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Posted by Killa [70.126.214.172] on 2008/09/24 22:32:02
hey, iv been having issues getting custom models into quake, if anyone can help me or knows any good tutorials for me to use it would be much appreciated, thanks! (this seems to be a mapping site, but i was directed here for this issue by someone else)

Killa
#1 posted by gb [89.27.237.51] on 2008/09/24 22:54:02
I'm in the same boat, I also just made my first Quake models. I found it helped that I had mapping experience, because in both cases, you build wireframe meshes of some sort and apply skin/textures to them.
I use QME, which can be downloaded from quakeone.com among other places; it comes with a pretty good manual which is an enlightening read.
http://www.quakeone.com/index.php?...
For skins I use Wally and Paint Shop Pro 4.12, which is an older shareware program (whose trial phase never expires...)
I found it helpful to set the grid size in qme to 2 or 4 units, instead of 0.1. Just read the whole qme manual.
There is also a tutorial by Preach from Quake Expo 06, which is here:
http://www.quakeexpo.com/booth.php...
Also use google to look around for tutorials etc.
On The Subject Of That Tutorial
#2 posted by Preach [81.152.239.106] on 2008/09/24 23:28:19
I've been working on a little project to force me to learn some C++. The program takes an md3 file and a pcx skin, and outputs a mdl file. This would be a good way of skipping the bit of the tutorial which involves messing around with quark. Right now the program works, but it's pretty inflexible. For example, it combines the skins from all the components of the md3 by overlaying them onto the same skin.
It also runs on the command line, so you have to type things in each time you want to convert something. I'd like to give it a proper windows GUI interface, but that's a whole lot of extra learning I haven't got my head round yet. If anyone thinks they'd find it useful it it's current state, give a yell.
I Have A Maya 8.5 -> Quake Path
#3 posted by Lunaran [24.158.1.74] on 2008/09/25 00:08:16
It's a python script run from within Maya that writes out an extended form of .qc that contains actual mesh definitions, coupled with a modified modelgen.exe that reads that mesh data (and .bmp files instead of .lbm). It works perfectly and I have one or two new monsters working in-game already, and they turned out pretty nicely. Doing all the modelling and animating in Maya makes everything so much easier I changed my plans on new monsters in Lunsp2 from "one" to "a bunch" just because the turnaround is so quick.
It is of course not perfect, still in a guts-hanging-out garage-inventor kind of a state, and the documentation exists entirely in my head, and I was going to post it once I'd polished up the rough edges and made it safe for public consumption, but if you have/wanted to use/are willing to try Maya I suppose I could upload something tonight when I get home. Plus, if you're familiar with scripting in your 3d package of choice you could always use just the changed modelgen.exe and write the extended .qc files yourself from Max or Blender or whatever heathen satanist 3d package you use.
Maya -> Quake
#4 posted by Kinn [86.153.225.202] on 2008/09/25 00:32:47
Bloody hell, that would probably get me back into quake modding actually.
unfortunately i'm in the middle of a crunch at work right now, and will be for some time :(
Bollocks >:{
Interesting
#5 posted by ijed [190.20.120.51] on 2008/09/25 05:09:06
I use Max, never got around to figuring out Maya joints.
I'm mostly just hacking up the Q1 monsters ATM, but the heavier stuff will be starting soon.
Lun
#6 posted by Mr Fribbles [150.101.155.114] on 2008/09/25 14:02:16
Maya > Quake sounds good!
I have no interest in modelling or animating characters, but it'd be nice to be able to make/export basic props from Maya and use them in Quake (I'm assuming it's easy to add custom models using Quoth).
Custom Models In Quoth
#7 posted by Preach [81.152.232.253] on 2008/09/25 19:58:59
Yeah, we added that in the latest version, use a "classname" of "mapobject_custom" and model field set to the desired path and model. Spawnflag 1 makes it a static entity, and if you set mangle then that will be used in place of angles - to make odd rotations easier.
Custom Models
#8 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/09/26 04:11:47
i'm playing around with making props for a map i'm working on but having to skin them the 'quake' way instead of doing it all in 3ds is incredibly annoying. :(
I'm Getting Used To It
#9 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/09/26 04:20:01
you can kind of plan around it. I've modelled all my characters thus far with the modelgen projection in mind and gotten pretty good results, without any unsealed edges either. The main thing to remember is, don't have any faces that are parallel to the front - make your legs and heads diamonds or hexes in cross section so that when you do the roadkill you can pull those verts out a bit and pancake the guy to get more even pixel density on those faces that slope away from the z axis.
It helps that next to the existing monsters anything looks good. :)
Well
#10 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/09/26 04:35:52
it's not that it's hard to do, but that you can efficiently unwrap a model. and that in turn means you can get as much resolution out of the skin as you could.
Pretty Easy
#11 posted by HeadThump [4.136.90.168] on 2008/09/26 04:50:41
to unwrap the UV's the Quake way with Blender. Line the camera evenly with the front face choose an unwrap mode called project from view for the front selection. Invert selection you have the back face, then you can spread it out as you see fit. Blender pretty much emulates Maya methods so that might translate over, or might not.
UVs
#12 posted by Preach [86.148.9.7] on 2008/09/26 10:14:48
The converter I've got for MD3 to MDL preserves the existing UV map on the MD3. It turns out that MD3 models do just duplicate the vertices in the same way that it's necessary to do for quake 1 models. So you can map the skin in as efficient a way as you desire.
Hmm
#13 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/09/26 15:25:59
the md3 vertex limit is higher than quake's mdl vertex limit, right?
Is there a quake vertex limit?
Hey Luddits
#14 posted by gone [89.110.55.19] on 2008/09/26 16:06:38
http://www.speeds.quaddicted.com/d...
http://www.speeds.quaddicted.com/d...
"Luddites"
#15 posted by Lunaran [24.158.1.74] on 2008/09/26 18:28:48
Do you walk up to people who are drawing in sketchbooks, or carving something out of a block of wood, and say that to them too?
Sometimes the pleasure in doing something the hard way is in the doing.
#16 posted by gone [89.110.55.19] on 2008/09/26 19:06:05
I walked up to ppl who had said "I wish I could use the technology" and pointed them into the direction...
Well
#17 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/09/26 19:08:06
i don't really use model props in quake much. if i want to do a map that would require detail models like that, then i do it for doom3. :P
Alright Cool, Thanks Speeds
#18 posted by Mr Fribbles [59.167.73.215] on 2008/09/27 04:25:21
Now how can I do it in a good engine?
Limits
#19 posted by Preach [86.148.9.7] on 2008/09/27 10:29:05
Yeah, the md3 limits are 2 to 4 times higher than the quake ones on both triangles and vertices. The thing is though, unless you're making a really weird model with loads of breaks, then the number of vertices is always going to be lower than the number of triangles, but both have the same limit. So you don't usually run into problems, and if you do, the solution is just grouping more things on the skin, which is basically what taking a planar map is heading towards.
Model Limits
#20 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/09/27 19:44:11
what *are* the limits for quake .mdls?
Limits
#21 posted by Preach [86.148.9.7] on 2008/09/27 21:50:00
Ok, I made a slight mistake there. The standard limits, found in winquake and the released source are 2048 triangles, but only 1024 vertices. The compiled version of GLquake from iD actually has the triangle limit halved to 1024, but you can pretty much ignore that as just recompiling the GPL source gives you GLquake with this limit restored. There's no reason anyone should have trouble with that limit.
It's also interesting to note that unlike the max number of frames, which is 256 for networking reasons, you can increase these limits a long way without doing anything besides changing the headers.
In general I'd still say you're gonna hit the tri limit at about the same time as the vertex limit on most models. Once you've counted the vertices on the perimeter of a segment, a mesh of quads increases by 1 vertex for 2 triangles added(roughly speaking). So if you're unwrapping lots of small pieces the vertices are the rub, but for larger pieces the triangles will be more trouble.
Yikes
#22 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/09/27 22:53:02
i had no idea the tris limit was so low o.o but thanks for the info!
Unless The Model Is Huge
#23 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/09/28 04:19:58
you shouldn't be using near that many anyway, because
a) it'll look totally out of place amongst the boxier stock models (and if you don't care about that, you should)
b) integerization will tend to destroy any fine geometry anyway. Remember the faces in Nehahra? Woof.
Model Property
#24 posted by MadFox [84.26.60.178] on 2008/09/28 07:17:55
my bones model took 1082 triangles/ 382 vertices.
And the mdl was large, 1150kb.
the granito model was 574 triangles/169 vertices and was 622kb. It is a huge monster I intended as end boss. The only problem I have it stops its attack in pain frames so one can easily kill it by constant shooting.
Madfox
#25 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/09/28 15:18:40
Monsters' attacks are interruptable by default - you can cut off a hell knight's fire attack in mid-sweep for example. You just need to change your boss's pain function to cause pain every time (or nearly every time) and it should work, although that's if your .qc works like the original .qc, and I can't be sure that it does.
And In Reverse
#26 posted by Preach [86.156.60.23] on 2008/09/28 15:39:29
Madfox, open up shambler.qc. The first thing you should look for is a series of functions; sham_pain1 to sham_pain6. These should look something like the pain functions of your boss monster, and I'll call them the "pain animation" functions. Now if you look at the spawn function for a shambler, right at the bottom of the file, notice the line:
self.th_pain = sham_pain;
What you should notice is that this is not the same function as sham_pain1. sham_pain is an additional function, which I'll call the "pain controller" function. It decides whether or not to bother sending the monster into pain. If you change that line to read sham_pain1(the first "pain ainmation" function), then every time the shambler takes ANY damage, it will run the pain animation, which I think is your problem with the boss. You might want to try this with a shambler, just to see it go wrong.
So now we need to see what the "pain controller" function sham_pain does differently.
void(entity attacker, float damage) sham_pain =
{
sound (self, CHAN_VOICE, "shambler/shurt2.wav", 1, ATTN_NORM);
if (self.health <= 0)
return;
if (random()*400 > damage)
return;
if (self.pain_finished > time)
return;
self.pain_finished = time + 2;
sham_pain1 ();
};
The english language version of this code is:
Play the pain sound.
If I'm dead, return.
Make a random number between 0 and 400, and if the damage taken is less than that, return.
If the current time is less than my pain_finished time, return.
Otherwise, set my pain_finished time to 2 seconds into the future, and play the animation starting with sham_pain1.
I'd say the two most important things the "pain controller" function does are:
1) Create a random chance for the pain animation to play or not (although many smaller monsters don't have this in their pain controllers)
2) Keeps track of the pain_finished variable - not playing the "pain animation" if this variable is greater than time, but also updating it to some time in the future every time a pain animation IS played. This is basically setting a minimum time between pain animations, and that minimum time should be long enough for an attack to occur.
So basically what you want to do is copy this "pain controller" function, rename it, and replace the call to sham_pain1 with granito_pain1, the first of your "pain animation" functions. Then make sure that th_pain is set to the name of the "pain controller" in the monster spawn function. Once it works you can tweak the values further. Hope that helps.
Bootleg Liquor
#27 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/09/28 16:17:48
sham_pain and wiiiine
I will justify this post (and turn the thread away from qc back to modelling) by saying I'm putting together my Maya export stuff for you all right now.
Here You Go, Buttasses
#28 posted by Lunaran [97.87.13.222] on 2008/09/28 18:11:26
Version 0.01 of lunmodelgen.exe and .py:
[ http://lunaran.com/files/lunmodelg... ]
[ http://lunaran.com/files/lunmodelg... ]
The .txt should explain everything, but only if you read everything in it. I also included an unfinished example monster!
Great Thread
#29 posted by ijed [190.20.112.122] on 2008/09/28 18:50:22
If You Are Modeling 3dsmax
#30 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/09/28 19:28:41
i found a useful utility that will deform a mesh into the shape of your UVs. you can use relax and pelt mapping now for quake models. :)
http://slidelondon.com/iv
when you use it on a mesh, it creates a new mesh with a morpher modifier on it so you can go between the unfolded mesh and the original. now you can just export the skin from with the unfolded mesh, then use the morpher to bring everything back together, slap a skin modifier on top and start animating! (if you use the original mesh and then try to combine it with the unfolded mesh, the vertex numbers will be screwed up)
Hah
#31 posted by ijed [190.20.112.122] on 2008/09/28 19:36:57
So I can finally have the skins painted properly without all the annoying black space outside.
Hmm
#32 posted by nonentity [87.194.146.225] on 2008/09/28 19:43:21
OK, stupid question (well, stupid person...);
How is the skin information in Quake different to normal texture/skin information in 3d apps?
I'm curious as to whether I can use the funky new 3d painting shiznat in PS CS3 Extended to skin quake monsters (or at least, a combination of PS and maya/lun's script)
UVs In Mdls
#33 posted by Preach [86.156.60.23] on 2008/09/28 21:27:45
There are two types of UV vertices in a quake model, onseam and offseam. The offseam vertices are the ones not on the perimeter of any shape on the skin. These are exactly like UV coordinates in any other app: each such vertex on the skin is paired with one on the model, and every triangle which meets that vertex will have the corresponding triangle meet it on the skin.
The difficulty arises once you get to a vertex on the edge of a piece on the skin. You don't want all of the triangles which meet at that vertex on the model to join onto it at that UV point on the skin, because you would like to unfold them as separate pieces.
The quake mdl format allows such vertices to be designated "onseam". Then two copies of this vertex will be made on the UV map (but not the model) - one on the left hand side of the skin, and another half the skinwidth to the right of it. To determine which triangles connect to which copy of the vertex, each triangle in the model has a flag "facesfront" which is set by the model compiler. If the triangle faces front it is connected to the left hand vertex, otherwise it connects to the right. As you might guess, the original quake model compiler calculates this based on whether the face is front or back facing, which is why you get the front/back pairing on the original skins.
The alternative, which I support despite always listing it's negative effects, is to make none of the vertices "onseam", but instead make actual duplicates of those vertices in the model which are on the edge of a skin segment, so that they can be moved where you like on the skin. This allows for much better packing of the skin, since you can do things like mirroring halves, devoting more space to things which face front, all the tricks basically.
Thanks!
#34 posted by MadFox [84.26.60.178] on 2008/09/28 22:23:13
Preach, that gave me more perceptive!
Point is I gave the granito.qc three pain sessions so
the self.th.pain = granito_pain_decide
I can change it but how do I calculate the other three pain session?
a closer watch:
http://members.home.nl/gimli/grani...
Ok
#35 posted by Preach [86.156.60.23] on 2008/09/28 22:46:14
It looks like most of what you need is there. First thing I would try is change all those pain finished things to equal time + 5, if it's meant to be a really powerful monster.
There's a small bug which means the first pain animation won't ever be called, you should change
if (r < 0.66)
to
else if (r < 0.66)
otherwise when r < 0.33 it's also < 0.66 so the second pain sequence overrides the first one.
To make the pain animations less likely to happen, you could change to something like
if(r < 0.05)
{ first sequence...}
else if(r < 0.1)
{ second sequence...}
else if(r < 0.15)
{third sequence ...}
That way if r > 0.15 none of them happen. You could even finish that with:
else
self.pain_finished = time + 0.5;
so that if it doesn't go into pain that time, don't even bother to check for the next half a second, which would defend it against pain from nails/lightning a bit more.
You may find putting all these things in might go too far the other way, I'm just throwing them at you so you have the options.
Yeah!
#36 posted by MadFox [84.26.60.178] on 2008/09/28 23:34:57
That goes great!
First I copied the shambler's part of the sham_pain, but then I lost the other two pain sessions in the self.th.pain statement.
But indeed it has more power now. It can't be shot so easily and that's what bothered me in the first place for an end boss.
Hey, thanks for that splendid cham_pain explanation!
Hm
#37 posted by megaman [92.73.93.83] on 2008/09/29 00:07:22
wouldn't gl engines copy the vertex anyways for rendering?
Copycat
#38 posted by Preach [86.156.60.23] on 2008/09/29 00:33:20
Yeah, but that copy wouldn't count towards the limit of 1024, only the ones that are loaded from the mdl structure count for that.
Slide
#39 posted by Bal [81.249.72.25] on 2008/09/29 00:51:05
Was just browsing Polycount and someone made a script like the one necros posted for Maya:
http://boards.polycount.net/showth...
Thought it might interest someone maybe.
How
#40 posted by MadFox [84.26.60.178] on 2008/09/29 21:23:35
do I create the last death frame of a monster,
so its death scene leaves in another skin index?
#41 posted by necros [99.227.108.217] on 2008/09/29 21:38:38
just add self.skin = # in the last frame function.
but seriously, madfox. post this stuff in the programming thread. :\
Good
#42 posted by MadFox [84.26.60.178] on 2008/09/30 01:20:44
thanks for advice.
nice thread.
Milkshape
#43 posted by Killa [70.126.212.240] on 2008/10/15 09:18:15
if anyone's interested in modeling and uses milkshape i have a tutorial i wrote that might help you out.
it's here: http://z10.invisionfree.com/Quaked...

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