Save the Blender session, close Blender, copy the session somewhere else, reboot Blender, open the "new" session, and export all the DMXs in the new location. Then copy the QC and move it over to the new location too. (Change $CD in the QC to match if you have it.) What about now?

Set the "weight link cull threshold" to at least 0.5 for good results (just turn it all the way up to 1.0, though), then make sure to re-export all DMXs used by the QC. Then try to compile it again.

No. You have to use FBX, I think, which is only supported by Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and/or Source 2, I believe.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Masterlegodude:

importing [a model with 23358 polygons] with custom normals only took 14.4 seconds

If it's an SMD, importing it with custom normals completely ignores connections of triangles. If it's not an SMD, it probably stores what parts are connected to what parts within itself, and then share the vertices.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Masterlegodude:

wouldn't there be a way to compare the normal data per-face and just split the edges wherever the values don't match?

That's what's so insanely difficult to implement and will take exponentially-increasing "insanely" long time to import and calculate.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Masterlegodude:

[SMDs] have all that data for each polygon in them,

No, they don't. (And SMDs don't even support polygons, only triangles. ("Poly" refers to "any amount of" or something, and "gon" refers to... like, "any shape", with "polygon" referring to a shape that can have any amount of edges/corners.))

SMDs store each triangle's material name and its 3 vertices' positions in the 3D world space, normals, UV mappings, bone weight rigging, etcetera, basically everything there is to know about the triangle (except which edges are "sharp", as that's redundant with every triangle storing custom normals of each vertice).
But the thing is... it stores every single triangle separately, and it doesn't even store which triangles are connected to each other. The Blender Source Tools merge/weld/whatever every vertice together that are close enough to each other... but this does not work right at all when the vertices have custom normals, thus the triangles of custom-normal-imported-SMDs aren't connected. (Go on, try importing an SMD with custom normals enabled, then select everything of it in Edit Mode and do the Remove Doubles thing.)
And it'd be even harder to properly load in the custom normals after merging the vertices than working around it and truly splitting the edges of sharp edges between triangles.

Remember, the Blender Source Tools are a script made by one(?) person, who doesn't get paid for it, and Blender isn't built around specifically supporting it, instead being the other way around, unlike some of the tools VALVe use for Source editing or such. Speaking of other tools, you can use another tool, import the SMD with something built by a team specifically for it, export it as a DMX, import the DMX into Blender, and that should be good enough. (DMX stores which polygons are connected just fine and also support custom normals, which Blender can then import with no problem.)

Artfunkel has explained that it would be way too hard to detect the normals of faces and split edges, both by the "A" and the "B" methods you propose, and even if they did manage to implement it, would you like to wait... I guess [an exponentially-increasing amount of time based on how many triangles are in the mesh] more than currently?

Additionally, normals can not only face directly outwards, they can face in any given direction, so if the model is using truly custom normals, they will be broken by both the A and B methods.

Personally, I highly prefer opening Blender twice, importing a mesh that's just smooth-shaded in one Blender and importing it with the normals intact in the other Blender, then manually splitting the edges of the mesh in the first Blender. That way, it will also look better when animated and such, I believe.

There probably is, but not that I know of. (I don't use Blender much.)

It's probably working as it should. From what I can see, Blender's posing is weird, with a cylinder with the top having a weight of 1, bottom 0, and middle 0.5, in most cases, twisting it 180 degrees should make the middle sort of collapse into itself (which it would do in Source), but in Blender, it just only gets affected 50%, as in being turned 90 degrees instead of being halfway between 0 and 180 degrees (which would be collapsed into itself).

Technically, the SMD and DMX formats are unlimited in this regard.
But when compiled into an MDL, it's limited to 128 or 256 in SMD (due to Source MDLs only supporting 128 or 256 bones) and 3 in DMX (or 4 in Source 2).

Mind if I ask you why you deleted your previous thread on this a couple of days ago (as I was writing a response to it of why it is normal)?

Anyway, to answer why it's normal, in much less detail than before:
The armature is rotated, and the mesh is parented to the armature while the vertices aren't.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Cufflux#1979:

That would be a quick fix to this issue.

Yeah... of course, except if it was to be done for all vertices of a >10000-triangle mesh (thus with >30000 vertices) upon an import.