re-uv MD3 without breaking anything?

[Spiney]

Hey guys, maybe some of you know this?
There's some MD3 models I want to retexture, but some have really bad uv mapping.
Is there a way to replace the UV without breaking animation etc?

[obsidian]

Why would replacing UW-coords have anything to do with the animation?

[Spiney]

Well, I don't have the source files, the only way I know to edit them is to convert to a different format for editing and then reconverting using Noesis. But I don't know of any format that keeps vertex animation intact? I need a common format such as .fbx and I don't know if there's any reliable conversion stuff. I think ideally I could just export the thing to an .obj, fix the uv and then patch that into the .md3 somehow.

Just to be clear, I want to:

1. take an MD3 file and convert it into a format my modelling app of choice can read
2. once I have it in, create a second UV mapping that has less deformation and seams going on
3. bake the original texture onto the new UV map
4. repaint the skin

This is no problem...

5. replace the old with the new and improved UV mapping into the old .MD3 to go along with the new texture

Ideally I'd just get a source file and export to MD3, but this isn't available.
I don't have much experience with animated MD3, format is kinda old by now and I'm new to this... :/

[obsidian]

Hmm... that would depend on whether or not your file converter correctly supports the animation frames. I guess the only way to know is to do a quick test and see if it still retains it both on import as well as export. The process of editing the UW-coords itself shouldn't affect animation in any way.

[Spiney]

I'll do some tests. It's that or busting out the hex editor, which probably isn't worth the effort.

[Theftbot]

NOT really humanly readable.

[CZghost]

Spiney, LithUnwrap supports MD3 format if you have this... Then you simply save in format for your model editor and check it contains the original animation, if not, try to reconstruct the animation yourself, then convert to MD3 by your conversion software. Don't forget to include animation configuration file if you want to get it work correctly!