Your First Model

(This tutorial was made by Smoke)

OK peeps, this is the fun part! :) Your first Quake Model, unless you've already made one :) is going to be a spiffy new missile for the Rocket Launcher!

Creating a frame (3D).

You create and edit the 3D model with the frame editor. Open it by clicking the button.

Before we start, we need to set up the frame editor so you can see the model fairly well. You can change the background of the view to any color of the Quake palette, I suggest gray. To do this click "Options|Edit" in the menu bar. It will bring up the options dialog, now click the tab that says "Frame editor" you will see a color palette to the right. To the left will be a little box and the words "palette index", OK select a few different colors and watch the number in the palette index box, it will change, sift through the gray at the top until you find seven. That's where mine is set, most of the gfx in Quake are dark and this gray color will allow you to see the objects better. Don't select white unless your ready to be blinded :) Because we want to be able to line up vertices later on, you should select "parallel" under "projection".

Because a missile will be a small model, we need to setup the viewer to get a close-up look of the model, select a zoom factor of 450 % using the button.

You will need to insert a lot of objects from the object library in this tutorial. So if you can't find the object library palette in the upper right corner of the qME main window you have a problem. You should see something like this...

If for some strange reason you can't find it, then something went wrong during installation of qME. The "geometry" tab is nothing more than a directory on you hard disk, so you need to find and select the directory that contains the "geometry" directory You can change the directory by using the options dialog and selecting OK.

Now we've got all that setup, we are ready to start editing.

Use the button on the object library palette to put a sphere into your model.
Hit the button to get the object scale tool.
Click on the sphere to select it, then put a cursor in the scale boxes and scale the sphere down to .3 .3 .3.
Now insert a cylinder and scale it down to .7 .2 .2, pretty easy eh? Now for some confusion, do you see the colored lines? Good. Now, the blue line faces the front of the model, we are making a missile so we want the shaft (shaft = the cylinder you just added) to point away from the front, like a tail. I'm not going to show you exactly how to do it cause you have to learn how to use the program sometime, but you should select the object move tool to move objects around. Anyway, you'll know when this isn't lined up right when you launch a missile and it fly's sideways towards its destination :). Anyway...after scaling the cylinder down, line it up using the object move tool, so it sticks out of the sphere and starts to look somewhat like a weird missile.
Now insert a cube and scale it down to .4 .7 .2 and hit this button to edit the vertices to make our cube look more like a fin that would be on a missile and stick it back where a fin on a missile would go. Note that this fin is supposed to stick out of BOTH sides of the shaft.
Now insert yet another cube and scale it down to .4 .2 .7 (pay close attention to the numbers now.) and edit its vertices to make it look more like a fin and stick it back there where you put the other one (Just mess around with the fins until they look good.).
Keep in mind that you can use these buttons to select different views to help line things up and I highly suggest it!
Now insert a cone. Rotate it 90 degrees on the Y axis (hint: X Y Z). Scale it down to .2 .2 .2 and put it on the end of the shaft so it looks like a flame.
Now, since this is a missile from the Rocket Launcher we want it to glow and smoke so we click this button. You should get the dialog below. In there you will see a check box under "Flags" marked "Rocket Smoke Trail" put a check mark in it and click OK. That will make the model have the "EF_ROCKET" flag and when shown in Quake it will glow and smoke. Cool eh? :)

Painting a skin (2D).

Click this button to get to the skin editor where you can either paint the skin within qME or export it and paint it in a different program, I will teach you how to export it or paint it within qME, I wont teach you how to use a different program to paint it though :).

Once in the skin editor, if you do NOT see the palette click this button so it will show up. There are 2 sides to the palette, the left side is the one that tells you what colors are IN the current skin, the right one show ALL the colors in the Quake palette. Select the color you want to use in the left palette, if you cant tell what color you have selected look at the right palette and you will see. After selecting a color hit this button to get the pencil, you may have to reselect your color.
Draw! :)

Now if you want to paint your skin in a different program (like Paint Shop Pro) this is what ya do.

Click this button to get into 2D mode.
Over to the left you will se a list of the skins in the model. Select the skin you want to paint on, in this case it will most likely be called "new skin" to change the name of the skin click on the skin you want to rename and hold the mouse button for a few seconds. Don't move the mouse, just hold the button. When you release you should be able to type in a new name. Anyway, select the skin you want to export and then right click (NOTE: you MUST select a skin before you can export and if there are more than one skin, select the right one!) now use the "File|Export Skin" menu to save the skin.
Select a place and name for the file you are exporting and click OK.
Fire up your fav paint program on it and DRAW! =Þ~
After drawing the skin in a different program you might want to import it into your new model. So, if you closed qME open it back up and open your model, goto 2D mode, click "File|Import Skin" menu to find the file that contains your skin and click OK.
Now if the skin you just imported is not the FIRST in the list, grab it (left click drag) and drag it onto the first skin this will move it to the first place in the list.
Voila your first Quake model with qME ! Pretty easy huh? :)

Using your missile in Quake

Well this is what I got in the end, does yours look anything like it ?

OK, now you wanna see the thing in Quake right? Right. This is what ya do. Let's assume you installed Quake in C:\QUAKE\, then this is the root directory for new game patches. If you installed Quake in another directory, that's OK, use that directory in the description below whenever you see C:\QUAKE\ in the text.

We are going to create a new game patch to view our missile. Use the explorer or a DOS box to create the MYMDL sub directory directly under the game root. Then create a PROGS sub directory directly under that one. The result should be C:\QUAKE\MYMDL\PROGS\ . Now go back to qME and choose "File|Save As" to save your model as MISSILE.MDL in the PROGS directory you just created (You don't have to type the extension, qME will automatically put ".mdl" at the end!)

Now you start a DOS box change the current directory to C:\QUAKE\ and type :

quake -game mymdl +map e1m1

Now once you're inside Quake bring down the console with "~" and type "impulse 9" this will give you the rocket launcher.

Now get ready for some serious gibbing with your collection of spanking new rockets :)

If you want to see your missile a little less in motion, save it as ARMOR.MDL in the same PROGS directory where you saved it as MISSILE.MDL, this will replace the armor model with your missile model. You'll see a tiny missile embedded in the floor instead of an armor powerup.