by David 'st3ady' Fromberg on 8/15/2008 @ 4:25am
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Ok so this is a simple step by step of how I was able to get a model from 3dsmax
into our beloved Quake!

My goal was to get a simple gold coin into the game, which will hopefully be
used by my favorite mod, the MegaTF Coop mod. Be sure to check out the booth.

Tools you will need:

- 3dsmax (I was using 9)

- qme ( homepage - and a
place to download the full
version)

- quick3d

- Paint Shop Pro (I was using 9) and or Photoshop

- the quake palette which you can (Save Target As...) download
here

This tutorial also assumes you have basic model/skinning knowledge in 3dsmax.
If not, I am sure you can find some great basic tutorials on the web using
google or youtube.



I started out in 3dsmax and made a simple 12 sided cylinder. I scaled it so it
was pretty small and floating just above the grid a tiny bit. I then uvmapped it
and exported the wire uv template (128x128) as a simple bitmap and opened it up
into photoshop. I went to google image search, found an image of a big gold
coin, found an image of quakeguy's head, and also found an image of the quake
symbol. I opened them up, did some editing, and managed to get quakeguy's head
and the quake symbol onto the skin. Here is what I made in photoshop:

Sure there is a ton of wasted space, haven't figured out how to cut out the
bottom half and apply it to the model, so I kept it as a 128x128 bitmap.

Next I opened up this skin in Paint Shop Pro and went to Image -> Palette ->
Load Palette. Here I selected the quake palette of course:

It automatically changed the skin's colors so that they closely match that of
the colors in the quake palette. Amazing! This technique is WAAAAAYYY better
than trying to skin using only the pencil tool and the given colors, like I
remember trying to back in the golden days of quake (doh!). Little did I know...







Ok so now we have a good skin ready to apply to the model. I went back into max
and applied this new skin to the model and checked it out:







Cool cool, so far so good. Now, I selected all the faces of the model in edit
polygon mode and flipped them:

Why did you do that? Well this is because Quick3d is a weird program and
automatically flips the faces. So we do this to counteract this unwanted effect.

Next, Export the model (I did regular export as opposed to Export selected)
as a .3ds Max object. I saved it as coin1.3ds.



Then, open up quick3d and open this file:







What the heck why is the screen filled with this weird color? Well it
automatically zooms in, so all you have to do is zoom out by right clicking and
dragging:







So here we see the model is on its side. That is fine. Now go and Save as a .mdl
Quake file. If you are like me and have the unlicensed version, it saves it the
model automatically as something like "shareware_model.mdl". Whatever, that is
fine, just rename it to coin01.mdl or whatever afterwards.



Ok now let's open it up in Qme! Hopefully it loads properly and you see your
model.







Qme is another weird old program that takes some getting used to. Choose the
magnifying glass in the top left and use it by right clicking or left clicking
in the 3d view. You can also use the right mouse button to move around.



Since I plan on replacing the armor model in Quake, and I want it to spin, I
click on the model properties button in the top left (hover over until you find
it), and check the rotate check box:







Cool. Now just save the model as armor.mdl into a folder called Progs in another
folder called whatever you want your mod to be called, inside of your Quake
folder:







Now copy some map files such as dm1-6.bsp into a maps folder:







And you should have these folders at this point:







Cool. Now Let's make a simple bat file using notepad:







I use ezquake, but you can use whichever client you want.



Double click on it after saving (make sure you set it to all files when saving
in notepad!), type in "MAP DM4" in the console, or whichever map you chose, and
run around until you find the armor model:









Well that is it really. I don't know anything about Quake C, so you will have to
ask some coders about making new items for your mod. Oh and here is the model in a zip file along with the skin if you want to download it and test it out/use it for whatever.



Let me know if you need any clarification, or any thoughts on this quick
tutorial I wrote at 4am on a Friday morning XD.



davidfromberg at the gmail dotz com



PS~ If you know of any better ways to do things, let me know, I friggin' wish
someone made a .mdl exporter for max but it seems no one ever did! :(