Export from Quake 3 as .obj

[cocov]

Can someone please write an idiot guide to importing quake 3 maps into radiant and exporting them out as .obj.
I had converted the bsp to .map and could read it, but when exporting it, there seems to be no file format attached to the obj.

I mean, if you can link to whatever tools plugins you use so its the same it would be really helpful.

Thanks.

[obsidian]

Tutorial:
http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/idtec ... vanced.php

BTW, if no file format attached, it probably exported it right, you just didn't add the extension with the file name. Just rename the file with a .obj extension and you should be good.

[cocov]

Thanks obsidian, you were right, worked straight away, I'll check out the link as I have actually forgotten what I did convert the bsp tp .map etc as I gave up.

Thanks again!

P.S.
One more thing, when imported into my 3D app the axis seems odd, is there some kind of freeze tranformations things I need to do to get it to rotate correctly. I'm using an old versions of maya 7 from uni. If its in the link you sent me I'm sure I'll come across it when I read it tonight.

[obsidian]

All modelling programs have some kind of rotation lock. I don't know where it is in Maya but it should be a pretty basic function.

[Ouija]

Maya uses different XYZ coordinates than most engines and packages do. For future reference:
3DS Max, Quake engine and Source use X for horizontal, Y for depth and Z for height. This is the most common setup.
Unreal Engine uses the above but swaps X and Y so that X is depth and Y is the horizontal position. This has no other impact than rotating everything along the Z-axis.
Maya swaps Y and Z so that Z is the depth, while Y is the height. This results in things being rotated 90 degrees along the X axis.
Your solution would be to rotate the imported mesh 90 degrees along X, either before export in Radiant or after import in Maya.

[Noruen]

Yeah, because Maya is good program with normal axis. I can't understand why somebody came with "y" as depth... XYZ - width height depth. And metric system for everyone!

[Ouija]

Z being height is a natural evolution from isometric and top-down 2D. X and Y were already "taken" by that plane leaving Z as the height.
Better doesn't mean compatible, so I'd rather stay with height-Z. (any decent exporter takes care of these problems though)

[Silicone_Milk]

Yeah, because Maya is good program with normal axis. I can't understand why somebody came with "y" as depth... XYZ - width height depth. And metric system for everyone!

It wasn't that somebody decided to randomly declare Y as depth. It's that in older id Tech games, the XY plane was used to represent a level which was a series of lines essentially. A technique called raycasting was used to determine where and how large to draw slices of these lines based on how far away you were from them to create the illusion of "depth". At the time, the "standards" were being followed in that it was a 2D grid so it had an X and Y axis.

When the engines became truly 3D, Z became height as a result of tacking a new dimension on to the pre-existing "x = left/right and y = forwards/backwards" system.

EDIT: What Ouija said

[Grenader]

BTW, if no file format attached, it probably exported it right, you just didn't add the extension with the file name. Just rename the file with a .obj extension and you should be good.

I wrote a massively super complex(2 line) patch for this: http://thoronir.net/radiant/objfile_extension.patch

It's also on the netradiant tracker but it seems netradiant development is a little... slow