First off, I love your content.


You can decompile GoldSrc models into .qc, .smd, and UV Map files, which you can then just import into Blender. It includes the rigging, the textures, the animations, etc.
It's been a little while since I've used Blender for GoldSrc modding, so forgive me if there's been an update that's changed what I'm used to, causing everything I just said to be incorrect.
What is it specifically you're looking for to be improved in the import/export process?

Personally, one issue I've had is when Jed's model viewer's compile command line will say that a bone is in error, or it's missing a texture that's been applied and sorted properly.

Thank you! As regards the problem: The bones are not being exported. Or at least when the model is compiled, the bones are not coming along for the ride. Viewing it in HLMV, I can see that only one large hitbox is generated and the skeleton is missing. That also leads to none of the animations working whatsoever. I have had a lot of trouble with this plugin in the past and have developed very creative pipelines to circumvent the issue. This latest trouble has vexed all of my solutions, though.

I've had that issue. In fact, I was working on a custom model earlier this summer, and I had to set it aside cuz I got bogged down with work, and didn't have time to figure out how to fix that exact problem.
I assume you're exporting the mesh that has the skeleton tied to it as a .SMD file, so if you're doing that, we could eliminate the filetype issue.
Is the skeleton set as a "parent" to the mesh, or did you set it as an armature that the mesh is tied to? They both serve the same purpose if done properly, but sometimes there can be noticeable differences when working with them.
I might open up the Blender file for my model, to try and see what the exact issue was and compare it to yours. Maybe we'll come up with something.

Edit: another thing you could try if you don't get a proper answer from someone who actually knows more about the Blender Source Tools than I do...
try exporting the mesh, uv maps, etc. to Milkshape 3D, and if you can't import the skeleton into Milkshape 3D, then just create a quick, lazy rigging for your mesh, export it, and see if that works in HLMV. It might just be that the Blender Tools are oriented towards the Source Engine so much that it's harder to work with GoldSrc.

The milkshape fix is something we have resorted to before. Only my 30-day trial has run out. And regarding your last line - that is why I decided to make this request.

If someone could look at the Python console and narrow it down to the Source Tools plugin, they might, in theory, be able to copy and edit huge amounts of the code to make it more GoldSrc friendly, albeit a little more unstable.

But obviously, that doesn't help us here; I'm just theorizing.

As for the Milkshape thing...

If only there were some other way to obtain a keycode for activating the software, a way to obtain a key for no cost, a tool of some sort that could generate a keycode.

Sorry I'm not super helpful. Have you tried consulting any of these?

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Blender_Source_Tools_Help
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/groups/CrowbarTool

The problem is that BST exports smd's with bone weighting. GoldSrc doesn't support this. That's why your "bones are not being exported", because studiomdl thinks these bones have no vertexes attached to them and cut them. The only ugly solution I found is to import your exported mesh into Milkshape3d and re-export it without bone weighting.

Animations should be exported fine AFAIK.

Thanks for working that out xDShot! If you have a bit of scripting experience it's easy to fix up your SMDs for GoldSrc. You need to parse the triangles section and translate the weights at the end of the line into a bone ID at the start. Here's the spec.

I'll probably add support for this in the next release. Are there any other GoldSrc incompatibilites?

At some point, Crowbar will also convert between different SMD formats.

As it stands, I exported a mesh with a rig the other day. All the bones were in the middle of the mesh, right at the waist.

I ran into this issue a bit back. If you have Notepad++ or some other editor with regular expression support, a find and replace with these strings should ready your model for GoldSrc. Or at least it did for me.

Find:0 (-*\d+\.\d+ -*\d+\.\d+ -*\d+\.\d+ -*\d+\.\d+ -*\d+\.\d+ -*\d+\.\d+ -*\d+\.\d+ -*\d+\.\d+) 1 (\d+) 1\.000000$
Replace:\2 \1