Lightwave models in Q3A

[Billybob06]

Hey everyone, Im quite new to editing quake and the gtkradiant editor and was looking for a little help. I have been trying to import lightwave files into the editor, but don't seem to be able to get the texture to come with it. I tried to use milkshape 3d to convert it to an md3 file but the texture is still missing in the radiant editor. What is it that im missing? Are there some important directory structure i need to be creating or a shader file or something? I have correctly uv mapped and textured the object. Thanks

[Hipshot]

Have you set up it correct with shaders and all that?

[Billybob06]

Im not sure how to? I have gathered that i need a shader file but i know nothing about them, and all i want to do is to add a simple texture to the mesh. Could you tell me how to do that?

[obsidian]

Welcome Billybob06.

Q3 does not read the actual file path to the texture that you used within Lightwave. It just reads the material name. So you need to set the material name to the name of the shader/texture.

I don't use Lightwave, but I wrote a tutorial covering this in 3dsMAX. It should be somewhat similar for Lightwave.

Check it (Scroll halfway down the page to the screenshots).


Edit: Otherwise, see if you can export to ASE, which is generally what most people use here and since it's a simple ASCII text file, you can easily edit the shader names if you need tweaking.

[Hipshot]

Btw, if it is a simple object, or well, a object that can be made in radiant, make it there and then use q3map2 to convert it to an ase-model, very slick and simple.

[Billybob06]

Thats brilliant guys, thanks very much for all of your help. By the way, that program / plugin that you mentioned

Btw, if it is a simple object, or well, a object that can be made in radiant, make it there and then use q3map2 to convert it to an ase-model, very slick and simple.

Could you explain a little further for me, because it sounds like it could be what im looking for. Where would I find it etc.

Cheers again everyone for your help, this really will set me off now.

[Billybob06]

Ok guys. I have made a staircase for my map and textured it. I imported it into my level, but now I need to know:

1. Why I can't rotate the mesh,
2. How do I make it so I don't just walk through the mesh.

Sorry for being a pain in the ass guys. Cheers

[Hipshot]

If someone dosen't explain, I'll do it when I get home in about ~2H.
The make-ASE-in-radiant, clip and rotate thing...

[Silicone_Milk]

Ok guys. I have made a staircase for my map and textured it. I imported it into my level, but now I need to know:

1. Why I can't rotate the mesh,
2. How do I make it so I don't just walk through the mesh.

Sorry for being a pain in the ass guys. Cheers

Seeing as I dont have much time to write aything Im going to breifly explain walking through the mesh.

To prevent this go into your editor and go the textures and select the Common texture set. That's where theres caulk, nodraw, hint, etc....
To clip off (and prevent walking through) a mesh use the Player_Clip texture and fill in the area you dont want people to walk in/through. Anywhere there's a player_clip brush means the surface area that brush covers is unaccessible to the player.

Be careful you dont accidently stick a player_spawn entity into a clip brush otherwise you wont be able to move.

[Hipshot]

Ugh, tired, I think I need to explain the whole Radiant into a ASE-process tomorrow. It's not that hard really, actually its just drag and drop kinda, but I need to sleep right now...

Rotate a model using "angles" in the ent-properties and as Milk said, use the caulk/playerclip, botclip and weaponclip to clip your models.

[obsidian]

Q3Map2? See my signature? You were also inquiring about shaders, the Shader Manual is also linked.

To rotate models in Radiant, you need to select the model, then hit "n" to bring up the entities dialog. In the bottom left corner, you will see a bunch of buttons with angles set on them. Hitting one will automatically set a fixed "angle" key/value pair.

You can do this arbitrarily by setting "angle" in the key field and a degree in the value field.

To rotate along any axis, you can set the "angles" key along with a set of 3 degrees that controls pitch, yaw and roll.

[Billybob06]

Ok I get the rotate bit, but the clipping is a bit errr.. I figured the rotate bit, with the clicking buttons and the typing stuff in... but i still aint got the other bit. cheers for all your support, I thank you all for responding I didn't think I would get this ammount of responce. Cheers guy. I look forward to your post silicone_milk

[roughrider]

I'm not sure if what I am about to tell you is in the Q3 mapping and resources sticky thread or not, so I will give you some thoughts on clipping.
In gtkradiant, as one of the others had mentioned earlier, you would want to go to the "common" textures. Within that list of textures, you will come across some of them that you will probably want to use. Depending on how well you want your model clipped, for example, if you want it to block players and weapon shots from going thru it, you would want to use "weapon clip". If you don't care if weapon shots go thru it, then just use the "player clip".
Short explaination of the 2:
Weapon clip stops projectiles from entering/going thru, the object that you used weapon clip on. It also blocks players from going thatr same object and you don't need to use the player clip.
Player clip blocks the player from going thru the object that you have clipped with this but not projectiles. Projectiles will still go thru and can/will hit whatever is on the other side.

Basically, what you would do is select the clip texture that you want to use and create a brush that surrounds the model completely. You can further manipulte that clip texture to bring it closer to the model so that it doesn't block other areas that would not be otherwise blocked. The methods that you decide to use in manipulating the clip texture can be varied from using the "clipper tool" to "edge-manipulation".
In the sticky thread called Starting Q3 mapping....; there are links to some previously done tutorials on the clipping tool and I do believe that there are also some things in there about edge-manipulation.
Something to remember is that in the editor, if it is still set to filter clip brushes, make sure you go in and unfilter it so you can work on that particular clip brush.

[Silicone_Milk]

Ill make a drawing to explain clipping in a few minutes... in the meanwhile I should mention you'll want to round off the edges of your clip brush if its clipping a model so people "brush off" the model rather than catching on the sharp edge made by a regular 90 angle that a standard rectangular brush creates.

[Silicone_Milk]

here's the pic
[lvlshot]http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a242/caldiar/e85c13a1.jpg[/lvlshot]

As you can see, the pink is the clip brush. This drawing is a top down view of the same hall - one with a clip brush and one without.

The clip brush blocks players/projectiles/etc from going through depending on the type of brush you use.
There are

Clip_All (name?)- clips everything. Go figure heh

Weapon_Clip - clips all projectiles from weapon so you can't shoot through this invisible brush

Bot_Clip - keeps the computer-controlled enemies from running through. It would be kinda screwed up to bot clip a hallway so a player could run through but a bot couldn't so you just turn around and fire on them while they're stuck... hehe

Player_Clip - Like Bot_Clip but only affects the players not the computer-controlled guys.

[Silicone_Milk]

so what you would do for clipping a model is say we have a rectangle model. Yep. Just a rectangle.

--------
|||||||||
---------

and we want to clip it off. (= represents clip)

the clip brush would engulf the whole model...

=========
= ------- =
= ||||||| =
= ------- =
=========

now the player can't touch the model because the player can't run past the === that surrounds it.

Hope this helps... if it still doesn't quite make sense I suppose I could make a simple example .map file for you to look at.

and sorry for the crappy ascii drawing hehe

[Billybob06]

AAAHA!

Bingo.. I'v just (finally) finished my very first model for quake 3 then. It really is quite simple isn't it. I mad a bit of a mess with my quake directory in the process like, but it's done. Cheers guys for the feed back, this is a big help.

I'll be sure to talk to you guys soon... probably in about half-an-hour when I get stuck again :icon1:

[Lenard]

Post screenshots for god's sake!

pre-emptive:

Press the print screen button, located the the east of f12 on your keyboard, then open mspaint, press ctrl+v. Save. Upload at imageshack.us

[Billybob06]

No offence m8, but I am aware of how to create a screen shot.. lol.
Anyway, once I finish the text I'll give ya all a look.

[seremtan]

Ok I get the rotate bit, but the clipping is a bit errr.. I figured the rotate bit, with the clicking buttons and the typing stuff in... but i still aint got the other bit. cheers for all your support, I thank you all for responding I didn't think I would get this ammount of responce. Cheers guy. I look forward to your post silicone_milk

since this model is a fairly simple shape like a staircase, you can actually make the model itself solid by adding the key/value pair 'spawnflags'/'2' (without the quotes) to model properties. i'd avoid doing this for any more complex models though as it gives you a load of collision faces you don't really need, but for something you're walking on it's ok

iirc 'spawnflags'/'4' makes the model lightmapping rather than vertex-lit (i.e. it casts shadows). 'spawnflags'/'6' is if you want your model to be both solid AND lightmapped (you can only have one spawnflag key/value per model hence the combo)

mods feel free to edit this if i have the spawnflags around the wrong way. it's been a while since i've been near radiant

[Billybob06]

coolio.. cheers for that man, im gonna try that out now.

[Lenard]

Then you should post a screenshot. I wasn't trying to offend you but half the new people to this board or any other end up asking how to post screenshots. Honestly though, I was trying to get lwo's into q3 for a long time so I am pretty interested. No one ever gave me this much help... for some reason.

[Billybob06]

Ok guys.. rip it to shreds. It is a little rushed because I wanted to get a quick object done to test the .lwo format in GtkRadiant, so the texture isn't too hot and the model aint much better.

[Billybob06]

That bit at the top there looks a bit daft, but it can't be seen in the level im doing.. I'll probably tidy it up a bit and maybe make a handrail built on the top for the upper level. And I will get round to re-doing the texture for it.. any other ideas??

[Lenard]

Looks really good, shmang. I will address any questions to you from now on.