Use Blender animations in Quake Mods tutorial - Indie Devs

Hey guys! As most of you know there aren't a lot of options when it comes to animating if you want to make a quake mod like solitude, left4quake, etc. Most people use Qme, an old, out of date, simple program. I however, like to use a program called Blender 3d

Blender 3d is a constantly updated 3d modeling programing that can model, animate, render, texture, and more. I love Blender because it has many options and is easy to use(after some practice) This tutorial will show you how to get a model animated in blender, exported as an mdl, and added to kurok PC.

First of download Blender from: Blender.org
After you have downloaded and installed blender, you need to add the mdl export. Download this: Glbsp.sourceforge.net extract it and take the ajmdl_export_055.py and copy it into your script folder for blender. For me, the path is C:\Documents and Settings\Mitch\Application Data\Blender Foundation\Blender\.blender\scripts. After you have added that, you can move to the next step.

Next, download this 3d model that I made for you: Sendspace.com please note that I didn't take my time on this model and you can use your own if you'd like. After that's downloaded please double click it. Blender should open up and there should be a (cruddy) 3d pistol waiting for you! yay! you want to then right click where the 3d view and options meet and press split view. make a small split.

then click on the little box in the left corner of that. Split and go to timeline. It should look like this:

The timeline shows the animation all in all. What we'll do is make a basic animation that plays when the gun shoots in kurok. First press a so that everything is highlighted. Then press i and click locrotscale. This places a keyframe so when you get to that frame, the model will be at that position. Now go to frame 3. press r and rotate the gun upwards. This is the peak of the shot. Once again press i and click locrotscale. Now go to frame 6 and rotate the gun back to its original position. Press i and locrotscale once more. you can adjust it so that the animation ends at 10 frames. press the play button and itll shoot the gun over and over. You can adjust it how you like.

You also have to take into account where the gun will show up. Go to front view, and the model should be facing like this: To tell the truth, it's all trial and error. If the gun doesn't look good in game, go back and reposition it until it does.

Now that the animation is finished we can export as an mdl. Please note that the model MUST have a texture or the export WILL have an error. There are tutorials on how to add textures whether you want to unwrap it, or select faces and add it. Make sure you are at frame 7. The exporter will take 6 frames if you are on frame7, 7 if you are on frame 8, and so on. Now right click the model and go to file on the top left of the screen.
Click on export after that, then click mdl after that. note their are two mdl options. choose the one farther down in all caps. Choose your path whether it's to your desktop, c drive, or what, name it v_shot.mdl, then press export. It'll look as if it froze up but after a couple seconds it'll be done and you can press the button that appears to exit.

Now find the mdl on your pc. You now need a program called Pakexplorer. this opens pak folders which kuroks progs, or models, are stored in. Quaketerminus.com
install it and move on.

Now go to your kurok pc folder, and navigate to where you see pak1, 2, and 3. double click pak2 and go into the folder titled progs. Copy the v_shot.mdl you made in blender to this folder and replace the original. Wala! You can now run kurok, get the pistol, and shoot around.

Now that you have the basic idea of animation, you can move onto more complex things like the reload. There are different hotkeys for different uses like r for rotate, s for scale, g for move, and so on. There are many tutorials on these. When doing the reload, skip a frames after the shooting animation, and just start. Don't go over 30 frames for the entire thing unless you have a modified engine because kurok wont play the whole thing. If you have any questions at all let me know here and I'll help you. I can answer animating, texture adding, and even 3d modeling questions if you need. Hope this helped get a basic understanding of blender and its capabilities!

thanks
-Mobster