I've always to ask questions regarding modelling and animating in Blender and exporting it to Quake.
I've been known recently about Shape Keys (https://www.blender.org/manual/animation/techs/shape/shape_keys.html) for animations, and importing .mdl files directly into Blender (with Bill Currie's MDL addon) helps me scale my models properly. I also have QME to know how many frames one models hold, but still want to know these:

1/What is the method to export shape key frames as .mdl frames? And what is the method to be able to see/chose frames in mdl files in Blender?

2/How can I deal with frame interpolation with Darkplaces? For example, the Super Nailgun rotates fine while shooting, but Zerstorer's Chaingun just distorts like crazy while shooting.

3/Kind of off-topic (but still relevent on the whole export models in quake subject) but how do I prevent Photoshop to turn textures that have the quake palette applied on into noisy pictures? 

1/What is the method to export shape key frames as .mdl frames? And what is the method to be able to see/chose frames in mdl files in Blender?

Can you clarify this question a bit for me - what are you expecting to happen when you export the model, and what is actually happening when you try?

2/How can I deal with frame interpolation with Darkplaces? For example, the Super Nailgun rotates fine while shooting, but Zerstorer's Chaingun just distorts like crazy while shooting.

First an explanation of what's happening with zerst�rer's chaingun. Open up the chaingun model in QME, and paint one side of the rotating barrel blue, and the other side red. Now if you look at frame fire5, you'll see the barrel is actually the same way up as fire1, even though it should be rotated 180 degrees to continue the animation smoothly. Of course, when zer was released there was no interpolation, so this was completely fine - both ways up looked the same!

The fix is to rotate the barrels 180 degrees in frames fire5 - fire8. Then interpolation in darkplaces is a lot better - it still goes wonky when you go from firing to not-firing, because the not-firing pose is always fire1. The way to fix that would be to rewrite the code so the game never jumps to a frame which isn't the next in the loop - e.g. if the player stops firing after fire2, then use fire3 as the non-firing pose, then start the next attack with fire4.

In general, to make a model interpolation friendly, you have to be thinking about the transitions between frames. So the code needs to only ever set a new frame that smoothly blends from the last frame, and your model needs to have poses where every part of the model makes a continuous motion from any previous frame to any subsequent frame. Both halves need to work together for the best effect.

3/Kind of off-topic (but still relevent on the whole export models in quake subject) but how do I prevent Photoshop to turn textures that have the quake palette applied on into noisy pictures?

You have to create your textures in the Quake palette, so the important thing is to only use colours already in that palette, or colours close to them, when painting the texture. The more closely you follow the colours in the game, the less noisy your image will be when you convert it. I tried to look for a good guide to creating images in a specific palette, then best I could find is this zealous article which nevertheless has lots of useful technique points:
http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299 

I'm not sure, but the last one might be about automatic dithering, which indeed makes a lot of noise. Deliberately, but it's not always for the better.

I'd advice turning it off by default. Color conversion menu should have all necessary options.

Oh, and I don't think that pixel art guidelines are appropriate for Quake graphics. Unless I missed something. 

I'm asking how I can make animations/animation frames in Blender and make sure the exported mdl file has them too, or if I need to export each frame as their own model and make sure I can import them as frames in QME.

And dwere don't worry, when I try to texture I try my best to replicate the quake aesthetics ;)
And thanks for the tip about automatic dithering, that should do it since even if I try to make a simple texture that uses quake colors it still comes out as grainy. 

I'm asking how I can make animations/animation frames in Blender and make sure the exported mdl file has them too, or if I need to export each frame as their own model and make sure I can import them as frames in QME.

So at the moment, you are able to create models with more than one pose, and you are able to export them from Blender, but when they are exported they only have a single frame? And you have a way of changing which pose that frame is?

I'm not very familiar with this blender plugin, but I had a quick try and I was able to import a model, then export it again, and the exported model had all the frames. So it is possible to get it to export animations all in one go, it's just a matter of finding out where it's going wrong and what can be done... 

It might be good if you can upload one of your blender files so I can have a look at what you have, and try to play around with it. 

I think the amount of frames exported depends on which frame is currently selected. Or something. I forgot. 

I'm max there was an issue once where I couldn't export all frames and I found I had to add a keyframe at the end that, maybe this is something similar? 

Just saw that the timeline at the bottom of Blender's window actually stands for animations, as I discovered by importing an mdl file containing frames and fucking around with the timeline cursor.

Life's good, and I'm off doing models for Quake now! 

Doing a double post, but:

I'm currently doing texture work for my machine gun, and the only way I found out to work with quake's palette limitation and making the texture look like quake is to use MS Paint, taking parts of the quake weapons' textures and working pixels by pixels.

Of course that's extremely tedious and eats a lot of time.
But since I have Photoshop CS6, is there a way to optimize texture work through it? 

We had a big discussion on suitable editors for quake textures about a week ago in mapping help, see the following posts for the bulk of it:

http://celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=4&start=15380&end=15429 

Daya: You can make 256 color palette in PS or GIMP, so you can convert your texture to color spectrum from this palette. You must copy Quake colors manually to PS Color Table and save it for later use.
Here take a look: http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/654/convert-a-pattern-photo-to-a-given-palette 

I have one for GIMP somewhere, if someone interested... 

For your convienence I just uploaded the good old program Wally up to Quaketastic.
It is one of the good wad editors that were on the WadFather back in 2001 and can be very usefull if you're doing things with quake's texture.
It has a lot of feathers you can use, and is more specific than texmex.
My download confirms it is a dangerous program.

If it is more dangerous than the squad be aware,
so download on your own risk.

wally 

Wally was already at Quaketastic and is also available at Quaddicted.

https://www.quaddicted.com/files/tools/wally_155b.exe

http://quaketastic.com/files/tools/windows/wad_editors/Wally-155B.zip

I only knew because I went looking for it earlier this year. 

http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2015/39/1442965830-infantrygun.png

Keep in mind, this is the first time I'm doing actual texture work, and even after applying Quake's palette, it doesn't feel that "quake-y" enough.

Any tips on accomplishing that if that's not the case here? 

Make the barrel blue like the sng. 

Try using lower res textures(diff uv's) ATM it about q3 quality 

Tend to use mainly the darker half of the palette lines and don't have many bright bits. It's usually textures being too bright that make things look unquakey. 

http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2015/39/1443008160-infantrygun2.png 

But I think the checkerboard ork pattern on the muzzle is a bit odd. Maybe make it more transparent so you can see the metal texture underneath. That might not fix it though, since the UV cut to front is pretty harsh compared to the soft nature of the rest of the texture - created by the low res.

Maybe even remove / move it? 

Nah, it's something I wanted to make since day 1. Maybe doing transparency will fix it and a subtle halo surrounding the cylinder's face.

But then I've got another problem. When I export it as an .mdl file and check in QME to see if it has exported right, not only does it still have the g_nailgun texture (even though I seem to texture-assigned my texture), but the UV seems to have been reset, as I've seen while importing my bmp skin anyway. Anybody knows what's the problem here? And there doesn't seem to be parameters on the exporter either. 

I don't like the checkboard bit. Too bright for quake. 

http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2015/39/1443025682-infantrygun3.png

I'm asking again, has anyone had UV-reset related problems when exporting a model to .mdl ? 'Cause it's the only thing keeping my stuff away for being Quake compatible. 

I'm asking again, has anyone had UV-reset related problems when exporting a model to .mdl ? 'Cause it's the only thing keeping my stuff away for being Quake compatible.

What's your conversion process - which program do you make the models in, and what do you use to export it? It is possible to make quake models with nice UV maps with the correct process, e.g.
https://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/ogre/
However, Quake itself had very simple back-front UVs and lots of tools don't support anything more.

RE: v3 of the skin, it's improved a lot as you've taken the feedback on board. Have you tried overlaying scuffs and scratches onto the metal to make it a bit less "clean"? It's easy to go too far the other way with that stuff but I think it's worth a try, particularly on the browner metal bits.