Using Blender to make Quake 3 maps

by **ScatterBox** » Fri Mar 21, 2014 8:46 pm

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!!

by **gnounc** » Sat Mar 22, 2014 12:42 am

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.

by **Seven** » Sat Mar 22, 2014 2:06 pm

by **toneddu2000** » Sat Mar 22, 2014 6:56 pm

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 and

Last version I presume is

by **ScatterBox** » Sat Mar 22, 2014 11:39 pm

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?

by **frag.machine** » Sun Mar 23, 2014 12:18 am

by **toneddu2000** » Sun Mar 23, 2014 10:08 am

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.

by **leileilol** » Sun Mar 23, 2014 8:54 pm

by **toneddu2000** » Mon Mar 24, 2014 3:14 pm

by **leileilol** » Mon Mar 31, 2014 11:52 am

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?

by **goldenboy** » Mon Mar 31, 2014 12:54 pm

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

by **toneddu2000** » Mon Mar 31, 2014 8:53 pm

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

by **goldenboy** » Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:36 pm

by **jitspoe** » Mon Mar 31, 2014 10:33 pm

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.

by **toneddu2000** » Mon Mar 31, 2014 10:41 pm

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

Using Blender to make Quake 3 maps

Using Blender to make Quake 3 maps

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