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ODDJOB's Amazing Flying VWEP Tutorial and Other Tivial Musings.

Well, here is the tutorial I have been talking about for a little while now. I'm doing this in order to pass the torch. I have done many of the vwep for the Action Quake models and want to pass this knowlege on so some one else so anybody can add vwep to their favorite model. But you still have to get the model ok'ed by the Guild. I mean, who wants to be playing AQ2 and have a gun toting PK Knight blow your ass away?

Well first you'll need to know the tools you need to do this. You'll have to get your self over to the http://planetquake.com/q2pmp . From there check out everybody's work, then go to the Developers page then, on to the tools page to pick up the Q2 Modeler v.9b. It is a great freeware tool that unfortunatly is not being supported by the author anymore, so it can be buggy sometimes. Guess you could try bugging him.... After you have downloaded that you'll need to go over to http://www.xs4all.nl/~renep/quakeme/And look around that site to find where to download your next invaluable tool, QME 3.1. It's shareware and will set you back about $20. Not too bad. The registered version is the only one that can handle the full md2 player model file size. After you have d/l'ed and installed those two programs, you are ready to go. Oh, I almost forgot, you are gonna need a pak explored too. You can find one here: http://www.quake2.com/qworkshop/features/files.htm .

It's up to you to learn the basics of the tools. I taugnt myself the basics and so can you. I will tell you all you need to know to do vwep though. Okay now. Well, open up Q2 modeler and then open up the weapon model you are going to link. I am going to use the M4, everybody's favorite weapon. It will work fine for this tutorial. And the male model of course. So you open the M4 model from the terror directory. Get it from there because that is the closest to the originals as you can get. That goes for all the models in the terror dir. Just trust me. Then you merge the M4.md2 model with the weapon.md2 model from the male directory. Then you need to go to the file menu and click on 'choose reference model' and open up the male model. He should only appear in the perspective window. You use the manipulator tools(scale move and rotate) to get the breifcase into the right position, realitive to the male model and the weapon model.Just like in fig#1.

Once you have it lined up and everything looks nice, it's time for step 2.

Step Two. Now that it's lined up perfectly, you can get rid of the reference model by going to the file menu and selecting 'clear reference model'. Well, now you need to make sure that you new weapon model is selected in face mode. And only the faces of your new model. Usually you just have to scroll through a few frames and and find a frame where they are not right on top of each other and select there. If its not already selected. Remember you just got done moving the thing around. Now that you have it selected in face mode, go back to the frame you lined it up in and go into vertex mode. Now you need to select four vertex on the weapon model from the male directory that is already sync'ed up. You need to try to get the vertex that are the furthest away from each other. Dunno why, but it workes better that way. Now you have four vertex selected just like fig#2, right?

Good. Ok, on to step three.

Step Three. Here comes the part that sync's up the animations of your new model to the old model. I know, you're thinking: Oh, great, here comes all the work! Ugh! Here's what ya do... First save your work up to this point. Because the aligning is not undoable. Go to the bones tool pallet and click on the align button. Take a look at fig#3 to see what I mean.

Now cycle thru the animation and watch with wonder at just how easy that was. You'll notice that your new model is perfectly aligned with the old. You can even reload the reference model to check it. Yup, sure 'nuff. All aligned. If your model is totally distorted after the align, then you need to reload the saved file and pick different vertex. Then try the align again. Rinse and repeat until it's ok. Well now, that wasn't so hard was it? Now go back to face mode, invert you selection so the old weapon model is selected and delete it. Then go to the view menu and select skins. You need to delete the unused vertex that are cluttering up yu skin mesh. They are the left over vertex from your recently deleted weapon model. After that is completed, you just need to export you model to md2 format.

Step Four. Before you export it you need the folder to export it to. Open up your pak explorer and open up the quake2\action\pak0.pak. From inside the pak, go to the models folder and highlight the weapons folder. Now just extract away. Now go back to Q2 modeler and export thenewly aligned model to quake2\action\models\weapons\g_m4 as w_m4. It will ask you for a skin, so point it to the one in the unpaked action\models\weapons\g_m4 called, funnily enough, 'skin'. You now have yourself a nicely aligned weapon model that is almost finished. You now just need to link the model to the skin.

Step five. Open up your newly registered version of QME 3.1 with Q2 support. Then, guess what! That's right, open up the newly aligned M4 model. The reason you need this progam is because it is the only one that I have found 100% effective at linking a model to a skin. Otherwise you get that funky red shadow skin. Ugh. Now that your model is open, open up the skin for it. then save it again into the same folder you got it from. Make sure it's in md2 format. That will link it to the skin that is already in memory because its in the pak file and you video card doesn't have to work so hard. Well, all done. Now just move the w_m4.md2 file back into your \players\male folder and you have a new aligned vwep model that is linked to the skin in your pak0.pak file.

Now that wasn't so hard was it? You haven't done the other akimbo yet. That is where the agravation comes in. Bleh.

There are two methods I developed to handle this problem. One, link the akimbo model to the hand itself. And the other you link the weapon but with the 2nd pistol oriented to the correct hand. The first method is the preferred. But it also has the most problems. The 2nd requires more work but it is effective.

Method #1. You basically follow the same steps as the M4 tutorial. Import the single Mk23 model. But this time you merge the whole male tris.md2. You can select everything on the tris but the arm on you are linking to and delete it. It's not nessessary. Then align the model so it looks as close as you can get to looking as if it is holding it(can be hard depending on the model). Select the Mk23 model in face mode. Pick the vertex in the hand. Keep them as far apart as possible, but keep them in the hand/forearm area. Like so: Fig#4.

Hit the align button and there you go. If its all aligned and isn't too distorted during the animation then just delete the arm, then merge the other single mk23 model and export both of them to the \action\models\weapons\g_dual as w_akimbo. Should be sitting there next to your w_mk23. All the rest is the same as above. The tris model is heavily deformed for the animation on most well made models, so sometimes this method is not going to work. you can live with a little distortion(look closly at the 2nd pistol on the SAS model, or any for that matter). Unfortunatly it is inheirent in the model making process. But To solve the akimbo problem I ran into on a few of the models, I came up with method #2.

Method #2. I used this on the Messiah model. He gestured too much with his other hand so I had to use this method. All you need to do is open the mk23 model from the terror folder, then merge with the weapon model of the model you are working with and then load the model as a reference model. Align the Mk23 model to where it belongs and select the vertex from the weapon model. For the Messiah, I just used the wooden handle that usually rested in that hand. I didn't select the vertex from the model itself. You know the rest by now. Align it. Blah blah blah. Now you have a model that is aligned with the correct hand until he pulls it away from the original. Then it just floats. And you may have to, frame by frame align the model manually where it doesn't line up. Or you can do what I did and just scale it down until it's invisible. Use the type in window to scale it to 1 after you have the scale manipulator selected. Like Fig#5.

Do that for every frame you need. If you look at the akimbo for the messiah, the 2nd pistol dissapears during the taunts and pains. But it's not noticeable in-game. And as I learned in my scenic design class.. If it looks good from 20' away, its ok. Heh. And you already know how to finish this. Heh.

Well, that's all folks. Hope this helps you.

Dwayne 'ODDJOB' Douglass

P.S. I have added three WWII weapon models and a tommy gun model for use as replacement wvep. To use these, just rename them to the weapon you want it to replace and put the skin in the folder with it, so you don't have to fiddle with the pak. Oh, and I am about to release a tommy gun replace ment for the heads-up for the M4, complete with arms and such. So you have all the tools you need. Now that you know how, YOU can implement them. You can try to get a hold of me if you have a problem, but I can't promise an answer. I'll try though.