@Rich, hey thanks for registering here.

it imports multiple skins, but doesn't export at the moment. I often have models with multiple skins, at the moment I use another package to add them.

Tools->Data viewer->Model # That certainly shows me the multiple skins in the MDL file but I want to see them on the model. This simple displays them as flat textures in the view window.

Newer versions of Noesis have an animation slider That would be extremely handy, as often I want to check certain frames with different skins. I don't suppose you could add a loop function (frame X->Y) for the play?

Can you give me the command line you're trying to use, and the data you're trying to use it with? I will have to go back and try the again. I did spent a long time trying to working out what each command line parameter did, but found it frustrating because I wanted to automate converting 50+ models at once and the command line seem to only work through the export window.

the Noesis page doesn't have a donate link I will sort out a donation this week. Amazing program, it has saved me loads of time trying to get models into Quake 1. 

We've talked before - I was having the problem with the Q1/BMP format that time.

This time it was a mis-applied texture from 3dsMax. Basically the material wasn't applied properly, so when importing the FBX it looked fine, but then exporting to IQM caused the UVs/texture to be removed.

Unfortunately I've since fixed it so don't have a decent repro case to show.

I'll be more precise and sure to send you bugs as they surface :) 

Where's a good place for contact? Can't seem to find an email link for you. 

You can use iamthedick at gmail dot com. Feel free to send stuff along whenever you run into anything that isn't working right.

@sock, if you want to apply the texture to the model in the preview, you can go to Model #->Meshes->Mesh #->Material index. Double-click that to modify it to the value of the material you want. You can also go to Model #->Materials->Material # and modify the texture index for the material instead, if you'd like.

I can look into multi-select functionality or something for the data viewer to allow you to loop arbitrary frame sets.

Feel free to send along your batch export content/commandline to my e-mail whenever you get a chance, too.

Thanks a lot for the donation. I'm presently seeking a new job and am close to broke, so everything helps. :) 

I tried all I could to attach the the grenade launcher to the other three modelparts but they won't collect to one model.

For some reason I can't follow the button traject and end up with a skinfile of 784x240.
If I select an object I can't find the Attach button.


Quake1 Orb 

http://tomeofpreach.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/attach.png

Take a look at this.
If this doesn't work
Tell me what you see instead of "editable mesh" 

http://tomeofpreach.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/attach.png

Take a look at this.
If this doesn't work
Tell me what you see instead of "editable mesh" 

I'm as queer-eyed as the orb self.
If i select the most versatile part "legs" there shows no attach button.
legs
When I select "torso" I set the attach button, but when I attach them the UVWrapper gives me a broken mesh on a little part of the skinfile.
torso 

What happens if you right click the legs and do "convert to editable mesh"? This ought to let you attach it, but it might damage the animation. 

Yes, it freezes animation.
As far I can go is wondering how I got the skinfile of the rocketlauncher into the three other ones.
First the eye got damaged, then I followed necro's hint of moving the mesh in Quark47.
Only thing I couldn't avoid is the 782x240 size.

A bit torned up I decided to reinvent the rocketlauncher and made it out of a flat basefile.
Doesn't help much as I don't understand how to get a half sized UVW map out of them, just like the Q3 models.

How do they do it? 

You can use entirely separate skins for different parts of models in Q3, it's not really comparable to Q1, where everything has to be on one skin. 

I retraced the grenadelauncher from a flat vertice mesh in the hope it would get the UVWrappers attention.

Doesn't make a lot difference in detail though.
And gmax handels it as a sepperate file so I have to search on.
Thanks for the reply though!

I wondered, is it possible to place the verts behind eachother, sparing skinsize?

v_launch 

I wondered, is it possible to place the verts behind eachother, sparing skinsize?

Should be (it's common practice), unless Quake has some funky limitation. 

Are typically generated by Qme, which does back/front mapping without any controls for stacking or packing the UVs.

Not sure what the original models were made it, but they set the precedent. 

Yes, the quake model format does support this, but like ijed says, the main editor that handles .mdl format has exactly one way of making skin layouts. It loads files which are more creative though - there's an example of a dome model which overlaps vertices here:

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

While I'm throwing out links to my blog...

http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/a-modelling-pipeline/

...describes one way you might go about making such a .mdl file. The "madfox care package" linked a few posts ago has a ready-made setup for the first half of the article, which gives you a .mdl file to work with. 

ijed et al, what is the preferred format to export uvw maps?

3dsmax's is a binary format and I guess proprietary... :\
that wouldn't be much fun to decode... 

@spiney - I placed the verts behind eachother and it worked. First skinsize had 194x220 and this one gets 184x195 smaller.
Three objects won't layer I suppose as one gets stick in the middle.

@preach - I managed to get the object attached in Gmax now. And it also collides exact to the torso, more than I could animate myself.
Only bad point is that the attached model don't want to export. It keeps asking about modifiers. 

Can you screencap the error message you get? 

I honestly don't know - I just export to whichever format works. I prefer not to use proprietary formats since it just closes doors on collaboration. And you never know when they'll change the format.

I know that the .obj format is universal, supports UVs and can be imported into just about anything.

However it doesn't support animation, so typically I use FBX, which supports everything and is well supported and stable.

It seems popular with everyone here as well.

As to what UVW format it uses internally... IDK sorry.

Let me know if you need any testing done.

I also have another request... IQM format.

Skeletal as opposed to vertex animation just looks better. Strangely enough was only implemented in the 4th version of MDL / idtech as well. 

You can get dev kits from Autodesk for the format, just need to plug the code into your codebase and it should work.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=7478532

Also FBX is not limited to triangles, you can store stuff in quads which is a lot easier for modelling when everything is not a huge mess of triangles. 

oh so you guys import UVs by importing a whole model then? ok, that works too.

I already have OBJ and FBX is plain text too, so not too bad to figure out how to deal with it.
I know sock has trouble with OBJ in lightwave so it's probably a good idea to get FBX in anyway.

Is IQM plain text?
I doubt I will touch skeletal modelling, at least for a while. there's a lot of new stuff to take into account there. 

It's binary. Here's the site: http://lee.fov120.com/iqm/

But yeah, probably something for (current version + 1). 

An inherent flaw in how Quake treats animation I was fighting with the last night.

Having all the animation lumped together is a big cause of the dodgy frames issue. You know the one, where the animation continues fine but at the end or start of the loop one additional frame makes the monster (or whatever) pop into some unwanted pose.

Qme had fairly good tools for naming and ordering the frames, and hunting down errant ones.

3dsMax at least doesn't have anything, so I end up counting the frames manually.

Having said that, there probably is a plugin somewhere... 

This could help:

Animation > Track View > Note Track 

I can export the model from Gmax to md3 and Noesis can convert it to a mdl. An mdl file in Noesid exported to md3 Gmax won't capture.
So far so good.

There is only the thing of attaching the launcher to the model. When I import the launch.dxf and try to attach it to the legs my animation gets lost.
Whwn I attach it to the torso, the uvw file also gets attached to the torsos-kin and ends up in a distorted skinfile

I can scale this part th fit into the already excisting skinfile, but the loss of texture also scrambles the launcher
Also think I had to skip some double objects while exporting as the vert/tris count gets much too high.

So it is a case of a proper attachement of the launcher to the original file without the loss of the uvw skinfile.

I tried the othe way around by just merging the launcher.mdl into the converted md3 model in QMLE. That way I also get a skinfile, but at least the proportions are in a usable manner

I loose all my animation so I have to stretch 218 launchers to make the file fit.
Didn't expect it to be such a hussle!