Quake 3 player model animation question.

[Bacon]

I know that Quake uses md3 with vertex animation for the frames, my question is, how does this work in blender? Do I make bones and fully rig the animation then bake it as vertex? Or is there some other way you're supposed to do it? Also, is there a limit to how many animation frames a model has?

I'd like to finish a model i'm making but i'm having trouble understanding this part. I understand tagging, how the animation config file works, its just this part. Is anyone here familar with making Quake 3 player models in blender?

[WendyB]

The animation does get baked down as vertex animation upon export, so you can use whatever tools you need to animate your character. So yeah, you would just rig your character. You could even use advanced features like morph targets or cloth simulation, if you felt so inclined.

You will need an exporter to the MD3 format for Blender. I personally haven't worked with Blender, so I can't provide you with the details. You should try talking to fromhell, the author of OpenArena. He uses Blender to create the characters for OpenArena. Since OpenArena uses the Quake 3 tech unaltered, the process would be the same. There's a topic on the subject at the OpenArena forums, too: http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=2139.0

As for animation lengths, the shooting animation has to be exactly 6 frames long and play at a frame rate of 15. Same for the gauntlet attack animation. The weapon switch animation consists of two parts; a 5 frame weapon drop and a 4 frame weapon raise. Both of those have to play at a frame rate of 20 frames a second.

All other animations can be of differing lengths and frame rates. Ideally though, the death animations are short and to the point, because otherwise they won't finish playing before the victim respawns, which will cut off the animation immediately and look bad in the game. A character can respawn after 1.7 seconds it seems, so that would be the maximum time a death animation has to play out.

Another thing to keep in mind is that since the animation is stored as vertex animation, the more frames you add, the bigger the file will get. Some custom models that were made back in the day had so many animation frames, they ended up as a 50 meg download. These models also wouldn't load in the game normally, unless you manually increased the allocated memory in the game's console.

[Bacon]

Thank you very much for the info. I'll probably just stick with the same amount of frames then that id uses, to keep it small.

I'm having one other problem but I might as well post it in here since its blender related. I'm trying to combine all materials/UVs on my model into one image, but can't get it to work. I know that you have to create a second UV channel, unwrap the mesh onto a new image, then bake the textures onto the UV map. My problem is when I select the mesh after ctrl+j joining them all, I can't unwrap to the new image I created. If i hit A to select all the faces then unwrap, it unwraps to one of the original 12 or so materials. How do I unwrap all the materials to one UV? Every answer I find on google I seem to be too retarded to do.

[Bacon]

I think i got it. I used 2.49b's "Consolidate into one image" then applied said image to the mesh. The model wouldn't load in the game though so I had to slipt the mesh into 3 parts. After doing this, the gun works in game fine, but the texture co-ords are messed. Do I need to "consolidate into one image" for each seperate mesh now that i've sepearted it? Or am I doing something else wrong?

[lvlshot]http://img.bacon.ms/shot0010.jpg[/lvlshot]

What it's supposed to look like:

[lvlshot]http://img.bacon.ms/pd-dragon-blend.jpg[/lvlshot]

I cant test right now or I would without having to ask.

[WendyB]

I have no idea what "consolidate into one image" means, is that a Blender thing?

If you put up your file for download, I can have a look at what's wrong, though.

[Bacon]

I just left it as the 30 seperate materials and manually re assigned them with misfit model 3d, and it worked. Thanks anyways

[lvlshot]http://img.bacon.ms/shot0016.jpg[/lvlshot]

[Bacon]

I'm having another issue. When I export, the 3 body parts don't line up in the game properly. The 3 tags shown are named accordingly, and are inside the mesh. When I export each piece, like the head for example, i'm only selecting the head and tag_head and exporting just that. Am I missing something? I understand the legs need to be positioned on the z axis to the proper floor height, but I was under the impression the tags snap the rest of the pieces in. All meshes are "sealed", and named accordingly (h_head, l_legs etc). Is my exporter just screwed or something?

[lvlshot]http://img.bacon.ms/34534543543534543535.jpg[/lvlshot]

[WendyB]

Upon exporting the torso, the torso tag has to be at the world origin (0,0,0). Upon exporting the head, the head tag has to be at world origin (0,0,0). Some exporters can account for this, with others you may have to manually adjust the scene before exporting each part.

Meshes do not have to be sealed to work in Quake 3. They can have holes.

[Bacon]

The problem with that is when I move the head lower down to 0,0,0 the head grows bigger in game. In fact anything you move closer to the center seems to grow, or shrink depending on how far away it is. I'm not going to question it though, considering how many models you've made. I guess i'll play around with scaling on export too. Thank you for the info.

[WendyB]

Some software doesn't like it when you try to move or scale fully rigged characters. Try selecting only your origin bone (normally found at the pelvis or waist) and moving only that. Effectively this would animate your character into the new position. This should keep the integrity of your rig and not cause weird scaling issues.

Alternatively... Does Blender generate a qc file for exporting to md3? If so, there is a setting you can use that will automatically do this for you.

[Bacon]

When I move it in blender the scale doesn't go wonky at all, it's fine. It's when I test it in game that it either is huge or too small. The same thing happens with weapons, the bigger I make it on the blender grid, the smaller it gets in game. Then if you make it smaller, it gets bigger, until a certain point then it gets smaller again. I can't even make guns smaller than a certain size. It's fucking weird, and frustrating as hell.

I ended up just using 3 different blend files and scaling manually there.

[WendyB]

So did you manage to get all the pieces aligned correctly in the game, then?

[Bacon]

Yes, I did exactly what you said about putting the tags at 0,0,0 and it worked great. I had to rotate the tags to get the body and head to face the right way, but it was weird. One tag faces 90, one faces 180 and one faces 0 but they all face forward once in the game.

[WendyB]

I was facing exactly the same problems when I was working on my first character for Quake 3! Glad it worked out.

[Bacon]

Is there any way to change the lighting on the textures? They seem washed out or something. Is there something I need to add to the model meta-data to get rid of this?

[lvlshot]http://img.bacon.ms/shot0018.jpg[/lvlshot]

[WendyB]

The lighting on your model appears to be working correctly. Quake 3 does an overall gamma correction to fake the effect of overbrighting, though, which makes any textures appear brighter ingame than in your image editing program. There is no fix for that, other than simply adjusting the texture to be darker and/or more contrasted.