Your First Model

Initial version of this tutorial was made by Smoke

OK peeps, this is the fun part !

Your first Quake Model (unless you've already made one) is going to be a spiffy new animated missile for the Rocket Launcher !

Creating a frame

First we are going to create a single frame that we will use as the starting point for our model. You create and edit the 3D frame with the frame editor.

Setting up the frame editor

Before we start, we need to set up the frame editor so you can see the model fairly well. Make sure you have opened the editor by clicking the button.

We are first going to change the background color of the frame editor. To do this click "Options|Edit" in the menu bar. It will bring up the options dialog, now click the tab that says "Frame editor" you will see a group with a caption saying "Background color". In this group there will be a little box with a number and the words "Palette index" in front of it. Now press the button with "..." on it to bring up a color palette. OK select a color in the top row of the palette that looks like a nice gray not too light and not too dark. After you click a color the palette index should be set somewhere in the range 7 to 10. That's where mine is set, most of the gfx in Quake are dark and this gray color will allow you to see the objects better. Don't select white unless your ready to be blinded :) OK now close the options dialog by pressing the OK button

Now back to the frame editor. Because we want to be able to line-up vertices later on, you should press down the button, to get parallel projection instead of perspective projection.

Because a missile is a relatively small model, we need to setup the viewer to get a close-up look of the model, select a zoom factor of 900 % using the button.

You will need to insert a lot of objects from the object library in this tutorial. So if you can't find the object library palette in the upper right corner of the qME main window you have a problem. You should see something like this...

If for some strange reason you can't find it, then something went wrong during installation of qME. If you do see the geometry tab, then just skip to the next paragraph. The "geometry" tab is nothing more than a directory on you hard disk, so you need to find and select the directory that contains the "geometry" directory Let me repeat that... you need to find the directory that contains the "geometry" directory. You can change the directory by using the options dialog under the general tab and then select OK after you have set the path to the object library correctly.

Now we've got all that setup, we are ready to start editing.

Keep in mind that you can use these buttons to select different views to help line things up and I highly suggest it!

Creating a fin for our rocket

What we are going to do first is create a fin for our rocket. Because there will be two fins in our model, we are going to create a prefab fin model that we can insert twice.

1. Insert a cube by pressing the button on the object library palette.
2. Hit the button to get the object scale tool.
3. Click on the cube to select it, then put a cursor in the scale boxes and scale the cube down to .4 .7 .2. If you have typed in a value, hitting the return key will actually set the value, but also going to another edit box will set it.
4. Now hit the  button to edit the vertices to make our cube look more like a fin. Viewed from above with the render mode set to wireframe this should look something like this:

5. Now select "File|Save Model" from the menu and save the model in a file called "FIN.MDL". Remember where you put it, you will need it shortly.

Note, you also could put the fin into the object library. If you save the fin in a directory on the same level as the geometry directory or in the geometry directory itself, and you select "Options|Edit" followed by clicking OK, the object palette will be updated and your model will be available from the object library.

Creating the rocket

1. Lets start from scratch again by selecting "File|New Model" .
2. Now press the button on the object library palette to put a sphere into your model.
3. Hit the button to get the object scale tool.
4. Click on the sphere to select it, then put a cursor in the scale boxes and scale the sphere down to .3 .3 .3.
5. Now insert a cylinder and scale it down to .7 .2 .2, pretty easy eh?
6. Now for some confusion, do you see the colored lines? Good. Now, the blue line faces the front of the model, we are making a missile so we want the shaft (shaft = the cylinder you just added) to point away from the front, like a tail. I'm not going to show you exactly how to do it cause you have to learn how to use the program sometime, but you should select the object move tool to move objects around. Anyway, you'll know when this isn't lined up right when you launch a missile and it fly's sideways towards its destination :). Anyway...after scaling the cylinder down, line it up using the object move tool, so it sticks out of the sphere and starts to look somewhat like a weird missile.
7. Now we need to insert our fins into the model. Select "File|Merge Model" and select your prefab "FIN.MDL". You will see that a fin is merged into your model.
8. Hit the button to get the object rotate tool and select the fin you just inserted. Put the cursor in the rotate boxes and rotate the object to 90,0,0.
9. Now we need to insert the second fin into the model. Select "File|Merge Model" and select the "FIN.MDL" again.
10. Use the object move tool to move the fins to where a fin on a missile would go. Note that these fins are supposed to stick out of BOTH sides of the shaft. Just mess around with the fins until they look good.
11. Now insert a cone from the object library palette. Rotate it 90 degrees on the Y axis (hint: X Y Z). Scale it down to .2 .2 .2 and put it on the end of the shaft so it looks like a flame.
12. Now, since this is a missile from the Rocket Launcher we want it to glow and smoke so we click this  button. You should see the model properties editor now. In there you will see a check box under "Flags" marked "Rocket Smoke Trail" put a check mark in it and click OK. That will make the model have the "EF_ROCKET" flag and when shown in Quake it will glow and smoke. Cool eh? :)

Read on, to find out how to paint on your newly created model.

Painting a skin

You can paint on the skin in either 2D with the skin texture editor or in 3D directly on the model in the frame editor.

To use the 2D skin texture editor, click this button. You can also paint the skin with an external paint program, just export it, paint on it and import it again. I will teach you how to export or paint it within qME, I won't teach you how to use a different program to paint it though :).

Internal painting

1. Select the  button to get the pencil.
2. To select the color you want to use in painting, select a color from the color palette you normally find on the bottom of the main window. You also can right click on the skin to select a color already present in the skin itself.
3. Draw, either in the Skin Texture Editor or in the Frame Editor.

External painting

Now if you want to paint your skin in a different program (like Paint Shop Pro) this is what ya do.

1. Click in the upper left panel that contains these lines.
2. Select the skin you want to paint on, in this case it will most likely be called "new skin". To change the name of the skin click on the skin you want to rename and click the name label. After clicking it, the label will go into edit mode. Anyway, select the skin you want to export (NOTE: you MUST select a skin before you can export and if there are more than one skin, select the right one!) now use the "File|Export Skin" menu to save the skin.
3. Select a place and name for the file you are exporting and click OK.
4. Fire up your fav paint program on it and DRAW! =▐~
5. After drawing the skin in a different program you might want to import it into your new model. So, if you closed qME open it back up and open your model, click "File|Import Skin" menu to find the file that contains your skin and click OK.
6. Now if the skin you just imported is not the FIRST in the list, grab it (left click drag) and drag it onto the first skin this will move it to the first place in the list.
7. Voila your first Quake model with qME ! Pretty easy huh? :)

Read on, to find out how to add animation frames to your model.

Animating the model

Now we are going to add some animation frames.

What we are trying to accomplish here is making the rocket look more realistic during flight. If you ever have seen a real missile launch from close by, you might have noticed that these things behave quite differently from the normal Quake missiles. In particular at take-off the missiles control mechanisms that guide it make it jump wildly as it hurls towards it target.

What we are going to do is add a client side animation. This means you can let Quake do the animation playing without programming a single line of QC code !

To create an animation this is what you need to do.

1. First we need to set up the joints in the model. Joints are the animation parameters that define motion for the model. Select the root object in the object tree panel, right click and select "Edit Object Joints" from the local menu.
2. Now in the dialog you see now, check the TY and TZ boxes and give the joints the names "left right" and "up down". Click close to close the dialog. We now have created two joints in our model that allow us to control the animation in the Joint Track Editor.
3. Now select our single frame in the frame tree panel, right click and duplicate the frame 10 times, then duplicate the first frame again, so you get a total of 12 frames.
4. Well lets start animating ! Open the Joint Track Editor by pressing the button and select the cells in the first column of the grid. Press the button to turn these two values into key values. The values turn now from gray in to black, which means you can change them. You need to double click the values to edit them.

5. Well go on with changing gray tween values into key values for frame 4, 6,7 and finally frame 10. If you are finished with changing the key values, press the button. This will calculate the in-between values and update the model. Your grid should now look exactly likethe one you see above.
6. Now go to the frame editor and play the animation by using the green play button from the animation controls and see how the rocket jumps up and down and moves from left to right.
7. Finally we need to instruct Quake that it needs to play the animation automatically. To do this, right click the scene in the frame tree panel and select "Group Frames for Scene" from the local menu. Now we are halfway there. Again select the scene and right click it again and choose "Edit Duration of Frames for Scene". Make all durations '0.05' which will play back the animation at a framerate of 20 frames per second.

Read on to find out how you can use your new rocket in Quake.

Using your missile in Quake

Well this is what I got in the end, does yours look anything like it ?

OK, now you wanna see the thing in Quake right? Right. This is what ya do. Let's assume you installed Quake in C:\QUAKE\, then this is the root directory for new game patches. If you installed Quake in another directory, that's OK, use that directory in the description below whenever you see C:\QUAKE\ in the text.

We are going to create a new game patch to view our missile. Use the explorer or a DOS box to create the MYMDL sub directory directly under the game root. Then create a PROGS sub directory directly under that one. The result should be C:\QUAKE\MYMDL\PROGS\ . Now go back to qME and choose "File|Save As" to save your model as MISSILE.MDL in the PROGS directory you just created (You don't have to type the extension, qME will automatically put ".mdl" at the end!)

Now you start a DOS box, change the current directory to C:\QUAKE\ and type :

quake -game mymdl +map e1m1

Now once you're inside Quake bring down the console with "~" and type "impulse 9" this will give you the rocket launcher and all other weapons.

Now get ready for some serious gibbing with your collection of spanking new rockets :)

If you want to see your missile a little less in motion, save it as GRENADE.MDL in the same PROGS directory where you saved it as MISSILE.MDL, this will replace the grenade with your missile model. You will then see your missile bouncing of walls instead of the normal grenade.