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# Info about the MD4 format supported by the ioQ3 engine #
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All models included with the original version of Quake3 from id soft are in
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the MD3 format. Animations in this format are realized by saving the position
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of every vertex in each frame which can make these files pretty large.
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ID started work on a newer format, the MD4 format which they never finished.
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This format uses a skeleton with all vertices "attached" to their bones.
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Because only the position of the bones must be stored for each frame and the
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number of bones is not very high this format is more efficient when
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Raven software "finished" this format originally started by ID and included
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it in their game EliteForce. They called their model format "MDR" which is
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the name I have used throughout the sourcecode and I will continue using in
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this readme. Since the code on how to handle those MDR files was released
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under a GPL licence a long time ago, I was able to implement this format for
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Quake3 and do some efficiency improvements.
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To enable the support for this model format, go to qcommon/qfiles.h,
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remove the comment slashes for #define RAVENMDR and then compile the engine.
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Including finished MDR models in your projects is easy: just load the model
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files in your cgame code as you would normally load an MD3 model. The engine
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will expect the models to have a ".mdr" suffix.
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The rest is pretty much the same: Selecting the current animation frame,
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adding a skin to the model, etc..
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You can check out the original eliteforce game sourcecode if you want to
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have examples on using the md4s. The source can be got at:
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http://eliteforce2.filefront.com/
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You can also get reference MDR files there, just go to the model/skin
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section there and pick something to download.
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Now here comes the tricky part:
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Creating files with this format. There are tools to create these kinds of
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MDR files, like a plugin for Milkshape.
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A pretty good overview about MDR file creation is available at
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http://synapse.vgfort.com/
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You can find some tools for creating MDR files there.
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There is an independent implementation of the MD4 file format available
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http://gongo.quakedev.com/
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At this time, ioquake3 has no support for these models though that may
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change in the future. Nevertheless, he has got a tool for skeletal
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animations that can possibly be hooked into the MDR format with some
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removed
md4-readme.txt
