Making things in scale for the game? Bots Q

Valandar

Okay, so I've made a mesh, got it all set up, and am preparing to rg an animate him, to turn him into a Quake III mesh. But before I do...

...how do I make sure that my mesh doesn't come into Quake thirty feet tall, or six inches tall? How doI make sure it stays 'in scale' with the existing meshes?

Soccerman18

you can import a model that is the correct size, adjust yours to fit, then delete the imported model.

rooster

import some q3 meshes into your scene and resize as necessary is probably the quick and easy way
edit: great minds..

although theres probably some unit guidelines kicking about somewhere

Valandar

Thanks, guys.

I've been meshing for the game Freedom Force for a while, now, and trust me, that game is SOOO easy to mesh for; biggest problem is needing at least 3000 frames for the animations, heheh...

Anyway, I decided to go ahead and start converting some of my custom meshes for Quake, so wish me luck.

Valandar

Another question, this one about tag_weapon...

Should this be pointing in the direction the weapon will point, or to the top of the weapon? And should it be placed right at the 'top' of the hand, in the center of the hand, or what?

MoP

Again if you import, say, Sarge and look at his tags, you'll see where they go - the long edge of the triangle tag should be pointing in the direction of fire. The tag should be slightly above and slightly in front of the fist.

It often depends on the length of the arms too when setting up weapon animations since the default pose is to have the left arm resting under the barrel of the gun, so it might take some testing to get that looking right. Depends on your character though - they might even just hold the gun single-handed.

I usually just get the first frame of my Torso model with a rough tag position and export that, put it in the game and see where the weapon lines up to, then eyeball it and tweak the tag position from there.

Valandar

Cool, thanks. I had imported Doom, but apparantly the tags did not come with. I'm using Max 5 (old rev, I know, I haven't been able to afford to upgrade), and when I imported him, I couldn't find the tags... that, and the parts were all jumbled and already in a pose, heheh...

MoP

Hmm, yeah.. i remember that happening... depends which MD3 importer you're using, I think. There's a good MD3 import script by Chris Cookson (maxscript, not plugin) which should work in Max5, and has a checkbox for importing tags, animations and stuff like that. Maybe worth googling for that.

Valandar

Cool, thanks. I think I've got my tags placed correctly, and she's all rigged. Just gotta animate her (I don't think I'll use the Steed bipeds), and then get to work on exporting her and assigning the skins and such.

Valandar

Okay, I got it in scale, but ended up with 2 bizarre problems.

First, I loaded up the Mynx biped, and used the Mynx CFG file... and none of the animations line up.

Secondly, the mesh is turned sideways. I haven't been able to get the 3rd person viewer script to work, so I looked in the "mirror", and this is the picture I got:



If I rotate the model to the left, there's no effect - the bip01 decides it WANTS to face that way.

Would I be better off just making the durn animations myself? And if so, what is "Torso_drop" and "torso_raise"? Shooting with the torso tilted?

Valandar

Never mind, got it all sorted out, W00T!

MoP

What was the problem, if you don't mind me asking? Might save some people some angst if a solution is documented here.

Valandar

I have no clue. I just scrapped all the animations and animated it myself, and suddenly it's both facing the right way AND it's lining up properly.

Valandar

Okay, next question - bots. I downloaded a program to make Q3 bots, and then made a bot script for my mesh. When I go to Skirmish, the bot is there and selectable. But when I actually enter the match, she never shows up. What am I doing wrong?

KDR_11k

Check the console for error messages.