InsideQC Forums

OK, so I made some island terrain in Blender 3D and exported it as a .map. After that I loaded it into DarkPlaces to see how it ran... I got the error "no info_player_start" I thought "OK, should have expected that" so my next plan was to open the .map in Quark, or GTK. I first loaded it into GTK, and I couldn't figure out how to apply textures/compile/move around (lul) Then I tried Quark to find that I needed Quake 3 installed. So now I'm installing that.

My main question is... Can you add entity's in Blender somehow so I won't have to go through as much trouble next time? I tried adding a cube to the map in Blender and naming it "info_player_start" for it's object name and it didn't work.. is there any way to add entity's in Blender? Thanks.

P.S. I'm writing this on the fly, so sorry if it's extra sloppy and hard to understand!!

I'm pretty sure there is not. Entity placement in blender is somethign I've been wishing someone would tackle.
However you CAN write out a .ent file.

I think if you make sure the origin of the map in blender is where you'd want the player to spawn, then you can write an entry in a .ent file placing info_player_start at 0,0,0 and gain a little traction.

To do that, I would dump an entity file from darkplaces fo a standard map, (I forget the command for that, try googling)
find the info_player_start entry, paste that into a new .ent file, and edit the coordinate vector.

After that IIIRC you have to renamethe .ent file to your mapname, and include it in the maps folder alongside it.
Goodluck.

Hello ScatterBox,

The DP command for creating an .ent file is sv_saveentfile, but you are kinda stuck here.
If you cannot load a map in dp, you cannot create a .ent file....

Just like gnounc said:
The info_player_start block´s info in an .ent file is always identical:
Its infos are (example start map):

{
"classname" "info_player_start"
"origin" "544 288 32"
"angle" "90"
}

The z-value does not need to be accurate, as the player will drop to floor.


The only 2 blocks which seems to be needed for a map to load are:
- worldspawn
- info_player_start

worldspawn example block from start map:

{
"sounds" "4"
"classname" "worldspawn"
"wad" "gfx/start.wad"
"message" "Introduction"
"worldtype" "0"
}

Be aware though that if your [mapname].ent file only includes these 2 blocks,
you will have no entities or teleporter functionality and so on: Pure map.
As the .ent file overrides the maps info´s (classnames).

But that seems to be ok for your specific issue.

Best of luck.

I collaborated once with a guy named z80 who made a blender exporter to map. As far as I remember with this you could export everything, even entities with property name but it has the downsides that it was developed for blender 2.49 and it's made in python so it's soooooo slow.
You can find more informations here and here

Last version I presume is here

Thanks for all the help guys!! I got the map exported into a .map, and managed to load it into GTK Radiant and add info_player_start. Only problem is, when i get it into DP it seems to have split the polygons up. Anything that isn't a flat edge (eg. the terrain hills) has broken apart. Leaving small gaps between where each of the vertices connect.

So are hills, and terrain just not possible for Quake?

ScatterBox wrote:So are hills, and terrain just not possible for Quake?

Pretty much this, I'm afraid.

Keep in mind that nowadays gamedev industries NEVER used 3rd party apps to create levels directly. If you see the 3 more important engines we have now (CryEngine 3, UnrealEngine4 and Unity 5), they encourage designers to use "modular environment" approach instead of a giant map model. I converted myself to this approach last year and I'm glad I switched. I talked once with motorsep and (if I remember correctly) he hinted about the fact he created some sort of terrain hulls in .obj format for SteelStorm, which have been used in Radiant. The only thing I don't know if it's possible to group the .obj with a collision model, if it's possible it could worth a try. I use this approach in UDK even for terrains and it's wonderful. But UDK permits to export .fbx mesh + collision model.

toneddu2000 wrote:Keep in mind that nowadays gamedev industries NEVER used 3rd party apps to create levels directly.

Funny that, because that's the typical pipeline for proper professional UE3 map creation. Most of UT3's levels literally are giant meshes.

I said

Keep in mind that nowadays gamedev industries NEVER used 3rd party apps to create levels directly.

Not

Keep in mind that nowadays gamedev industries NEVER used 3rd party apps to create modular level meshes.

If It sounded like that, it wasn't meant to. My all levels are 100% meshes made in Blender!
I follow this pipeline

I might get around to trying the Blender map export process. I have an idea for a OA map that would kind of suck to do in Quark but would be quick to whip up in Blender (in theory).... The real question is how are beziers supported?

Don't you use q3map2? Just use .obj and misc_model.

gb, can you please explain if it's possible to export as obj file model AND collision to radiant? That would be awesome, I used this approach for FBX files on UDK and I love it

gb, can you please explain if it's possible to export as obj file model AND collision to radiant?

It's not possible, q3map2 doesn't take "collision meshes" because all collision in the q3bsp format comes from brushes (okay, except patch meshes).

Collision can come a) from brushes (either build a collision hull - it doesn't need to be detailed and it doesn't need to be airtight - or use a clip-textured copy of an existing Radiant blockout) or b) from q3map2's collision generation algorithm.

Using the autogeneration (spawnflag on misc_model) creates a clipping hull for a model from brushes (so brush limits apply, such as "must be concave") automagically. This is usually adequate especially for relatively simple models with mainly flat, axial surfaces (i.e. any model that looks much like brushwork.)

Manual placement of clip brushes gives you more control and might be necessary in some tricky cases.

It depends much on what kind of map it is, really. If it's a small deathmatch map, I'd use this approach in a heartbeat. Make a greybox layout in Radiant (that you can later use as a clipping hull), export that to Blender and model away.

Using Radiant for the basic layout is advisable anyway, since that's exactly what it does best. Blender currently lacks the tools for quickly laying down a level; this is where brushes excel...

Your map will still need to be airtight, so there also needs to be a caulk hull - in the case of a small deathmatch map, this can easily be a box. In the case of a large SP map such as in Scout's Journey, it'll roughly follow the basic layout (because of vis.)

Entities are placed in Radiant in this scenario.

It's more work to be sure. But you get the freedom of a full powered 3D modeling suite instead of a BSP editor.

I haven't tried q3map2 in a long time, but last time I tried to use it to make collision brushes out of a mesh, it did not do a very clean job of it. It made lots of tiny, thin brushes - like one for each triangle. Some of the brushes protruded through others, and there weren't clean edges.

really thorough explanation, gb. Thanks a lot
I'm of the same opinion about sketching the level with radiant, it's faster than use Blender directly