I have started a little project to make Master Chief for Quake 3 Arena, but I can't figure out how to do the animations or how to tag the parts of a character. Could someone please help me?
For your basic Quake III model, you tag the character at their neck, their waist, and whichever hand you want holding the weapon. If I recall correctly, the model is broken up and exported as three different models. One model for the head, one for the torso and arms, and one for the pelvis and legs. Animations are exported for the torso model and the legs model. It might be possible to export animations for the head model, but I don't think that Quake III Arena itself would be able to use those animations at all. Generally, the head is static.
Animations are exported with the meshes, but that's not all you will need to get them working. There is also a scripted text file that has to be written. Some Quake III exporters will create this file for you. That is the ideal situation. If that isn't the case, it is possible to write the file yourself, it just happens to be extremely tedious and annoying.
The tags that get exported with your models are essentially just single triangles. They need to be separate objects in whatever program you are using to edit your models. And they need to be oriented correctly. If you don't orient them correctly, you will get some really bizarre looking errors when you get the game in model. The tags also have to be named very specifically, as well as the three models that are getting exported. Most exporters look for these specific naming conventions when exporting your model.
Since Master Chief is a fairly segmented / armored model, it should be pretty easy to make a Quake III model of him. More organic models don't do quite as well in Quake III, because of the necessity of dividing the model up into three separate components. Naturally segmented models make the process much easier.
So what would I have to do? I'm using Milkshape 3D because it can import and export Quake md3 files, but I check the other characters and I can't really find anything of animation in the md3 files. And what about the skin files how do I use those?
Also I have Master Chief as one object in Milkshape 3d. I could break him into segments, but that may take a while.
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Animations are exported with the meshes, but that's not all you will need to get them working. There is also a scripted text file that has to be written. Some Quake III exporters will create this file for you. That is the ideal situation. If that isn't the case, it is possible to write the file yourself, it just happens to be extremely tedious and annoying.
The tags that get exported with your models are essentially just single triangles. They need to be separate objects in whatever program you are using to edit your models. And they need to be oriented correctly. If you don't orient them correctly, you will get some really bizarre looking errors when you get the game in model. The tags also have to be named very specifically, as well as the three models that are getting exported. Most exporters look for these specific naming conventions when exporting your model.
Since Master Chief is a fairly segmented / armored model, it should be pretty easy to make a Quake III model of him. More organic models don't do quite as well in Quake III, because of the necessity of dividing the model up into three separate components. Naturally segmented models make the process much easier.
Also I have Master Chief as one object in Milkshape 3d. I could break him into segments, but that may take a while.