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Maya Tutorial: Creating Custom Models for CoD4 In this tutorial ya nubs will learn how to make and texture a simple 3D model in Maya. I'll also show how to export it from Maya and convert it into a working CoD4 xmodel :dave: Requirements for this tutorial: 1x working, legit copy of Maya 8.5 (32-bit) or Maya 2009 1x CoD Tools for Maya, installed and working (CoD4 tools for Maya 8.5 or CoD BO tools for Maya 2009) 1x Photoshop CS2 or newer 1x NVIDIA Texture Tools for Photoshop, installed and working 1x CoD4 Mod Tools, installed and working If you do not meet the requirements, shut down your computer, go to the nearest forest and get eaten by a bear! :angryarnold: ARGH! To keep things simple, we'll be modeling a gold bar. To create a gold bar model, we will need some information about gold bar dimensions: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=gold+bar+dimensions&l=1 Our gold bar is going to be a 400 oz bar :sir: and because we are using inches as units, divide the dimensions by 24 like the website says. Maya 2009 1. Open Maya and make sure your settings are like in the picture below: 2. Create a cube model and insert the gold bar dimensions to its properties: 3. Move the pivot point to the bottom of the model: 4. Move the model to the center of the grid: 5. Scale the top face to make the cube look like a gold bar: 6. Create UVs for the model (since the model is just a cube, we can use Automatic Mapping): 7. Edit the UV layout to something like this (try to use as much texture space as you can): 8. Clear transformation history and reset the model origin: 9. Duplicate the model and bevel the edges of the duplicate. This will be our 'highpoly' model. 10. Bake highpoly model into a normal map: 11. Assign a phong material to the model. The material you create in Asset Manager MUST have the same name. 12. This is not required, but I usually do this when I know I will no longer need the transformation history (I don't need to modify the bevel settings etc. This is basically the same as ALT+D but clears the history of the whole scene. DON'T DO THIS WITH A RIGGED MODEL OR THE SKIN WILL BE UNBOUND FROM THE SKELETON! (you can CTRL+Z to undo it but still don't do it :ph34r:) 13. Open Outliner and rename the high and lowpoly meshes... to keep things organized :sir: 14. Export the model as a .XMODEL_EXPORT file :horror: PHOTOSHOP 1. Open Photoshop and create a gray-scale logo/text to be imprinted to the model. Convert it into a normal map with NVIDIA tools. 2. Copy paste & resize the logo/text normal map on the gold bar normal map. Use 'Overlay' as the layer type and duplicate the logo twice. Apply 1 pixel gaussian blur to the duplicates. Merge the 3 layers and remove the excess crap to avoid weird seams ingame. 3. Create a 256x256 color texture: 4. Create a 256x256 specular color texture. Also make a 256x256 white cosine power texture (don't worry about filesize, the _spc and _cos images will be combined): ASSET MANAGER 1. Create a new model phong material with the name you used in Maya. I use mtl_ prefix for model materials. Press F10 to convert the material. 2. Create a new xmodel. NAME IT PROPERLY OR I WILL EAT YOU! :angryarnold: ARGH! 3. ??? 4. Done. WHAT IT SHOULD LOOK LIKE IN COD4 IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, ASK!! :angryarnold: AND DO NOT QUOTE THE WHOLE POST OR THIS THREAD WILL BECOME A MESS!! ARGH! DOWNLOAD LINK https://www.dropbox.com/s/ucjnz5ocjed4evc/prop_gold_bar.zip