Map to model?

[ajay]

Is possible to convert .maps to .mdl. I'm making a kind of complex map and I guess it would help if some of the architecture were models. Or would taking some aspects and "tie to entity" - ing them work?
I'd rather the map to model thing though.

Or is it the other way round; you can .mdl to .map? I'm sure it's one of them...

Ta.

[neg!ke]

it is possible but also fairly messy depending on the object you want to have modelled, and requires quite a lot additional work after the actual conversion.
quark has some model editing features; HeadThump once sent me a program called 3dexploration which could load maps and export them to a format readable by modelling apps; and a related tutorial (albeit for q3) was posted somewhere recently.

although, if you just need to bring down polycount, there are better methods you should try first, e.g. turning objects into func_walls, moving them 1 unit away from the adjacent surfaces, and upscaling textures.

[Sajt]

Reasons to NOT convert maps to models:

- You lose lightmapping and gain really crappy gourad shading
- You lose collision
- You gain crappy frustum culling glitches
- In software, you gain crappy clipping and no perspective correction
- MDLs compress vertex coordinates to bytes, so unless you divide the models into 256x256x256 chunks or something...

[Error]

I have a MDL->MAP converter...