A lightweight skeletal + model system?

[MDave]

I'm looking for something I can use for my engine that has a model and skeletal format similar to Half-Life's in terms of functionalty and features. Is there a Quake engine that has something like this already? And is there anyway I can plug in the code in your average glquake engine?

Being able to attach other models to bones, and sprite mussle flashes will really be a plus. Heck, even Half-Life's 'chrome' texture effect for models too.

Is there any documentation on Half-Life's model format so I can try and implement it blindly anyway? I'm willing to make a tutorial on how to do this once it's done.

Is this a bad idea? Will I have to live with wobbly vertices for overley-detailed-for-quake models and animations?

[GiffE]

DPM isn't bad and is skeletal.
DP also has an attach extension that works on ALL formats even MDL.
(If it doesn't have a bone it uses a specific vertex)

[Urre]

Say what? MDL vertexes don't have names, so if you attach something to an MDL model, it will attach at origin. Very useful in its own manner, ofcourse, but doesn't match what you just said. You can attach to MD3 tags though, just like bones in the skeletal model formats supported by DarkPlaces (PSK, DPM, ZYM).

MDave: The question is, are you looking for animation blending as well? That's the cool part of skeletal animation, but also the hard part (to implement). If you're only looking to attach models to other models, I'd suggest MD3 instead, a simple and useful vertex-animated model format.

[MDave]

I shall look into this DPM model format.

Animation blending would be nice, but isn't a priority. As far as I know, Half-Life dosn't do animation blending, so for something like Quake it's not really neccassary too.

If I have trouble integrating DPM, then I'll have a go at MD3 too.

I'm interested in how you would manage model attachments to tags and bones in QC code though with the 2 above formats.

How would you attach a muzzle flash model to the view weapon model for example?

[GiffE]

Say what? MDL vertexes don't have names, so if you attach something to an MDL model, it will attach at origin. Very useful in its own manner, ofcourse, but doesn't match what you just said. You can attach to MD3 tags though, just like bones in the skeletal model formats supported by DarkPlaces (PSK, DPM, ZYM).

(I should have stated that you have to supply the vertex rather than tag)
Thats what i meant by:

(If it doesn't have a bone it uses a specific vertex)

Poor choice of words on my part.

I'm not sure if the tags work for the built in viewmodel but if u spawn a model and use viewmodelforclient (i think thats what its called) you can use the attach function on it.
Its probably not best to physically attach the muzzleflash but rather spawn it at the location of the tag.

[Urre]

But you can't supply vertexes! They don't have names!

And yes, Half-Life did do animation blending.

[jal]

Warsow has skeletal models with animation blending support, you can check there. You can also check here http://jal.quakedev.com/ in the skelmod project, but the version in Warsow is more advanced.