How do I see actual entities in GTK Radiant 1.5?

[BreadMan]

Is there a way to see actual entities in GTK radiant instead of just plain old boxes that represent entities? Seeing and actual Quake player standing in the map instead of an info_player_start box would be cool, along with all the baddies, weapons, powerups and ammos too. Anyone know how I convince radiant to show me the money like this in camera view and the edit windows?

[golden_boy]

I don't know if that is possible.

The boxes never bothered me though. Level design is a pretty abstract process anyway, and I believe that is why they originally chose boxes instead of models.

Edit; Netradiant does show the models for Doom 3, though, so it might just be a setting somewhere. I don't know if this can be changed in the config files though, or if it is hardcoded in the editor itself.

Edit 2: I asked Lord Havoc, and he told me that the models are set in the entities.ent file (in the gamepack). This makes sense; so if you guys want to see the models in the editor, someone will have to create a custom entities.ent file that includes the model paths. Look at the Quake 3 entities.ent file for an example how this should be done.

Edit 3: This makes it possible to very accurately place items on desks, shelves etc, just like it's done in Doom 3. Of course Quake's ammo boxes are comically large, so they would look weird on a table and would never fit into a shelf, and Quake's weapons float in mid air so can't be placed onto a surface in a believable fashion. Someone should volunteer to change this, too. :-s

[MadGypsy]

O.O that's how you do it?! I never could figure it out.

someone will have to create a custom entities.ent file that includes the model paths

Heard.

[golden_boy]

Heh heh.

Go for it!

[MadGypsy]

Waste of time. Sure, you can get the models to show up with ease

ex.

<point name="monster_knight" color="1 0 0" box="-16 -16 -24 16 16 40" [color=#ff8800] model="progs/knight.mdl"[/color]>
//rest
</point>

but it wont have a skin and good luck explaining to radiant that the skin is inside of the .mdl file. You may be a smarty pants and say "replacement textures"...ok, that's what I said too. Where do you put them for radiant and/or how do you tell radiant where it is? I tried a few things...nothing seemed to work.

[MadGypsy]

everything I tried

1) exported the knight skin to bmp (only option in qme) & jpg and named it progs/knight.jpg

did not work

2) made progs/skin and dumped my image in it

did not work

3)invented a radiant attribute out of thin air

<point yadda yadda yadda model="progs/knight.mdl" [color=#ff8800]skin="progs/skin/knight.jpg"[/color]>

did not work

4) read the entire local.prefs file, looking for a config var that at least sounded like it would turn on model textures,.. found nothing.


maybe someone else will catch an "Aha!" or summin that will lead to the answer.

EDIT: This makes no sense. I haven't tried anything else, I am just thinking about the whole thing. Radiant will perfectly open an mdl in the map...even show me all the polys when it's hilighted, but doesn't know where the texture is!? What kinda straight up bullshit is that? I shouldn't have to do anything special, it already knows it's an .mdl and can display it. So, what's up with the texture?!

[golden_boy]

It does show shaders on .ase or .obj mapmodels, so this should work in principle.

Maybe it doesn't support whatever format .mdl skins are in - PCX?

Does the Radiant console show any related error?

Edit: Got it.



The solution is to export "skin0" from QME into a BMP image with the same name as the model - knight.bmp. Then use Gimp to convert that into knight.tga (and remember to set the image mode to "RGB" instead of "indexed"). Also make sure entities.ent has the line 'model="progs/knight.mdl".'

Do that for all the meshes you want displayed.

The ammo and health boxes are actually BSP, not MDL. You might be able to get these to show as well though, if you enable BSP model support in q1.game or whatever that config file is called. Or just replace them with meshes (this would be a worthy project anyway).

You might then contact divVerent who maintains NetRadiant and persuade him to include an updated Quake 1 gamepack. Or just make one yourself.

Too bad Radiant's model library thing doesn't support IQMs.

[MadGypsy]

it works with jpg as well.

I'll rewrite the entire ent (where applicable) and make an external skin package. It probably will take longer to export all of the skins than it will to edit the ent. Sometime tomorrow or somethin I'll have it done.

EDIT:

I also just figured out how to contain all these skins. The prospect of dumping an ass-load of images into progs didn't really seem desirable, especially considering that the models already have textures. So, a skins.pak with a progs directory can be placed in ID1...voila, no big mess.

*skins.pak can be named anything

..okey doke, Imma go put this together (or at least start)

[MadGypsy]

{smacks teeth} there is no simple way to determine which key to show, for world type. The user will have to change the model path in the .ent accordingly.

[MadGypsy]

OK, I have completely finished the .mdl stuff, textures and .ent injection. Now I need to figure out if I can put bsp's in the map via .ent injection.

[MadGypsy]

the flame models get really messed up in radiant. Their geometry is all crazy and the texture isn't correct at all so I did not include them in this image.



I haven't bothered with ammo boxes yet. That should be the last thing. I made some "executive decisions"

1) all info_player_* types use the player model
2) light models are useless. For one you can only use 2 models even though there are more than 2 possible displays for light. Also, the 2 you can use are all messed up in radiant. So, no light for you [soup nazi reference].

other facts:
3) key models need to be changed manually
4) sigil models need to be changed manually
5) you are stuck with one armor color to represent them all

Anyway, the proof is in the image. I'm just missing ammo boxes and I can put a fork in this...or maybe this is it, depending.

EDIT: woops, it seems I am missing the sigil in my image..or maybe I just don't see it. Anyway, I have it and it works.

[golden_boy]

Nicely done.

[MadGypsy]

OK, I'm stuck. I never learned how to reverse engineer a bsp. It absolutely loads the bsp just like any other model, but I have no way to get the texture out of it. Alternately, is there somewhere that I can just go get the original textures for all bsp models? If so, I can finish this proper.

@nicely done - thank you, but Breadman is the one that deserves the credit and then you next. All I did was take very obvious data that was literally given to me (by your explanation) and utilize it. I could be completely finished if I knew how to get bsp model textures (not replacement ones - nothing else has been replaced).

[MadGypsy]

Oh also just a heads up (@ goldenboy) I did not use GiMP for conversion. I used Easy Graphic Converter 1.2. I clicked Export as jpeg, then add directory and then start. About 1 second later I had 38 images converted. It converts to a whole lot of formats including tga and it's free.

Edit: I think this whole model in the map thing is pretty cool and all, but as your map becomes more dense all those extra polys could become annoying. I'm still going to completely finish this, but I consider it to be more kitschy than useful.

[Seven]

OK, I'm stuck. I never learned how to reverse engineer a bsp. It absolutely loads the bsp just like any other model, but I have no way to get the texture out of it. Alternately, is there somewhere that I can just go get the original textures for all bsp models? If so, I can finish this proper.

Hello MadGypsy,

You can extract every texture that is within any .bsp in your /maps folder with TexMex.
There are most probably other tools that can do this, but I always use TexMex, cause I somehow like it...

- Open TexMex
- Click File/Open
- switch from ".wad" format to ".bsp" format in the new window
- navigate to your desired .bsp file

It then shows you all textures, that are used in that .bsp file.
Doesnt matter if complete map or bbox model. You can save them then.

Example for the detailed battery ammo:


Kind regards,
Seven

PS: I used this method to extend this list here, which was started by Moon[Drunk] for ID1 maps.
I added the mission pack maps and Sould of evil 2 maps.
Maybe it is interesting for mappers....