps with an HL2 profile or a CSS profile and it was just all sorts of odd colors. Hope I wasn't using it incorrectly. Thanks Nem! BTW, great work!

Yes, checkout the FAQ (last question).

Wow, this program is amazing! Already been using GCFScape for a while, but never browsed through all the other tools you've been working on. Very impressive! Keep up the great work mon.

i'm having a major problem with this

when i try to run the program i get an error saying:
C:\Program Files\Crafty\Crafty.exe

This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the appliacation may fix this problem.
^^^ that didn't work^^^

been trying to use crafty to view the new TF2 models, but i keep getting an error...am i doing something wrong

"Error: MDL version 48 not supported"

it's a great tool,but it can not run in VISTA!
my system have VS.NET 2005

When I run a registry cleaner, it says that this program is trying to access a file that is missing - msvcm80.dll - when in actuality it IS in the system, but crafty is looking for it in the wrong place.
"That's why the CRT DLLs are now located in WinSXS and not in the System32 directory"
http://www.codeproject.com/cpp/vcredists_x86.asp

This would explain the error I get occasionaly (forget which at the moment).
Crafty does not seem to remember any setting

I've installed .net2.0 runtime and crafty100alpha14 but when i start crafty, it said

This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the appliacation may fix this problem.

how I deal with it? I use winXP sp2 and never install any vs studio. is it because I'm using an Chinese version XP?

please help me thanks!

added: I installed crafty100alpha13, it can run!
something different between these 2 alpha version?

it's me again.I open a Lost Coast bsp map, but without texture. how i set up crafty to show texture and export them all to .obj?
is it because i do not have steam install? crafty needs steam definitly? if I have some crack valve game(sorry for that), some have extract the resource file from gcf, and how I set up the root or searchpath in crafty?

nem, i want to know whether crafty can export decal&lightmap in one obj file? what i get now is one obj with decal, another obj with lightmap. but how i combine them to get the level look as in craty show? i found the comment you made before: what does it means? if i follow your instruction the second export just generate another obj.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I've added the ability to export lightmaps from VBSP files. To Get the whole VBSP file, complete with lightmap, export it twice with the following settings:

First export:
Material Type: Materials.
Textures enabled.
Models enabled.

Second Export:
Material Type: Lightmaps.
Textures enabled.
Models disabled.

You can enabled or disable Special Materials (just keep it the same for both exports) and use whatever Texture Extension you want. These settings can be found under the Exporting tab of the Options dialog.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

You need to export two .obj files, one for solid geometry and the other for lightmaps, because the .obj format does not support multi-texturing. This means that you will have to import both .obj files into your modeling package, line them up, then change the render mode of the lightmap .obj to be multiplicative in order to simulate lightmaps.

thanks a lot Nem. there are too many lightmaps in one obj, how can i copy the uv to another obj and export to some format support multitexturing? take maya for example to .mb.

I'm having the same problem as him, I resintalled the program many times, and even fully reinstalled/updated my .NET Framework 2.0, and still nothing looks like a bad ass tool I just can't get it to work any thoughts?


use the Force!

Try this.

ok I bow down to thee all mighty maker of tools. lol thanks mate.

the Force has been used wisely.

are you planning to add support to TF2 format mdl's?

I hope so (:

I noticed your donation page is down... you should get that back up

can this open newer portal files? it opens some of them but it doesnt oen some it says:mdl version 46 not supported.
will you add support for new mdl files?

They are currently working on my development build, which I will try to release in another week or two.