Okay, guys, this is surely a Modeling 101 question.

I'm creating a very simple model for my mod: it's a spherical nuke blast. You can't get much simpler in modeling than this: create a sphere, texture it. That's it. I'm using Milkshape 3D right now because I'm having problems with other programs exporting to md3 format.

I created my sphere, and I created a simple image to use as a texture. I applied my texture to the sphere, then made a control file for the model (because Milkshape requires it) and then exported the file as an .md3 model. My model doesn't animate or anything -- it's just a sphere with a texture.

In my mod, the sphere model shows up and works according to the code -- the code actually expands it, it's just the Kamikaze code from Team Arena right now -- but the texture isn't applied. It is in the modeling program, but it doesn't show up in the game.

I've tried making sure things were in the right directories, that the texture file was in a certain format, and still I get this.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Is there a specific error printed in the console? If the texture is missing, then somewhere in there, Quake3 will have printed out something pertaining to it.

Usually, it's something to the effect of a "trying" statement.. an example of this would be the following:

trying models/players/james/icon_red.TGA...

May take a bit of reading, as these "trying" statements don't stick out like other error messages


"Lifer!"

Thanks, Birdman! That did the trick. For some reason, Milkshape is assigning my model a /models/players/skin.tga (or some path like that), and I have to change it to the correct one in nPherno's tool. I'm not sure why it's doing that.

np

OKay, new question relating to this topic.

What if I make a model and apply more than one texture? For example, what if I apply an opacity map in something like 3DS or gmax? npherno's tool only gives me the option to give the path for one texture. i.e., I'm trying to make my nuke blast sphere somewhat transparent. Looks fine in the modeling software, but when I export it out and use npherno's tool, the opacity information is lost.

The best way to achieve a transparency effect in Quake3 is to use a shader and give the texture/skin the "blendfunc filter" parameter.

In order to do this, the texture needs to be a .TGA file, with an alpha channel added.

The shader uses the alpha channel to figure out what parts of the texture are transparent. Parts of the channel that are completely white are subtracted from the image, while parts that are completely black are left. This is how id software created the grates in their maps.

An alpha channel that is 50% gray will yield 50% transparency.

After you have the texture created, you will need to create a shader file and add the 'blendfunc filter' parameter to it.

That's one way of doing it. I'm sure there are others, but that's one that I'm most familiar with.

"Lifer!"
Team Reaction

Yeah, I would recommend a shader as well.

If you ever want to apply more than 1 texture, you need to break up the model into sub-models (You can't export a model with more than one image reference in it).  However, an alpha channel can be included in a .tga image, and considered part of a single texture.

Actually, a .skin file is the best way to go with that.  I'm not sure EXACTLY if Quake 3 handles .skin files for all models, or if it restricts it to only player models.  However, .skin files work fine for any model in Jedi Knight 2.

Has anyone else tested .skin files?  They'd work a lot better performance-wise than using alpha shaders.

I've never seen a .skin for weapon models.  I've never tried it either, so I'm not sure if it's excluded in code, or in practicality to support multiple weapon skins.

However, Q3 does only support 1 texture/object.  However, by breaking the model into subobjects (the mp5 is made up of 3 subobjects in those screenies above), you can allow more than one texture to be used, as each sub object can reference textures seperately. (the mp5 also has/had 3 textures used on it).

RE: shaders -- yeah, I realized after I posted that I needed to create a shader...not sure why it didn't occur to me to do that.