Exporting MD2 models with Milkshape 3D

If you had read the help file, you would have known already. But here goes:

MS3D cannot export MD2 files without bones. Only a mesh that is bound to a bone can be part of an animation, and MD2 is an animated format (not bone animated, but that doesn''t matter. That''s what the exporter is for).

If you did not animate your model, but still want to export it to MD2, create 1 bone in the model, select your entire model and the bind that entire model to the one bone. Click Save, Click Export.

And now for something that isn''t in the MS3D help files but important nontheless: MS3D makes extremely crappy MD2 models. MD2 models constist of several meshes. Each mesh is eighter a triangle strip or a triangle fan. That is why MD2 models render so fast. MS3D however, doesn''t know how to cut your model in meshes, so it makes every single triangle a mesh. Example: your model is 300 triangles. Instead of having about 20 meshes with 15 trinagles each (and thus about 20 glBegin()/glEnd calls) you get 300 meshes (and 300 glBegin()/glEnd() calls). This will make your game VERY slow.

There is a nive fix though. Get one of these really old Quake Model Editors. They are horrible to model with but they do export the optimized meshes. Create the model in MS3D, Export to MD2, load it in Quake Editor, and finally export it (again). Voilá, one good MD2 model.

The Quake Modeler is good for more trhinghs though. In MS3D you cannot name the animation frames, in QME you can, so in your game you can call the animations by name

Hope this helped!

Sander Maréchal
[Lone Wolves Game Development][RoboBlast][Articles][GD Emporium][Webdesign][E-mail]

Wow, thanks Sander. That was very helpful.

quote:

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Original post by Sander
There is a nive fix though. Get one of these really old Quake Model Editors. They are horrible to model with but they do export the optimized meshes. Create the model in MS3D, Export to MD2, load it in Quake Editor, and finally export it (again). Voilá, one good MD2 model.

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Ok, I''ve been searching around for one of those old Quake model editors, but could someone please recommend me a good freeware one which effectively cuts my model into meshes like Sander has said? Thanks in advance.

Quake 2 Modeller