quark III import/export plugins for 3D Studio Max R3
by Pop N Fresh
pop_n_fresh@telus.net
License:
--------
(c)1999 Kelvin McDowell.
Copywrited Freeware. Redistrute as you wish as long as this archive remains intact.
Archive contains the following files:
Max 2x/ExportMD3.dle
Max 2x/ImportMD3.dli
Max 3x/ExportMD3.dle
Max 3x/ImportMD3.dli
tag.md3
ReadMe.txt
Bug reports / comments / requests / suggestions:
------------------------------------------------
pop_n_fresh@telus.net
or try the webboard at
http://www.planetquark.com/polycount/
**** HOW TO USE ****
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First remember that --__the left and right arrow keys will change the value of a slider by 1__--
Copy 'Import.dli' and 'Export.dle' to your Max plugins directory. If you have a Max 2.x version use the files in the Max 2x directory. If you have a Max 3.x version use the files in the Max 3x directory.
Go to you favorite website and read the 'modeling for quark III Arena' tutorial they have there. (q3a.stomped.com has a good one or why not try www.polycount.com). Make yourself a model and texture it. OK, done? Now this how to use the export plugin.
Any object the has a name beginning with 'tag_' will be converted to a tag when exporting your model. To help ease the proper creation of tags i've included an .md3 file called 'tag.md3'. This file contains a single tag centered at the origin without any rotation. Load it in and then move, rotate and rename it as a appropriate.
Select the parts of the model you wish to export as the head and tag_head. Use 'Export Selected' from the file menu, select quark III and the approprite filename ('head.md3' is probably a good one) and a dialogue will pop up. (You can also use the 'Only tags named' and 'Only Objects whose name starts with' option to select which parts of you model you wish to export. Max 2.x users must use these options as Max 2.x doesn't have the 'Export Selected' menu item.) As heads don't have any animation in them just move the 'From Frame' and 'To Frame' sliders to the same frame. Leave 'Smart Paths' and 'Relative to Tag' checked for now. I'll explain exactly what they do later. Click 'Export' and you should have a nice head.md3 file.
Select the parts of the model you want to be part of the torso and repeat the process for 'upper.md3'. The torso should contain three tags: tag_head, tag_torso and tag_weapon in addition to all the torso objects your model may have. Select the frames of animation you wish to export. A torso usually contains about 160 frames on animation.
Now do the same thing to create 'lower.md3'. The legs should contain one tag: tag_torso. You may or may not want to leave the 'Relative to Tag' checkbox checked. See the exact explaination of what 'Relative to Tag' does below. Experiment a bit.
DONE! Your .md3 files are ready for quark III!! You just have to make up your animation.cfg and .skin files.
What the Options do:
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*** 'From Frame' and 'To Frame' *** : These should be self-explainatory. There is no option currently to skip frames. Because of this you may need to save your max file and delete any frames you don't want to be in the .md3 before exporting.
*** 'Only Objects Named' *** : Check this option to export only a portion of the objects in your scene. Input a comma delimited list of the start of the names of what you want to export. The exported will match the object names against the names you supply. If an object's name starts with the same characters as you supplied it will be written to the .md3 file otherwise it will not be. Ex. if you check the option and type h_,u_ only objects with names such as h_head u_larm u_torso etc.. will be written out. All objects with names starting with tag_ will still be written out as tags are handled separately. See the next option desciption.
*** 'Only tags Named' *** : Check this option and type in the names of the tags you wish to export. Unlike the above option the name you type and the tag name must be an exact match. If you place tag_dude in the box and have a tag named tag_dudette the tag will not be exported.
*** 'Relative to Tag' *** : This searches for tag_torso. If it finds it positions all the geometry within the file relative to that tag. If it can't find tag_torso it then looks for tag_head. If it finds tag_head it positions the geometry in the file relative to that.
The best way to see exactly what this means is to try the following: From a clear workspace load the 'tag.md3' file. Rename the imported tag from 'tag_' to 'tag_head'. Create a pyramid centered on the origin. Now select both the tag and pyramid and move them away from the origin. Select 'Rotate' and rotate them so that there axis are no longer aligned with the origin.
Export them as an .md3 ('test.md3' might be a good name). Make sure the 'Relative to Tag' box is checked and you've renamed your tag to 'tag_head'. Import the .md3 you just created. The tag is back at the center and your rotations have been lost! This is important as quark III ignores the tag_head in 'head.md3' and assumes your head has its pivot at the origin. It then uses the 'tag_head' in 'upper.md3' to place your head on the body. It does something simular when placing the torso on the legs.
*** 'Smart Paths' *** : To use this your directory structure should mirror the quark III directory structure. ie: your models and textures should be in a 'models/players/my_cool_model/' directory. If you've done this and have 'Smart Paths' selected the exporter will be able to write proper relative paths for textures to the file. ie: 'models/players/my_cool_model.tga' instead of 'C:/3dsmax/textures/my_cool_model.tga'. quark III has problems finding things if the paths aren't written in the relative manner.
*** 'Ignore Bip' *** : This is for character studio users. Any subobject in the scene whose name starts with 'Bip' will be ignored by the exporter.
*** 'Show Warnings' ***: Show any warnings. Such as the model lacking normals, having more than one texture coordinate per vertex, etc.
General Notes:
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* Now comes with a Max 2.x version. Only tested on Max 2.5 but should work on any 2.x version of Max. Not as tested as the 3.x version. Consider the Max 2.x version to be *Alpha*. There seem to be some problems with Max 2.5 and character studio. Specifically, all the subobjects tend to crowd around the axis origin when you export them. Looking into it.
* Although i've had no problems loading any of the models that shipped with the full version of quark III Arena, the importer sometimes chokes on .md3 files created from other sources. This seems to be a problem with the other .md3 files not having correctly written headers. I'm uncertain if there's anything I can do about this until id releases source code and I can see what the exact spec is.
Version Info:
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Dec 26, 1990
* fourth release - 'Beta' for Max 3.x / 'Alpha' for Max 2.x
* Added version compiled for Max 2.5, should work with any 2.x version.
* Removed 'PPro' optimised version.
* Added checkbox to export only objects whose name begins with certain characters.
* Added checkbox to only export tags that the user explicitly names.
* Added checkbox to ignore any objects whose name starts with 'Bip' for Character Studio users.
* Added 'Show Warnings' checkbox to turn on and off warnings.
* Use GetObjTMAfterWSM instead of GetObjectTM
* Tested with Character studio. 3.x seems to work fine. 2.x positions meshes wrong. Looking into it.
* Little bug fixes here and there.
Dec 23, 1999
* third release - 'Beta'
* Added version compiled with 'blend' code generation option for non Pentium Pro/ii/iii processors.
* Added checkboxs for automatic path munging and writing out positions relative to tags.
* Normals now exported properly.
* Instead of generate UVs of (0.5,0.5) for an object without UV assignments it now bases UVs on the objects normals. ie: a spherical map.
Dec 21, 1999
* second release
* Fixed crash when exported object had no texture assignments. Will now give a warning and export anyway.
* Added support for exporting animation.
Dec 20, 1999
* first release
ImportMD3 notes:
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* Texture UVs are imported properly but you must assign a map (skin) yourself. Go to the materials dialogue, load up whatever bitmap you desire into the diffuse and assign the texture to whatever subobjects you desire. Remember to hit the little checkered cube in the materials editor so the texture is visible in you windows.
* Will also import the .MD2 format but this is no longer being worked on. It does make for a quick way to convert things from quark 2 to quark III Arena 'tho.
* Doesn't import normals
* Tags are imported as a single double-sided triangle. The origin is where two edges meet in a right angle. From the origin the long edge is the X axis and the short edge the Y axis.
* Only reads a single frame (the first) of multiframe animations.
ExportMD3 notes:
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* When the filenames of maps (skins) are being written out it looks for the string 'models' within the filename. If it finds it removes everything before the string. Thus "C:\quark III Arena\baseq3\models\mapobjects\mymodel.tga" becomes "models\mapobjects\mymodel.tga". This should help q3radient find things.
* There is a one to one correspondence between vertices and texture coordinates in MD3 models. In 3D Studio Max a vertex may have different texture coordinates on different triangles. MD2 models from quark 2 also have this property. When exporting such a model it tries to fix up things as best it can. It will warn you when texture UV coords may be screwed up because of this. The dialogue box will pop up once for every subobject affected.
* Any object with a name starting with 'tag_' is exported as a tag. All geometry is lost.
