quake models

[RooT]

what program do you use to model, i have been using an old freeware version of QME, but I think darkplaces engine can handle something more potent, any suggestions?

[leileilol]

Blender + tr3b md3 export script + lordhavoc's model tools (for texture path tweaking) = md3 goodness for Quake.

I'm still waiting for an MD3 -> MDL converter.

[Preach]

Blender + tr3b md3 export script + lordhavoc's model tools (for texture path tweaking) = md3 goodness for Quake.

I'm still waiting for an MD3 -> MDL converter.

Quark 6.4 does MD3 -> MDL conversion very well, preserves animation and skin. You have to give the MD3 a Q1 palette skin in TGA format before loading it into Quark - it's very fussy about this point, JPG won't cut it. But otherwise it just works straight off, load the MD3 and then save as: classic quake format.

Personally I use gmax with tempest to make MD3s, then convert them to MDL using this method, so there's another option for modelling software.

[leileilol]

preach!

quark doesn't really cut it

[Preach]

preach!

quark doesn't really cut it

Try not using the path tweaking program on your md3 before you load it, it could be that it's changed where quark expects to read the skin location. Or it could be blender doing that, I do remember having more problems when I used blender than with I do with gmax. If any of the compilers have an option for "smart paths" or relative paths, that might help too.

An alternative would be to use the md2 exporter for blender on your model, md2s might be easier to load into quark for conversion. Of course, it'll mess up all your framegroups, but it'll give you something to work with.

EDIT: just thought of another thing to check, if the path to the skin contains any forward/backslashes, make sure that you use the correct one in the correct place, I think this is another thing that Quark is fussy about. I'm afraid I don't recall which one it wants, the standard in windows is \ but the python stuff that quark is written on might mean it wants /. So you might want to try swapping whatever is there already with the other direction of slash...

[RooT]

ok thanks, ill give the gmax style a try, i use it for hl2

[LordHavoc]

EDIT: just thought of another thing to check, if the path to the skin contains any forward/backslashes, make sure that you use the correct one in the correct place, I think this is another thing that Quark is fussy about. I'm afraid I don't recall which one it wants, the standard in windows is \ but the python stuff that quark is written on might mean it wants /. So you might want to try swapping whatever is there already with the other direction of slash...

/ is the standard directory separator on all operating systems, except windows which encourages \ but works fine with /, and Mac which encouraged : but has adopted /

in C (and all other languages I can think of) the standard separator is / so all operating systems work with this, and in C (and most other languages) \ is a prefix for special characters, so it can mess up parsing if the script isn't written perfectly, this is one of several reasons I advocate never using \ for filenames.

[leileilol]

the slashes are already actually forward (/) in the md3s.

preach, let's see you try converting this
http://www.planetgargoyle.com/oq/vshot.zip

[Preach]

the slashes are already actually forward (/) in the md3s.

preach, let's see you try converting this
http://www.planetgargoyle.com/oq/vshot.zip

http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/~ajd70/v_shot_mdl.zip

Of course, it doesn't help all that much, as I did a round the houses conversion to make it work. The steps I took were the following:

1. Convert the skin to .tga.
2. Import the model into gmax, making sure animation is imported.
3. Apply a new material consisting of the tga skin to it.
4. Move the UV coordinates of all the skin verts up by 1(by that I mean 1 whole skin height). This is because in the existing model(or the imported model at least) they are between -1 and 0 vertically, but QMe will crash if they aren't between 0 and 1. The skin tiles so you don't see a difference in the MD3 model, but it causes problems later on.
5. Export all 6 frames to a new md3.
6. Open the new md3 in quark and save as mdl.

I included the md3 I generated to make the model from, so you can have a look and see if you can tell what the important difference is. There seems to be a few things different in the header from what I could read, the skin name mentions a file extention and the model has a path for itself at the top of the file. Still couldn't say exactly why one loads in quark and the other doesn't.

If you want to do conversions this way round, you'll want the md3 import script for gmax, which is available from http://www.thejediacademy.net/%7Evirtue/tutorials/hilts/q3-md3.zip. It's a bit cumbersome to convert a md3 to md3 using gmax, but until we get to the bottom of the problem, at least it's a solution : ).

[leileilol]

neat, though i can't stand gmax. : (

i've been begging and begging and begging and begging for an mdl exporter fro blender or something like that to no result.

Also, Quick3D can import md3 and export mdl properly however it's very annoying naggy shareware, requests personal info, and is possibly time-limited for 30 days. That's not good

[Error]

I use the retail version of qME 3.0

screw 3.1

[RenegadeC]

I use the retail version of qME 3.0

screw 3.1

*HUG*


not gay!

[Quake Matt]

What happened in 3.1?

I too use qME 3.0, importing from an old version of 3DSMax.

[FraGGer]

Im using Max8 XD

Started with Ms3D

[Dr. Shadowborg]

What happened in 3.1?

I too use qME 3.0, importing from an old version of 3DSMax.

Basically, 3.1 was a patch to 3.0, which added a whole buttload of bugs and a butt-ugly interface with features that often didn't work.

Oh, and quake models saved with it couldn't be loaded up in the previous version of QME.