News - Model converter with extensive Quake support

Rich · Post by **Rich** » Wed Nov 03, 2010 1:43 am

Sajt wrote:I'm pretty sure nobody knows the QME .mdo specs. It never occurred to me that Rene what's his face might still be alive, but I guess it's possible.

As for plugins, I would write one if you hadn't already done all the formats I am familiar with.

Are you going to move the implementation for other formats to plugins?

Well, I went ahead and sent him an e-mail a couple hours ago. It didn't bounce back, so I'll give him a couple weeks and see what happens.

If he's dropped off the face of the earth entirely, reversing it is always an option. I don't actually have a copy of QME or any mdo files to reference, but I'm guessing it won't be too complicated with those things on hand. Especially with native binary to disassemble for reference in case there are any peculiarities in the format.

Yeah, I figure I'll probably start slowly moving various formats to plugin land, now that the plugin system is pretty done-ish. I've only finally exposed the interface in the last few versions of the program, so plugins haven't been an option for all that long. I'll also be writing most (or all) of the future formats into plugins.

Rich · Post by **Rich** » Sun Nov 07, 2010 1:10 pm

I actually e-mailed Rene Post some days ago, and awesomazingly he is actually still around, and he replied. He said he'd go through his archives and find me some Delphi code to describe the mdo spec this weekend. You're welcome to the spec once he sends it over, if you'd like to make a Noesis plugin for it.

Also, 2.3 is now up. There's a frame list in the data viewer now, although still not explicit import/export of specific frame ranges. That's on the todo list for some other day.

Chip · Post by **Chip** » Sun Nov 07, 2010 1:22 pm

That's great news! What about qME source?

leileilol · Post by **leileilol** » Sun Nov 07, 2010 1:25 pm

"Update assoications"?

Rich · Post by **Rich** » Sun Nov 07, 2010 3:32 pm

leileilol wrote:"Update assoications"?

Will Not Fix. Assoication feature is as designed.

I dunno if Rene has any interest in releasing qME's source. Guess I might ask if he wants to just throw the whole thing at me once he gets around to getting back to me again on the mdo specs.

Sajt · Post by **Sajt** » Sun Nov 07, 2010 5:04 pm

Rich wrote:I actually e-mailed Rene Post some days ago, and awesomazingly he is actually still around, and he replied. He said he'd go through his archives and find me some Delphi code to describe the mdo spec this weekend. You're welcome to the spec once he sends it over, if you'd like to make a Noesis plugin for it.

Gah! I envy your out-of-the-box thinking. Some of us have stewed here for years idly wishing for the MDO specs. (But not enough to bother trying to reverse engineer it, and apparently not enough to think of emailing the guy.) I'll take a crack at a plugin, maybe, if you get your hands on some code from QME. Hopefully "reverse engineering" it from some Pascal code is easier than working from an MDO in a hex editor.

leileilol · Post by **leileilol** » Wed Dec 15, 2010 3:51 pm

PSK support was added in today's version.

Just posting that since Darkplaces also supports PSK.

This makes me happy and I am happy when i'm happy

(nub fyi: psk = actorx = unrealengine 2/3 model format)

Rich · Post by **Rich** » Wed Dec 15, 2010 11:36 pm

And I've just made a pretty big update to the PSK+PSA plugin. As well as some other random fixes while I was at it.

Apparently not only can PSK/PSA not have more than 1 root bone, they also need to have all children in hierarchical order. I also noticed that Gildor's importer was screwing up the normals due to my material redundancy, so I decided to auto-cull redundant verts and minimize material references in the PSK exporter once the verts have been reduced to the final forms of data that PSK actually wants. This was at the expense of making the plugin code a bit more frightening.

ijed · Post by **ijed** » Wed Dec 29, 2010 12:13 am

So, how do I use it?

I'm wanting to get an animated mesh from Max2010 into .mdl format.

What's the preferred format to export from?

Also - thanks a lot, this'll make things easier.

dreadlorde · Post by **dreadlorde** » Wed Dec 29, 2010 1:22 am

modelconv -i inputfile.type outputfile.type

There's more options, which you can see with just invoking modelconv.

I think you can only output one type at a time, and if that's the case, the -i flag should probably be removed. If you can output more than one format, disregard the last sentence.

ijed · Post by **ijed** » Wed Dec 29, 2010 1:39 am

Huh? I've used modelconv - not the same thing and unfortunately isn't working for me since the only maintained md3 exporter I can find for max2010 is a pretty broken version from the Duke3D forums.

Noesis has a visual interface and accepts lots of formats - I just don't know which to export from max in, that Noesis can then read and save into the .mdl format.

A batch export script that will output 120 frames into individual .3ds files will also work, searching for that now...

leileilol · Post by **leileilol** » Wed Dec 29, 2010 4:51 am

You can try Collada, that's a okay exchange format

ijed · Post by **ijed** » Wed Dec 29, 2010 1:26 pm

Yeah, when I tried that it showed up without animation, but most likely that's something I'm doing wrong with the export options.

Believe it or not I had all this crap working with a convoluted workflow using Quick3D/Qme, full of hidden minefields that would corrupt the mesh, texture or changeover formats, so new and maintained tools are always welcome.

Anything that 'just works' and doesn't have modelers grinding hours into fighting with the formats instead of making stuff look cool is a big bonus

Rich · Post by **Rich** » Wed Dec 29, 2010 2:54 pm

ijed wrote:Yeah, when I tried that it showed up without animation, but most likely that's something I'm doing wrong with the export options.

Believe it or not I had all this crap working with a convoluted workflow using Quick3D/Qme, full of hidden minefields that would corrupt the mesh, texture or changeover formats, so new and maintained tools are always welcome.

Anything that 'just works' and doesn't have modelers grinding hours into fighting with the formats instead of making stuff look cool is a big bonus

It's best to use an OpenCOLLADA-based exporter too, if you can. COLLADA standards have sadly become a bit of a mess, so I'm thinking about adding FBX sometime too.

There's also md5mesh/md5anim, though the big downside of that one is that you don't get stored normals. And there's PSK/PSA. No stored normals there either, but it does obey smoothing groups on import. And... there's SMD, skeletal mesh and sequence files are supported. (just load the model SMD, drag-and-drop the sequence SMD to apply it to the loaded model, and "Export from preview" to MDL) PSK/PSA might actually be pretty viable, since Epic offers their ActorX exporter for practially every modeling suite in existence.

I think those are the main "generic" formats that support skeletal animation and skinning. I'm open to suggestions for other formats, if you've got any. I try to stay clear of ones with blatant deficiencies (like not storing normals, or not allowing vertex weights), though I've found model formats that offer all the basics tend to be found more often as proprietary game formats than generic standard ones, haha.

ijed · Post by **ijed** » Thu Dec 30, 2010 1:40 am

I'm away for a couple of days (without internet) but we're going to continue needing this stuff for remake, so will get to a pipeline for it sooner or later. One that doesn't involve beating my head against a brick wall is better

Work a lot with tools guys who always say 'if there's a problem, then shout' will go with that ethos here as well - too much info never hurt development.

Should have put the word 'relevant' in there.