ZDoom

Freyja looks promising. I'll give it a try and see how it's like.

Hm, one of the problems I always have when modeling is that I put too much detail into them before I set them to a subsurface. What this does is make the model very hard to keep detailing, as everything is already in a sort of predetermined shape. This isn't too bad for making animations, but for games, it's very bad. This is what always happens tp me, Blender or otherwise, so I'd love to see a tutorial on low-poly modeling centered around GZdoom. There's already a basic one for Blender, but a more specific one would be great.

To be honest, I feel or felt the same way about blender, but when I bottled down to it it only took a day to learn all the basics. It is alien, and it does help if you like keyboards, but after that it's not nearly as unfriendly as it seems. Which is a trait I don't quite understand... maybe it is just the inherent unfamiliarity that makes it annoying.

It is still as far as I can see, the only free modelling tool worth keeping around, and that is what makes it so easy an option to suggest. I did come across a more middle of the road app at one point though, it may be worth a look - http://icculus.org/freyja/. The only reason I didn't give it the run around is because I figured I may as well go with something more standard rather than learning one more obscure program that may or may not suddenly drop dead.

Anyway, I'd much rather think outside the box and suggest to that person to re-wire their brain if they want to get any joy out of making 3d models.

Valid points, Chilvence, and I totally understand what you mean by, "if you're going to do something, better do it right". However, let me post a snippet of a PM I received very recently...

Also, I think you may have done this before, but could you recommend a good program for loading and viewing MD2 models? Perhaps something that allows a bit of editing of them too? I'm not about to set out on a model editing career, so I don't want an "all singing, all dancing" professional package, just something simple and (preferably) free. I've tried doing a bit of model making in the past and I just don't think my brain is wired that way. It's a shame because I've got a bunch of simple scenery sprites (lamps, barrels, columns, that kind of thing) that I'd like to make but I just can't seem to get it right. Even simple boxes turn out wrong. If an existing model is close to what I want, then sometimes I can alter it, but most of the time I end up messing it up instead and going back to the sprite.

As you can see, this person is very keen in making simple decorations and perhaps edit some existing ones to suit his needs. But he clearly states that he does NOT want to bother with the "big boys" and I can understand where he's coming from; he just doesn't have the time to learn the UI for a full featured program.

Between Blender and Milkshape, I feel that Milkshape's UI is much more straightforward and easier to learn. Blender's UI is really non-standard after all (pretty much all websites and wikis related to Blender emphasize this).

Back then when I was a n00b, I pretty much figured out the UI to Milkshape (and eventually 3ds Max) all on my own. It was that easy. But such isn't the case with Blender.

Now I COULD get used to Blender if it's the only choice I have, and if I wanted to. But I have better options so that's why I'm avoiding Blender.

I would have considered making a tutorial for Blender (in fact it would be my first choice considering we are working with free source ports) if the UI wasn't so weird. In fact, after your first post in this thread, I actually went over to download Blender in an attempt to learn it from scratch to see if it's a viable option (see, I'm not all closed minded; I actually consider your opinions!).

I struggled a bit but I could manage, and the next day I had a go at it again... before finally uninstalling it and saying "no, this is too much for my target audience".

I wouldn't say no one is intrested except me and Risen, cutty has already made a few posts and at least a dozen voted. I am only posting so heavily because I cant bear to think of people learning to model with either of those tools in 2007. It was ok for me, because back then I knew nothing of free software and the most advanced game around was Unreal and or Half-Life, but today its just not worth it.

I do think a tutorial geared towards GZdoom modelling would be useful, but perhaps a different approach. Why not assume anyone intrested will learn whatever tool they want to using the already masses of tutorials available, and simply concentrate on tutorialing the act of getting the finished products into GZDoom. I'm sure people would appreciate that.

Why don't we just have tutorials for each program eh?

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.

Cutty - Go to http://www.maxplugins.de/ and moosey over to the 3ds Max 7 section and look under the exporters section to see if it's supported.

Risen - Have you seen this page? It appears to link to a working MD3 exporter with animation support and has a tutorial too. I didn't really read it though so I wouldn't know if it's useful to you.

I couldn't even work out the uvmapping in MS3d

I know. Under the cons list of Milkshape 3D, I did mention that the UV tools inside it are crap and I had to use a separate program to do the unwrapping.

Perhaps your motivation is just wanting to see the Zdoom forum crowd actually start to use the modelling features of GZDoom

Correct. But if I'm going to tell people to use Blender, then I don't think there's a need for me to do this tutorial. They might as well go over to the Blender community where there are tons of better tutorials.

Which leads me back to...

All I wanted to teach was how to get Doom modders use GZDoom's model capabilities. But teaching people here how to use Blender is really not my goal (and I wouldn't be able to do it well anyway... I am already too acustomed to the 3ds Max workflow and keyboard shortcuts).

Well seeing as the only replies I'm getting are from people who already know how to model (which isn't a bad thing, thanks for participating guys), I gather there's not really much interest in the subject and I take it no one's really interested in the tutorial... good thing I didn't start on it yet.

Nash, I simply would not bother with milkshape3d, nor encourage anyone else to use it. Despite the fact that it costs 30 bucks when Blender is free, it is severely lacking in long term usability. It does the bare bones of what you need for a Quake 3 era model, but the simple fact is that every implementation feature wise is severely trounced by Blender.

Skeleton rigging can take hours to get right in MS3d, yet with Blender using the envelope rigging, you can be away in 20 minutes. I am not exaggerating, personally I would say you can go much faster than that. Not only that, but when I last used MS3d (admittedly a long time ago), it had hideous bugs in its animation system that cost me hours of extra work.

I couldn't even work out the uvmapping in MS3d, I gave up and resorted to using npherno's skin tool. Which is probably the worst thing to do, since it forces the crappy md2 format on you (another thing which I would not want anyone to suffer again). However after marking a few edge seams on your mesh in Blender, you can literally unwrap the whole thing to a usable level with one button.

It's also worth mentioning, that while I do believe learning to model with raw vertices and triangles may be slightly beneficial to your overall understanding of 3d, it is NOT n00b friendly. Any other tool you can name has a much more intelligent method of generating a mesh, even if it takes a while to actually find it. That in itself is often the main problem, there is no 3d equivalent of the 'line' tool in so far as the obvious usage and intended effect.

My personal favourite method is edge extrusion, since it allows me to build models almost exactly like I would have in q2mdl, but with a turbo speed boost. I would usually start a model with one flat plane, wrap it around itself on one axis and then build the rest on that single loop.

You might as well learn how to do it 'properly' from the start, then at least you aren't jammed in a corner with that hurdle to overcome later. Believe me (and you may well know, if you remember any of my long posts about this subject here in the past), that is not the position you want to be in.

I also find your statement that you aren't trying to help people enter the industry belittling and shortsighted. Perhaps your motivation is just wanting to see the Zdoom forum crowd actually start to use the modelling features of GZDoom for once, I do not know. But you are going about it the wrong way in any case. The right thing to do is to encourage people to try to get something out of 3d-modelling in general, then they can decide if they want to build a wad file with some models, and they will probably be good at it. If you just force people to learn modelling as fast as humanly possible, they will probably come out with crap and then have a hard-learned skill that they find hard to expand on in future. THAT is what you have to consider, not whether or not any individual is a prodigy destined for rockstar-fame or not, that viewpoint is exceedingly shallow.

So my point is, whatever you think is worth learning, it is worth learning properly. I know q2mdl so well that I can predict when its going to crash with 100% accuracy. 90% of my modelling hobby was spent on this. But it is the program equivalent of a hammer and some nails, you can use the damn thing even if the head is nearly falling off and your 'nails' consist of random bits of rusted metal you pulled out of a door frame 16 years ago, but that doesn't mean that it is good... you may have to suffer the bloat for learning something more modern, but as long as you aren't paying for it, it makes no sense to learn the old and rusty version.

A newbie guide using a newbie tool would likely be beneficial to some, but not to me.

I'm more advanced, in that I am already capable of building models and getting them into GZDoom. But I know that I am not so advanced as to understand 3D modeling in the same capacity that I understand 2D raster images. There are several areas in which I am completely in the dark about what is actually going on, and getting a usable result feels more like chance than skill.

With more advanced knowledge comes need for more advanced tools. When it comes to generating the mesh, I can operate Blender far and away better and more efficiently than I can operate q2modeler. I've discovered tools like radiosity baking which have made my textures much more believable in GZDoom's non-lighting renderer.

But then there's animation. It's very difficult to find information about animating a model using blender for use with the MD2/MD3 format. Most of the tutorials utilize features that aren't useful to me and I have to distill out what parts of them I can use and what's not supported. That's not an easy task and relies on quite a bit of outside information.

What I need is a newbie guide using a better featured tool, so that I can understand how all the basics fit together and why they do. (Specifically, I'd like it to be for Blender since I'm not in a good position to be spending money on tools of this nature)

If I'm not your audience, so be it; but you did ask for my thoughts.

I use 7. When it exports, does it do it correctly? By that I mean not rotate it on it's side (like what happens if you export into a format and import into milkshape) etc?

Depends on what version of 3ds Max you're using.

http://pages.videotron.com/browser/ archives every incarnation of MD3 exporters ever made, but you'll have to find out which version of the exporters would work for your version of Max.

There is no working MD3 exporter for Max 9, though.

Speaking of 3ds, is there any way to convert a file to the correct md3 format from it rather than having to go through milkshape etc?

I'm not going to bother with Blender (or any other program for that matter) because as far as GZDoom modeling goes, it's just overkill for the typical Doom modder. What I mean by this kind of person is, he is interested in making or tweaking existing models, has SOME art knowledge but does NOT want (or care) to learn a full-blown package. He's a simple hobbyist.

My aim is to create a tutorial that'll help that person do just that. I am not intending to make a tutorial on how to make it in the game and animation industry; that's just out of context.

I myself use 3ds Max and I know what kind of crappy tools Milkshape and Q2modeler are; however what I intended to do was a service for the community - and that is to make a tutorial for a modeling program that everyone here has access to. I realize there's this phobia with modeling going around and most of the time it's because the person runs into very intimidating modeling tools.

I wanted to demistify 3-d modeling so that EVERYONE can start making models for GZDoom.

If the user feels that he runs into limitations and wants to do more, then he should consider the larger packages, in which by then I would have succeeded in my goal; I would have educated that person who originally only wanted to make models for GZDoom. By then, he would already have access to lots of other professionally-done tutorials on more advanced modeling techniques and as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't really mean anything to me anymore because it's beyond what I intended to teach.

To use your example: Given a choice between Photoshop and Paint, I'll choose Photoshop every time. Now that I know it intimately, even the smallest tasks are easier than with it than with Paint. I'd much rather use a fully featured program and understand what my limits are. In the case of Blender, there's the added bonus that it's freely available.

So unfortunately I wouldn't find this tutorial of much use unless it was done in Blender. Q2modeller lacks tools that I find necessary to get the job done right. I've gotten much further with Blender, but I'd still like to know and understand it much better.