SKINHELP SECTION - Quake2 Model Viewing
Option One ~ MD2VIEW
Ok, a lot of people have been struggling to find a model viewer that works with Q2, theres a number of options to view them but I've only really had two working that were worth the effort. The first is MD2VIEW, it requires a 3dfx or GL card to work correctly but the readme file with it says u can rename one of the .DLL files so that it will work without a GL card so everyone should be able to use it
The Problem with MD2view that I had at first was that you cant just click the md2view.exe and have it working, you have to a) run from the RUN button on teh START menu in Windows 95, or you have to make a batch file. I've included 2 batch files in the zip for completeness sake and also cos I knwo that theres some people out there that cant be bothered reading readmes etc (erm not that I've EVER been like that lol).
What YOU WILL NEED TO DO to the Batch file is edit it in notepad, Wordpad of any text file reader, just change the directory structure line to how the filea re stored on your hardrive.
For
example, I have MD2 in my Quake2 directory d:/quake2/baseq2/md2
and so I use the command line
d:\quake2\baseq2\md2\md2view d:\quake2\baseq2\players\female\tris.md2
d:\quake2\baseq2\players\female\leann.pcx
. Everytime you want to see a different skin you have to change the batch file
altering the name of the skin, at the moment mine says leann.pcx as this is
the name of the skin I am working upon, I'm using the tris.md2 model from the
female directory as I want to view the female skin on the correct female model.
Well hopefull that should all be nice and sparkly clear now, I had a couple problems getting the comand lines to work right before I had success thanks to 666's help, another problem u may run into is that it cant load the skin correct, if this happens its cos of spelling mistakes in the batch file, if it doesnt appear correctly its cos youve saved in the wrong palette. Corel photopaint is bad at handling its palette, I STILL say its the best for editing the skin like but when it comes to saving it I save in PSP or adobe photoshop making sure the correct palette is used.
Its worth taking the time to use this folks as this is a new model and has many more quirks than the old quake model, quirks like the picture below will demonstrate and would also be nigh impossible for you to track down without a model viewer like this.
Look at all the weird jigsaw bits that make up the feet, mad eh? Without a model viewer your workign the dark.
Option Two ~ NPhernos Skin Tool
Ok. The rules have changed since I last updated this Q2 Skinhelp section, theres a new proggie out there. In my ever so humble opinion this program was made by God, Packaged by Jesus and sealed shut by Claudia Schiffers pussy ! Yeah I like it loads...
Anyway, enough humour for now. This is Both a Viewing tool AND and editor with a difference, the difference being that u can actully paint upon the 3d model and the flat pcx too, in addition to this is had a couple of neat tools like the gray gradient bar on the right which performs a nifty shading trick that partycrasher tried to explain to me last night (didnt quite follow it all as aint played with this yet). The program will also allow you to use ANY pallete and it doesnt have a problem with Corel Photopaint (tho u'll still need to use PSP or photoshop to save ur final skin version for use INGAME).
Really I cant recommend this program to you enough, it saves countless hours of fiddling in MD2VIEW as you try to approximate what your flat pcx is being turned into as u constantly resave and check your skin out. It totally eradicates the texture wrapping problem. The only thing it doesnt do ( aside from making the skin for you) is support GL, so keep MD2view still to check out how your skin will look in GL and for making cool webpics :)
>>>>>GET NPhernos Skin Tool NOW!!!<<<<<
While I'm scarely more than a few words from mentioning Corel Photopaints Palette saving problems let me make mention of a little patch sent to me by Ian Waugh that cures the problem. This was sent to me AGES ago, But this is the first time I've updated the skinhelp since so its been left gathering dust (sorry Ian). Heres his explanation of whats been going wrong for so long with Corel Photopaint ....
After
some digging around I think I have
found the reason why. Quake 2 seems to be very fussy about the header
information in the PCX file, The header contains an XY coordindate for the
top of the image, and Quake II insists these should be 0,0, but PhotoPaint
saves its images at 1,1. This skews the image into gibberish when displayed
in MDS2 or Quake 2 multiplier set-up. To fix this I have written a noddy
little utility to tweak the PCX file headers to make them useable. Its only
32k and takes a second to run. Using this I can edit my skin in PhotoPaint,
save it (don't have to quit or anything), run my little util, then run MD2
to see the results on the model, all very easy and quick. As I thought it
might be of some use to you, I have included the program with a few notes
in a zip file attached to this message.
>>>>>GET Corel Photopaint Fix NOW!!!<<<<<
'Patience is a Virtue, and Artists are lazy people