Quake3World

So... Here's the story. A guy asked me to make some models (A standard work, with standard pay, nothing fancy) of the Quake 3 weapons (remodeled, better quality, higher resolution textures, even some are from Shadow Warrior, but thats besides the point); later on he told me it was for a mod. That means, he needs everything on MD3 format. So, i made my research, made quads to tris, cut down the quantity of polygons, and then i fall flat. Why? Well, that's a really, really obscure format. I use Katsbits plugin for MD3 exporting. I of course hope this forum helps, being as it is Quake3World and all. Thanks in advance!! My questions are:

(NOTICE: I AM USING BLENDER 2.72)

-How in heaven do I export it with the texture? Every time i export it to MD3 it turns out white, and i don't really know what i'm doing wrong... (I added the custom property md3shader with the name of the texture, i think it has something to do with the texture image not being on the same folder, but anyway, it would be good knowing with certainty)

-How to properly export the texture; so i can send it through e-mail.

-How to match it with the muzzle flash or whatever on the game? I haven't even tried, but if someone knows, it would be awesome.

-And most important... How to animate a texture. What little i found is... "A typical MD3 weapon might be 5 GL units wide and 45 long. They usually would have no animations, although it should be possible to add animation by modifying the Quake 3 code. You can also add texture animations with shaders. Weapons have a tag named tag_weapon that attaches to the player model's tag_weapon tag in the upper body mesh. "

So yeah, i didn't get any of that. Animate a texture with shaders? Sweet Jesus. If you could even answer one of these questions, I'd apreciate it to an extent that is borderline exagerated. I think it is obvious i Am a more... Mainstream modeller. I hope you can help me.

PD : (Tags? It has something to do with points, i guess i'll investigate later, but as i said, VERY obscure format

PD 2: I'm using a cube for testing. It's a cube with every square cut in half, so a cube with 2 triangular faces on every square face, if that makes any sense.

For texturing: The material name on the mesh must be renamed to the path to the texture file. For example:

[lvlshot]http://img.bacon.ms/q3mdl1.jpg[/lvlshot]

As you can see, the material name is the path to the texture/UV map, in this case, "models/weapons2/machinegun/weapon_scar_l_col.jpg". The exporter won't automatically export a jpeg or tga so you need to export it manually yourself if you don't have the texture outside of blender.

As for tags, you add empty, and empties are used as tags. Example:

[lvlshot]http://img.bacon.ms/q3mdl2.jpg[/lvlshot]

As you can see, the empty placed on the guns handle, named "tag_weapon" which will tell the game where to place the weapon, into the player models hand. These don't need to be parented to the mesh.

Most weapons only have tag_weapon, and tag_flash (where the muzzle flash comes out), however the machinegun also has a tag_barrel. If you want a machinegun with no spinning barrel, just make the md3 for the barrel a blank model, and place tag_barrel on top of tag_flash.

You'll also need to animate the weapon, for firing and raising/dropping.

You'll need a bone like this, with your weapon tags and mesh parented to the bone.

[lvlshot]http://img.bacon.ms/q3mdl3.jpg[/lvlshot]

Weapon animation is controlled by _hand.md3 (machinegun_hand.md3, shotgun_hand.md3, etc). This model controls where the gun is placed in first person, and also has the animation for the gun dropping/raising, and firing.

Frames 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 are the guns firing animation, and frames 8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16 are the frames for dropping and raising. What you want for frames 8-16, is the guns rest position at both 8 and 16, and the guns lowest point when dropping to be at frame 12.

To animate it, just add a single bone to the gun model, with the tags parented to the bone, and export the bone with the tags, but not the gun model itself, for _hand.

Example:

Machinegun.md3 is just the gun mesh, and the tags, with no animation data, and no bone exported.

Machinegun_hand.md3 is the tags and the bone, WITHOUT the machinegun mesh in the file. So all that is in this md3 for machinegun_hand would be tag_weapon, tag_barrel, tag_flash and the bone. You want to export both models the same scale, but for _hand.md3, you can offset the x/y/z to whatever you want, to move the gun in the first person camera. The easiest way to figure out what offsets you want, is to load the game up with cheats enabled, and change cg_gunx, cg_guny and cg_gunz until you find a position you like. Then when you export, those numbers you used for x,y,z, you can use as the same numbers for exporting _hand.md3, in the offset fields.

You genius. Thank you. Any other question, i'll just post it here. Thanks!! I would have never, ever have been able to figure that out on my own. If you want, i could just send you the finished md3 file when it's done.

Would love to see it! That kinda looks like a Call of Duty weapon though... In any case, !