This keyboard is missing four keys. 

Yeah, I guess I can see how it's not ideal either.
All the monsters in Quoth were exported manually frame by frame... that was painful.

With Sock's monsters, I wrote some maxscripts for myself that automates everything but I can appreciate that it's not always an option if you don't know how or your 3d package doesn't have scripting.

I just don't see a solution outside of individual files per frame. 

I'm glad I have Gmax as my version of max3d 4.1 won't help me out with this skin problem. Forcing the torso part to attach the launcher distorted the skin file. Then I realized I could use the material editor to add the launcher skin again.

idle

Thanks Preach, I really would have added the launcher animation manual, but the way it now collides is perfekt! 

Wow, this is great... but weird :P 

Now it gets as bad as Quoth's RocketEnforcer,
the one that made me fear so much. 

While playing I wondered.., the rocketlauncher has three puffpipes.
In game the player sees them in front, so it looks as if the launcher is turned back.
The v_model shows it with the pipes behind.

Is it mirrored or am I shooting with the wrong way out? 

who shoot's who 

I�ll just stop whinging and learn maxscript :) 

fn export3DSFrames path name start end prefix =
(
counter = 1;
for i = start to end do
(
sliderTime = i;
ExportFile (path + prefix + "_" + name + counter + ".3ds") #noPrompt selectedonly:true;
counter += 1;
)
sleep 0.1;
)

here's the function I use to export a single sequence.

"path" string to specify output folder
"name" string for animation name
"start/end" these are frame numbers in max
"prefix" can be anything, i give it a number starting at 0 and increment for each additional sequence. it's to preserve the order of the sequences in windows so when I import them all in a batch, the order is still correct.

then I call it like this:
export3DSFrames workingDir "stand" 2 13 count;
count += 1;
export3DSFrames workingDir "walk" 539 552 count;
count += 1;
etc...

from a different script that is specifically for a monster. you can add in extra stuff like a switch to choose from different variations of a monster so that it automatically enables/disables layers or adds/removes bits from the mesh like for example removing shoulder armor or adding horns...

maxscript is annoying to learn but it is extremely useful. :) 

Here's a work-in-progress python script for importing that kind of fbx batch of frames into a mdl file.

http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/work-in-progress-fbxtomdl-script/

Anyone who's good with python know what the easiest way to handle installing libraries your script depends on? The set-up needed for this script is a barrier to use... 

If the script in the last post was a bit too much, then give the standalone package a try:

http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/standalone-fbxtomdl/

It's got command line switches and everything! 

Plasmagun ground and view model drop-in replacement for Quoth (put .mdl s into quoth/progs) and a ground shotgun model. Feel free to use in your maps/mods/w/e.

screenshot

download

more info and pictures 

This plasma gun model is really nice!!! 

It's a wonderful match for the ikbase textures - now I'm imagining a whole set of base themed replacements. The super nailgun and rocket launcher are quite arcane and abstract in design, and fit in less with the tech stuff. But yes, a really great bit of kit.

The shotgun it also a handy bit of kit to have - it opens the way a level where you only start with the axe - like the start of Zerst�rer taken further. Then you could get a "Bolt Gun" which fires nails at a shotgun rate (and gets replaced in its slot by the nailgun once you get one). After that, finding the shotgun would feel like a real reward. 

Your shotgun and triple barrel version look really good, any plans to release them like the plasma rifle? Do you plan to make the double barrel in between?

Would be really nice upgrade path, 1->2->3 barrels. 

Actually, on the topic of both weaker weapons and base style things, I reckon a player version of the enforcer blaster would be another good "low-powered" weapon to give to players in the early stages of a base map. If it used one cell to fire exactly what the enforcer puts out (a pair of shots at 15 damage each) it would be on par with the thunderbolt on damage per unit of ammo. Firing a two shot burst would differentiate it from other weapons, and it would let players use cells from enforcers early, without giving them the lightning gun. 

The weapon models are nice - but this looks absolutely incredible:

http://imgur.com/a/cMad2/#0

What is it? How did you make it? 

here what it is... 

q3map2 / Darkplaces surely? 

Single shotgun is in the zip, tripple uhmm still need to make a quake-quality skin and reloading anims, which is painfull with no proper preview (I spent 2 hrs repositioning the model and reloading quake just to get plasmagun look ok), next week mayhaps.

DBS you already have in the game and can find replacement models if you want a better looking one.

The tentacle mess is made with splines. Its a world of Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos. 

Quick tip for previewing and updating models. Run quake in a window, then use the flush command in the console to reload the models from disk. That way you can make a change, save it, and get it to appear in-game instantly. 

One of the better received models I made on my old site was the waterfall, but it never made it onto the new one. The reason was that I actually wanted to redo the whole thing, and version two is finally done.

http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/waterfall/

I was actually hoping to release this in a pair with a related model, but that one still doesn't look right so it's being held back. Anyway, this one ought to be nice and handy on its own. 

So a little break from all these coding posts. A few days ago I took the skip/detail window trick which I posted here and wrote it up for my blog. No new content, just a extra diagram, and a hint that you needed some visual cues to make a window like that work.

Well, that was a precursor to the next few models I'm gonna post, which are all attempts to highlight a window in quake, in such a way that it doesn't require alpha support (although often the models will be enhanced by alpha support in engines). Today is an example of a progressive enhancement model:
http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/glass-panes/

There's a couple of screenshots, one with and one without alpha. Hopefully the one without looks passable by winquake standards, and the nicer one from fitzquake sells the model. If you worry that the window still isn't yet well-defined enough, there will be more models to come very soon... 

I'm fairly sure that you can stop all waving effects in most engines these days, couple this with transparency and you could probably get a decent effect going with a nice texture (rather than use a solid colour to mask the fact that it's a water volume), quoth even allows you to run the correct cvar's on map load. 

It's interesting that you can now make glass without adding entities to the map.

I have some cool tricks in my new map that are kind of neat and made possible with skip (but nothing cool with detail yet...)