While I'm enjoying having a wizzy new website, I don't want to feel like I'm just linking to it instead of posting stuff here. So I'm going to share a motivating story and then link to a new article which relates to it:

I remember on several occasions running into an annoyance when creating a model. I would spend some time working in gmax on the model, sculpting and skinning it, until I reached the moment when it was finally done, and it was time to export to mdl format. Once I'd cursed and sworn my way through making the fragile conversion succeed, I'd begin the work in QME of getting the model finished off - scaling, rotating and positioning it correctly, adding animations, importing the skins.

The annoyance came when half way through this work in QME, I'd suddenly realise how much better the model would be if this part of the skin wasn't mirrored, or if I'd turned some of the edges the other way. The dilemma was choosing between foregoing these improvements, or throwing away all the work in QME so far to export a new version from gmax.

If you have ever had the same experience, or just want to learn how you might create a quake model without using QME, please come read the long article I just posted at
http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/a-modelling-pipeline/
The idea is to generate mdl files from a series of compiling tools, rather like bsp files are made.

Also in the modelling category is an expanded article on "progressive enhancement" expanding on what I've posted about it here, and restored downloads of my two modelling tools qmdl and md3tomdl. The latter is an exciting new version of the tool, v0.2! It offers better vertex rounding, proper vertex normals and support for multiple surfaces in the source md3 file. To be honest I've been using 0.2 for years and never realised I'd kept it to myself.

That's not to mention the model category where I've been uploading stuff the past week. It's a roughly even mix of models from the old site, newer models which I've shared in this thread, and entirely new models which nobody has seen yet! In particular the "Map objects" category has the best of the goods. 

i love md3tomdl :) 

Gmax md3 and soooo many things too learn. After using Hammer for so long Gmax is a bitch. Just getting things to grid. I keep moving things I don't intend to. A whole new set of terminology 

Stick with it though, and don't forget to walk before you can run. There are thousands of wooden barrel models out there, but one which was made just for quake(and so presents no legal worries) would still be nice! It's pretty simple to model, interesting to unwrap the skin for, and then doesn't need any animation (which is the hardest thing in gmax).

I really should take that old gmax tutorial I had on one of the qexpo sites, and revamp it on the blog someday... 

New model time (although I posted previews of it years ago so it's only newly finished)

http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/ogre/

It's a replacement ogre (which along with In The Shadows makes two in the past week, I know...) with all the usual skin map stuff. It's based off the ogre drawing metlslme did, which I was looking for in the screenshots thread earlier.

Bonus fun fact: this model uses less texture memory than the id ogre in 3d accelerated engines! The original ogre texture is 264x194, which gets rounded up to 512x256 - twice as much as the 256x256 of this model. 

And another model, one which might even be more interesting, although it was much less effort to make. It's a mapobject for adding fences and wooden logs to a map, with 4 skins which cover the main ID wood textures. Go take a peek and download it from http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2012/12/16/fence/ 

Looks very cool Preach. I may have a use for a model like that soon. :) 

A model that has a lot of uses.
Nice.
Thanks Preach 

Here's a little bug, it won't attack unless you change its sting.qc.

bug

I wanted something that just flattered around,
but as it awakes it is fixed to a player.
Not what I expected as it attack routine isn't used.
Maybe make it a bit smaller to lower the bouncing box.
Odd when it isn't possible to jump over it.

download 

i haven't looked at the code, but movetogoal will home in on whatever entity is stored in the .goalentity pointer.

if you adapted the sting.qc from a normal monster, then you probably have ai_stand() in the idle frames which will set the player to goalentity when it sees them.

then you probably have ai_run(#) which uses movetogoal which is what makes it run to the player. 

I guess I should have elaborated more:

what you need to do is remove ai_stand and ai_runs.

you will need to make a new movement function to replace the ai_run.

then you will need to find a way to make it choose when to move and when to stand.

btw, the model is cool. :) 

You're aiming at the point I lost my intention, necros.

In the mdl is a subroutine that turns, so it must be possible to make it just fly around, and take a place to sit down, after continuing flying.

It's just that I'm not so familiar with monsters that won't get hostile.
The subroutine to make it only wandering around don't come with an example to reach it.

The tumble when it dies accordant to a scrag explains a bit of the way to go. 

Maybe the code I used for birds will be helpful?
http://mobile.sheridanc.on.ca/~jonescor/temp/ne_bird(07.12.12).qc

check out the ai_bird() function at line 373

The bird doesn't move on it's own. The mapper places bird_anchorPoint entities with flags set for either food or rest.

Birds get hungry and tired when flying and have to go to rest areas to remove tiredness and food areas to remove hunger. This is basically how they decide where to go.

Also, birds don't use movetogoal or walkmove, they directly set .velocity to fly around. 

I searched in the AI.QC the .goalentity and the void.Hunt target.

I thought it would be possible to make the entity not getting hostile with an exclusion, but there is more involoved.

Still I don't get it why I can't jump over it.
I made the so seize small and still it acts like a pillar.

Thanks for the util, will see it through. 

That's awesome. I did a bird mesh, but just fired it via an emission without coding anything up. 

Poor bird mesh, to be vanished to fire without code!

necros - handsome sript! I try to rip off what comes in as usefull.

I suppose strings like "ai_monsterDead" and "ai_bird_modifyHunger" are the parts my compiler doesn't know to deal with.
But for a rough overview I must say you have a fine quake bird there. 

sorry about that.

ai_monsterDead is just a function that makes bodies fade away. You can just remove that.

ai_bird_modifyHunger is on line 188.

You can simplify it a lot by removing hunger and tiredness though. Those things are not really necessary. 

Ok, it's not a totally new model, I think I posted an early version of the dome right before my old site departed. But it's got a bunch of new skins, and it's now designed to align with the grid and brushes correctly.

http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/dome/ 

inside of the ikblue dome in particular 

Here's a special model for this festive occasion - although it's not really seasonal, just a little bit silly. It's a custom shambler model with some very special animations. Might even be useful if you're looking for an easter egg for your mod.

http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/shambler-dance/

I reckon the underlying model has potential too. It would need a bit of work on the skin, give the fur convincing texture. Shaping on the arms needs some work. And obviously some sensible animations... 

I'm scrapping the map itself, but those columns look familiar http://www.suspenlute.com/stuff/columns.jpg 

with 17 years of quake history someone somewhere MUST have created a model of a human heart - preferably animated. Anybody know? 

But it's just a blob of meat - you can probably make one in under an hour, even if you just use ye olde QME on its own :)

I spose it's possible that there was something like that in Hexen. And the HL1 gibs were pretty detailed. But hunting one down will probably take more time than making one. 

but I'd hoped there was something better out there. oh well.