Doom3 style version of the marine model.

[Repatition]

we need new textures more than anything!

[m4gnificent_b4st4rd]

we need new textures more than anything!

I'm not a texture artist, so I can't really help with that. However I can clone textures in Blender, so if I had some good reference images of someone's head (front, side, back, top) I should be able to clone the textures into one photorealistic image.

I tried doing it in this thread and it seemed to work ok, but since I only had a front shot the sides were left blank. If I had side photo as well I reckon I could get a decent result.

[m4gnificent_b4st4rd]

I've had a bright idea. While I'd still ideally like to have MD5 support built into the ioquake 3 engine there might be a way I can get it working in the game so I can check how my animations look while I'm working on it. 

The quake3 engine uses one model for the legs which includes a tag for the torso/arms model. The torso/arms model has 2 tags, one for the gun and one for the head. I've seen a player model (angelyss from openarena) that got around this by making the entire body and head out of one model and then setting that as the legs model, with the torso tag where the gun should be and the torso model being simple a tag for the weapon, so that the weapon appeared at the right place. While this was clever I think a better method would be to use the torso/arms model to draw the body since this would allow you to still use the weapons tag and the head tag. Having the head model seperate from the body saves wasting polys by building it into the body mesh.

To get things started I've exported the body and tags to upper.md3 and put it into a pk3. Here's how it looks.



It's worked pretty well. The next step is to replace the legs model with a torso tag and position it so that my model is correctly rotated and at the right height.

[m4gnificent_b4st4rd]

I've replaced the legs model with a single torso tag positioned at 0,0,-24 with 270 degrees of rotation on the z axis. This positions the body on the floor and facing forwards. Now I just need to tweak the tags for the head and weapon to face them in the right direction and reposition them slightly. Here's how it looks now.



I was able to look at my model like this by using this script...

Code Select Expand

//thirdperson.cfg
seta cg_thirdperson 1
seta cg_thirdpersonangle 180
seta cg_thirdpersonrange 80

[m4gnificent_b4st4rd]

Right, I've got everything sorted and now my non-segmented player model works in the game. Next step is to give it some animations. Here's how it looks in Blender and Tremulous.


Now imagine how much simpler it must be to animate a model like this instead of the horrific mess that is segmented models. 

[Repatition]

individual figures would be nice the rigging is too simple.....I know how easy it would be to do that also and it would'ant take much time.

[MitSugna]

I'd say it. But I will let you find it yourself.

[Odin]

There is a way to get md5 working in Tremulous, but it requires a skilled coder. You *can* actually rip the md5 code out of XreaL and put it into Tremulous without any issues(I actually asked Tr3B if this is possible). You just need to know what you're doing.

[ReapDaWrapper]

Soon, there will be no Self-Ass-Kicking while running. 

[m4gnificent_b4st4rd]

Odin - There is a way to get md5 working in Tremulous, but it requires a skilled coder. You *can* actually rip the md5 code out of XreaL and put it into Tremulous without any issues(I actually asked Tr3B if this is possible). You just need to know what you're doing.

Sadly I'm not a coder, so I can't do it. I'm not going to ask any coders to do it just yet either. I've seen a lot of posts on forums where people ask coders to implement new technologies, but are unable to provide the models/texures/sounds that that technology would need to function in the game. Coders are understandably wary of investing their time and skills in something that might turn out to be a waste of time. I don't want to be one of those annoying types, so I'm going to wait and see if I can get everything needed first. I've got the mesh and the armature sorted, I just need some animations.

[m4gnificent_b4st4rd]

I've been having a bit of trouble understanding the animation.cfg. I've imported the legs model and I've been comparing it's animations to what it says in animation.cfg. It's ok up to frame 90, when it jumps to what looks like frame 153, crouching walk. I'm guessing this is because the md3 leg model didn't have any poses saved for all the TORSO_ stuff and when Blender imported the md3 it ignored the empty frames, leading to frame 153 ending up at 90. Does this sound about right?

[m4gnificent_b4st4rd]

I've done some checking and the import script does appear to drop un-animated frames. It also starts counting from 1, where the game starts from 0. This leaves the torso/arm animations pretty much untouched apart from being out by one, but it really messes up the leg animations.

I've gone through the animations as they appear on the imported models and made this list.  

Code Select Expand


Legs Torso
start end start end
BOTH_DEATH1 1 29 1 29
BOTH_DEAD1 30 / 30 /
BOTH_DEATH2 31 59 31 59
BOTH_DEAD2 60 / 60 /
BOTH_DEATH3 61 89 61 89
BOTH_DEAD3 90 / 90 /
TORSO_GESTURE / / 91 130
TORSO_ATTACK / / 131 136
TORSO_ATTACK2 / / 137 142
TORSO_DROP / / 143 147
TORSO_RAISE / / 148 151
TORSO_STAND / / 152 /
TORSO_STAND2 / / 153 /
LEGS_WALKCR 91 98
LEGS_WALK 99 110
LEGS_RUN 111 119
LEGS_BACK 120 129
LEGS_SWIM 130 139
LEGS_JUMP 140 147
LEGS_LAND 148 /
LEGS_JUMPB 149 156
LEGS_LANDB 157 /
LEGS_IDLE 158 167
LEGS_IDLECR 168 177
LEGS_TURN 178 184


Now if I need to remind myself what a game animation looks like I can refer to this list, instead of trying to use animation.cfg.