Yeah, here's some more. Quite a few of the model this week have undeniably been random odds-and-ends that I just got round to polishing up and releasing. Today we've got a red-hot new model, created entirely this week.

It's a door pull mapobject for adding detail to your medieval and metal maps:
http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/door-pull/
Nothing complicated going on, just a static model to make a plain door interesting.

On the tools front, I've got a slightly weird exclusive to func_ deal going:
http://www.quaketastic.com/files/tools/windows/model-compiler.zip

This is the little package I use to jump-start my model making. When I embark on a new model, I create a clean directory for it, and then drop these 4 files into the directory. If I export the new model with the filename "model.md3", running the batch file compiles it to a basic mdl with no other input required.

The files also have all the scaffolding needed to build the model properly as I go. For example, once I have the first skin on the go, I overwrite the "dummy" model.pcx file with it. If I need to add extra skins, there's an empty array called "skinlist" in model.py I can add the filenames to. Similarly as I add various animation to the file, I can add to the list of (name, length) pairs in the rename_frames list. I can even amend the last line of the batch file to give the model file a less generic name.

So to make use of it, you need to extract the files somewhere safe, and then make one very important change. Open the batch file and modify the first line to specify the full path to the location of your copy of md3tomdl (advanced users could instead add md3tomdl to their path). Anyway, I hope this helps someone out there get things done with a little less fuss. 

door pull model is very cool and can be very useful. i'd love to see more things like this-- subtle details that are not meant to be the center of attention; the hallmark of a good map object. 

Yeah, so I've about run out of tools and utilities to post about, but I will continue with a trickle of models to use. Today we've got a gas cylinder which I originally made for a top-down zombie shooting mod. So the idea was to try and make a model which looked interesting from above. Luckily I did skin the whole model so it can be used in 3D maps as well.
http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/gas-cylinder/

Also, quick note on the republished vine model. Before this morning the "fixed" vine was missing the extra skins that the original came with. So you might need to re-download that one yet again... 

I have heard so much about beez.
Yet I never saw them in Quake1.
I have heard about a swarm entity,
but it is beyond my grasp.

Here I have some beez in beta state.
Thing izz... I can't kill them.
I even can't hurt them.

Help!
They hurt me, and kill me. 

any ideas for the model are welcome.
I can't loop the sound, although I ripped it with cooledit to loop mode. 

I have managed to kill the swarm. My hint is that to run your mod in fitzquake, and run the console command "r_showbboxes 1". You should then see where to aim, and it'll give you a clue what's gone wrong in your code.

Incidentally, I spotted a mismatch in the code at the moment. In the QC the pain animation is defined all the way to pain14, but the model only has 8 pain frames. This means the death animation glitches half way through. 

Can't check out what you've got there...

The RMQ swarm were distinct enemies, basically each bee was thinking in its own right. In theory with a collision they'd be kill able but this would ruin the shotguns - the code would only allow you to kill one bee of the swarm at once.... Unless you made an invisible explosion happen on the killed bee when hit by a shotgun.

You should be able to grab the swarm.qc from the RMQ SVN - it is almost completely nuclear as I remember, just needing a defs reference.

There's also a small qc maggot mod from idgames2 which could be useful, which is a micro enemy based off the Flesh Grub (I think). 

That's hillaric!
I thought I was a bad-aimer, but this cheats me.:P

Yes Preach, the bbox is out of order. It has to be in the center. The $painframe a typo.
I'm surprised I can easily walk through the bbox. That gave me the feeling I had to shoot one bee.
How does that bbox come up so left lifted?

@Ijed- always something new with that monster entity. When I started the swarm, I was afraid I couldn't make them too large because of that bbox. Now it seems it is just a tiny thing. 

Compare your line:
setsize (self, '16 16 16', '24 24 24');
to the setsize line of other monsters. 

I changed it into setsize (self, '-12 -12 -12', '12 12 12'); and that seems to work.

If the swarm gets killed the bbox hangs in the air, as the swarm is.
This looks rather odd. How come the bbox hangs in the air after the deathframes? 

check the wizard qc for this, specifically the death frames. you need to change the movetype to toss. 

Works great now!
Thanks for the advice, necros, preach, ijed.
^v^

beez 

So even though I haven't posted things on here for the past few days, I have managed to keep up "one model a day" through today. What you might have missed:

A model with the qualities necros looks for in a map object - but only useful if your map has a nautical flavour...
http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/09/18/mooring/

On the opposite end of things, a section of river you'd need to design the whole area around, although it does have some interesting techniques to demonstrate...
http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/09/19/rapids/

Finally, a length of bright warning tape for base maps, gimmicky but fun...
http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/warning-tape/ 

totally downloaded the mooring. :) 

Safety first 

Can't help it.., seen too much futurama 

Maybe he's king of those robots from Rubicon 2, so he can be the boss of the level. 

Or it can be a Duke Nukem cyborg (the cigar man, the cigar !!) 

He's more an update from metroid.

I modelled it so, it can open its mouth and animate smiley's. I wanted to add the abbility of lipsync. Qmle screws a lot while importing. 

Im really laughing hard on that floyd... 

...and then they will all bend for me!
and kizz my shiny ass! 

Haha awesome! 

...and then a new model!

So a while ago I was having a problem with gmax where the triangles got flipped when I exported. I have discovered today that the cause of this is applying the mirror operation to the model you intend to export. Use a mirror modifier instead. If you did mirror the model incorrectly, you can make the flipped triangles apparent in gmax by going to the Utilities tray on the right, and using the "Reset XForm" command. Now the editor and exported model are synced, and you can flip the polys in gmax to fix it.

Anyway, new model time. This was a request by MFX, but I had some ideas stashed away for this kind of thing that made it a fun model to make. It's a mapmodel for adding cables, wires and ropes to a map. Although it's most natural for base maps, there's a rope skin so you can use it in medieval maps too.

http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/cable/

There's a good selection of skins, poses and animations to make use of, plus I'm gonna put up a tutorial based around the model, featuring a new way to organise your animations in gmax. Just need to find the time, might be a few days still... 

Sure I'll find a place for those!

Also, the mirror issue has another bug which could have you tearing your hair out if you don't catch it - when creating a skeletal rig mirroring the bones will give them a negative scale, which can cause all sorts of headaches.

To solve it you need to find the 'bone tools' panel (can't remember which menu it's under) which has a mirror bones option that won't produce visibly correct but functionally broken bones.

If you've ever had to bin an entirely rigged and animated model because of this then this should be a useful tip. In theory such a model could be rescued by creating a second skeleton and then attaching it bone by bone to the broken one, but that's a pretty ugly way of resolving it.

Seeing as quake doesn't depend on skeletal animation this is kind of pointless, but anyone working on other engines might find it handy information.