could just be bad offset in qc\qme of course. 

sounds like framerate. Quake only thinks every 0.1 seconds. Would say more but my phone's buttons are tiny. 

i can't see how it can be those things. Here is a nice picture illustrating exactly what i'm on about:

http://i.imgur.com/2DWjt.jpg

It is a mystery. 

pretend in that picture of the model in QME that there is a helpful grid or something, but trust me it's 4 units to the side to the barrel centres, from the middle. 

i don't think the scale of the weaponmodel and the world is the same at all.
turn on noclip and move into a wall. you have to be nearly inside the wall before your weapon starts clipping, but if you look at the model, it's quite large and should have started clipping almost immediately.

the best you can hope for is to eyeball it. 

i did another test - i imported the spike mesh into the nailgun model in QME and put them side by side to compare their relative sizes in QME with their relative sizes ingame.

And yes, that seemed to prove that the weaponmodels ingame are scaled down compared to normal models.

Can anyone who knows their way around the engine find out what the scaling factor is? That would be super helpful :) 

i think the weapons are the correct scale in the world, but they are drawn on top of everything else and don't clip into anything -- this means that, for example, you can get really close to a wall and the gun looks tiny because it sorts on top of the wall (even though physically it should be clipping through it.)

With the nails, i think the nails are actually closer than the gun, but they sort behind it so it looks like they are big and too far apart. If they were spawned lower and farther forward, they might look correct at the current lateral spread. 

dunno about that - like necros said, the gun will clip if you noclip into the world.

also, i changed the nail spawn points to be further forward and all that, but the side problem was still clear and present. 

I think it's possible that the misalignment is on the z axis, that the weapon model is actually several units lower than the nails are being spawned. What metl says about the weapon always being last in the draw order is what makes the image deceptive, it makes the model clip in front of the nails when the order ought to be reversed.

A good test of this theory would be to move the nailgun up by 22 units (the view offset) or launch the nails from 22 units below their current position and see if the alignment improves. 

 

yes metl and preach are right - the nails are actually too high above the gun, and the sort order totally threw me off.

Also I am a retard for not reading metl's post correctly. 

Although this is entirely unfair to Kinn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vbd3E6tK2U 

I seem to be going round in circles and I not sure what which package I should be using. I want to make a small test Q1 monster with a couple of test animation frames and I am not sure which model package / conversion tools I should be using.

I download the Qme3_1 and it seems broken in so many ways. It is handy for extracting stuff and seeing how the mdl fit together but not much use for a good workflow on creating a model.

I download gmax and preach's md3tomdl convertor and it seems like a good solution I can work with, but I have a ton of questions about what things go where. So bare with me while I ask lots of stupid questions!

I can't import a md3 model into gmax? I want to look at the structure of the md3 in gmax (what stuff goes where) and the importer does not appear in the import menu? I have downloaded the file (q3-md3.ms) but I am not sure where it is suppose to go in the gmax file structure. I tried plugins but nothing changes on the import menu.

The md3 format supports head/torso/feet layout (aka q3) but I assume q1 is a single format (all model) is this correct? Should I be building my models as one mesh?

In Gmax I create the model/uv unwrap/etc then how do I setup the animations? Do I create bones and tweak each frame? How do I store the different frames? Do you work from a T pose model first and then tweak everything? (If I had an example in gmax I could see how it works, but I can't load preach's example ogre)

Any help or pointers on what I should do would be awesome. Thanks 

If so, give Lunaran a shout: he has written a maya -> .mdl tool 

The MD3 import is a pain to figure out, it's written in maxscript.

Put q3-md3.ms in D:\gmax\Scripts\Startup
Then if you click the hammer icon in the right hand panel (tab 6), then press the MAXScript button. MD3 import should then appear in the Utilities dropdown.

md3tomdl will combine multiple Q3 meshes into a single MDL file, but not very intelligently. The skin vertices of each mesh will be laid on top of each other in order to reduce down to a single skin. Similarly the animations are constructed by taking frame 1 from each mesh and combining those poses to make frame 1 of the mdl, all the frame 2s into frame 2, etc. I don't think I respected tags at all when combining either.*

If you're building your own model it makes sense to keep everything in one mesh because that's what the end product will be.

The standard way to animate in gmax is using the Skin modifier. You construct a set of bones for your mesh, then apply the skin modifier to the mesh. In the panel for the skin modifier you can add bones as controllers, assign vertices to them either by setting envelopes for the bones or by painting weights - google for "gmax skin modifier" and I'm sure a suitable tutorial will be there.

I've packaged up the latest version of the ogre, along with all the other bits of the pipeline (the skin, the batch file, the script for md3tomdl, the md3 output). It's at
http://www.btinternet.com/~chapterhonour/ogrepipe.zip
If you can't get that to load, let me know what kind of error you get and I can try to diagnose it. I expect the skin won't work straight off because gmax stores an absolute path for it...



*The problem is that you can't make the conversion more intelligent automatically. The number of decisions you need to send to the conversion tool is so great I'd spend most of the time writing a parser in C++ to read the config file. It seems smarter to write the tool in a scripting language, but I'm aborting my attempt with perl because even I find it awkward to work with and I wrote the damn thing. Python or Lua next... 

@Kinn, I don't have maya I only have LW9 which is too new for all the MD3 plugins to work. It does seem to connect well with Qme (3.1 version) but I prefer to try the max route for the moment.

@Preach, thanks :) That does make perfect sense now, I was wondering how you fit the ogre together. I will experiment with a single frame for the moment and see if I can the process working before attempting any proper monster model. Also is there a hotkey in gmax to bring up the UV edit screen? I can't find an easy way to get to the UV screen. 

I'm sure there's a shortcut for it, or a way to create one, there's a dialog box that lets you change all the shortcuts to your liking. Personally I just click the button on the modifier, it's not so bad. 

I can't believe how anyone has the patience to create models for Q1. I created a model and UV mapped in LW 9 (I like the interface and tools) and cannot get it into Q1.

Qme (3.0 & 3.1)
LWO import only takes mesh, totally ignores all UV data.
DXF import, mesh only but format does not support UV.
3DS import, mesh only. I can't get the UV data to be accepted. It could be the shitty exporter in LW but I did get the 3DS file imported back into LW (not really a good proof format is right) I tried importing the 3ds file into gmax and mesh only.

So I am totally stumped how anyone can get any UV stuff into Qme. The package and pipeline seem broken to me.

Any hints on how other people create models with Qme? Is this why preach wrote the md3 route ignoring qme? 

ah ok, so this was the process you were talking about in your mail. :)

first, qme cannot accept standard uvw data.

what you would need to do is to split the mesh up the same way it is split up in your uvw.

if you could export a dxf with uvw and import it into gmax, then use a gmax md3 exporter to export an md3 which you can then use preach's converter on, you could create a mdl file with the single frame BUT with your uvw mapping preserved.

after this, you could export the rest of the frames as lwos and IMPORT (not open) them into your existing model. 

sorry, first, i forgot dxf doesn't support uvw.
so you'd use 3ds format.

the above long process is only needed for the initial frame to set up the skin mapping.

once that's done, the rest will go in fairly easily. just write a script (lightwave can do this? i'm not sure, but i am assuming so since it's a high end 3d editing suite) to export all your frames as seperate lwo files.

the only danger is that during all the importing and exporting, the vertex order could get rearranged which will prevent you from importing the rest of the frames. 

I did it! I got my model from LW to Q1! Now I can plan getting all the bones and animation sorted.

LW 3DS exporter
Gmax Special 3DS importer (should be default)
Save in MD3 format (special plugin again)
Use preach md3tomdl
(can't get Photoshop to save in the right PCX skin format for preach tool, have to replace in Qme)
Open in QMe and it looks good :P

FINALLY!!! :D:D

Got several options for animations, DXF import into Qme or setup bones in Gmax not sure which at this point, will have to experiment. At least I can create all the meshes and UV stuff in LW. 

I don't have lightwave so I can't test it but this claims to be a md3 export plugin for lightwave. This would let you skip the gmax stages of that process.

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~mbristol/md3/index.html

PS: if you export the skin from QMe you should be able to get it into the required 8 bit format for md3tomdl.

PPS: if you can cut QMe out of the process you get to keep nice vertex normals for your model! 

PPS: if you can cut QMe out of the process you get to keep nice vertex normals for your model!

This is what was the final nail in the coffin for QME for me. 

Cool idea on the skin PCX format, I don't need to touch the package anymore. :)
The downside of the 3DS format is that the UV verts have to be un-welded before export. Is there an easy way in gmax to weld all UV verts together? 

I think the best you can do is apply the unwrap uvw modifier, select all the vertices manually and click the weld selected button. It's probably automatable with the maxscript stuff but it's not that much work by hand. Don't forget that the vertices do often get separated in the final mdl file as well, so do check if welding is helping the final output.