MD2 - Any drawbacks?
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/MD2 - Any drawbacks?
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| I'm about to opt for MD2 for my characters. Are there any known limitations associated with using MD2s and Blitz? I don't want to do a bunch of work and then find some really annoying flaw. Is the framerate affected in any major way for example? There's no SetAnimTime() command for MD2, but you can specify start/end frames so in theory you could hard-code the frame updates manually. Can you successfully have 2 sets of UVs on an MD2? Etc etc... Oh, and I know there's no bones with MD2, but that doesn't really bother me as I wasn't planning on doing realtime bone transforms or anything. Is there anything else that the lack of bones could harm? I just need advice before taking the plunge. |
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| the lighting on md2 sucks, you need to keep your models low poly, you get vertex wobbling which is horrible. There's nothing in md2 that you can't do btter using b3d which is a way better format in general. Doa search , hopefully one of the old topics is around which argued for both md2 and b3d. |
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| Read this thread for example: http://www.blitzbasic.co.nz/bbs/posts.php?topic=19936 |
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| Thing is, I'm doing hierarchy animated models with some vertex movement (all done manually - no bones). I can't get the bloody thing into the .b3d format. Every combination I've tried leaves something out. The closest I got was .x into UU then export to .b3d BUT as I said in another thread a part of the character expands, and that doesn't show up in the .x file. NOTHING will import an animated .3ds properly (and its a limited format anyway). Milkshape won't import the textures with a .smd for some reason. Why can't there be just one 3D file format that does everything and works properly? :( So far, MD2 is the only format that actually gets my model to look like it's supposed to. |
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| B3D desperately needs a MORP chunk (for morphing verts). (..and a Max exporter.) |
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| the problem your having with milkshape importing smd and textures is the texure needs to be of specific dimensions and color ie 128 x 128 and color of 8bit. |
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| Addressing some of your questions which haven't already been answered... MD2s are slightly faster. That, and the ability to do arbitrary morphing animation, are the only two reasons to use MD2 that I know of. In every other way (including the most important point, quality of visual appearance) b3d is far superior. MD2 does not support a second UV set. Bones are useful for many things besides just runtime animation. For example they are generally useful for keeping track of positions of body parts. You can easily attach weapons (just parent the gun to the hand bone,) do hit location (determine which part of the body was shot,) etc. |
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| Righty ho. How do I get an animated character with a part that scales in the animation from Max to a .b3d. I have tried everything I can think of. I have UltimateUnwrap and Milkshape and Qtip. |
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| taking a guess, couldn't you scale the bone the area is attached too? |
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| From another thread I think that is his question actually. I've never tried so I have no idea if you can export scaling keyframes to DirectX file format. |
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| I've found out that you CAN store scaling keyframes in .x files. The thing loads fine into B3D, but the scaling part of the animation is completely overlooked in Unwrap3D. Position and rotation works fine. I've e-mailed the author so hopefully he'll sort it out. I assume the same goes for scaling bones. Another day wasted on experimenting and tracking down somebody elses bugs. :( |
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| I just remembered that Halo and somebody else did MD3 loaders for B3D. - Would these solve the crappy lighting / other problems? - Are there any licensing issues with MD3? - Has anybody used those functions successfully? Any drawbacks? Thanks. |
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