I noticed that morph channels in Source 2 can be driven directly from DMX animation files.
It is possible to export these animations from SFM, and there are some official DMX sources that use them, like the animations for \dota 2 beta\content\dota_addons\overthrow\models\props_structures\midas_throne\kobold_overboss.vmdl

It would be a nice addition to BST if it could export the keyframes of shape keys as DMX animations. Ideally together with skeletal animations in the same file.

Edit: (Unless it already supports this and I'm screwing up somewhere).

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Rectus:

So if it's set up right, is should add cloth physics that "just works".

Whoops, missed a thing to get it working. By default the .vmdl has a hidden property that foreces it to use cloth procxy meshes only.

If you open the .vmdl, go to m_clothProxyMeshList and set the property m_bDriveMeshesWithBacksolvedJointsOnly to false, it will generate cloth from attributes on the reference mesh.

I found some more cloth attributes:
(They need the $0 postfix for the DMX keywords)

I think these are all float valued. It is possible there are global parameters as well, but I haven't looked into it yet.

I added some basic export support to BST, with the attributes set with vertex groups. Unfortunately some of the values don't seem to be normalized between 0 and 1, so it's not possible to set the full range of values with vertex groups. Not sure if that is doable without adding some kind of custom interface.
https://github.com/Artfunkel/BlenderSourceTools/pull/7

With the default .vmdl settings it generates a cloth node and bone on every vertex above a threshold value (0.05 by default). It also pins and limits the rotation fo any cloth nodes on vertices connected to non-cloth vertices. So if it's set up right, is should add cloth physics that "just works".

https://i.imgur.com/lq9Du4y.png
https://i.imgur.com/sfbgXUl.png

They seemed to update the cloth physics in the latest engine update, at least for SteamVR Home. Cloth can now collide with arbirtary geometry (and also there is a new bug that makes it sleep when the regular physics does).

I have no idea if adding cloth_enable to a DMX file has had any effect before, since all the old help text for the model editor mention it being authored in maya, which I'd guess uses some intenal FBX export plugin.


It is also possible to make a a cloth proxy mesh instead, that uses its vertices for the cloth nodes and maps onto the render mesh. It generates a compiled uneditable cloth mesh, and I couldn't find any way of pinning the cloth to anything so it wouldn't just fall to the ground.

The third way whiich I've been using up until now is the Add Cloth Piece command from the physics right click menu. That allows you to use the existing armature to set up cloth manually, and has a ton of undocumented settings so it's kinda a pain to use.

Old version of the same table:
https://i.imgur.com/m4uZsyR.png
https://twitter.com/rectus_sa/status/1207928128007557122

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zappy:

It does, being vertex groups or such.

While primarily used to rig mesh to an armature (at least when it comes to Source stuff), they can also be used for other purposes (such as setting how much "left" or "right" specific vertices are when it comes to stereo shape keys for DMX exports for Source, or what the per-vertex value of "cloth_enable$0" should be for DMX exports for Source 2).

You're absolutely right. I completely forgot you could do more with vertex groups than rigging.

Probably better to add it there in that case.

There seems to be some undocumented DmeVertexData keywords used by Source 2 in DMX version 22.

The ones I could find were:
tangent$0
texcoord$1
speed$0
cloth_enable$0

I got the texcoord$1 and cloth_enable$0 attributes working by pasting in per-vertex values for them into a text mode DMX mesh file. It would be nice to be able to set them in BST.

texcoord$1 is simply a second UV map which can be used in the SteamVR Home shaders for AO/lightmaps or transparency.

cloth_enable$0 is a float value between 0 and 1 which is used to enable per-vertex cloth physics. Not sure if Blender has any interface for editing per-vertex floats, so it might be best to import/export the values as vertex colors so it can be painted.

Old versions of the model editor help files mention some other cloth attributes too, I'll have to look if I can find keywords for them.

Here is a working DMX file, not sure if everything is coorect though:
https://gist.github.com/Rectus/23cefc438730e336d3cfe4909b668dcb

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Artfunkel:

The tools currently know about these three vertex map names:

VertexPaintBlendParams$0
VertexPaintBlendParams1$0
VertexPaintTintColor$0

If there are more, please point me toward them.

Sorry, looks like i got the names in blender confused with the DMX names.

I figured out how i got the vertex color tinting working before, I imported an FBX file into the Source 2 tools. It doesn't seem to care about what the map is named in that case, and will use the vertex colors to tint the model. The VertexPaintTintColor key sounds like it should do the same thing, but it has no effect on that material setting and renders everything black instead.

Exporting as FBX doesn't seem to let the material blending work though, so one file type works for one map, and the other for the other one.

Guessing that part of the DMX importer in the current source 2 tools being broken or something.

Confirmed fixed!

I can export maps that control blend textures, but it seems the valvesource_vertex_paint doesn't seem affect the tinting effect with the Vertex Colors option in the VR Standard shader in SteamVR Home. I could have sworn I had it working before, maybe it's using one of the other map names like ValveSource_VertexPaintTintColor mentioned in the changelog.

The Vertex Map feature appears to be broken. Both clicking the Create Source 2 Vertex Map buttons, and exporting DMX meshes from objects with with vertex colors result in error messages.

(This is not a huge issue for me at least, since it's possible to modify meshes and paint vertex colors directly in Hammer.)

DMX version is set to Binary 9, Model 22
Using version 3.0.2 with Blender 2.80

Creating a map:

Exporting a mesh:

Thank you. It's a relief that there is a workaround at least.