Converting MD3 to MD2

[|iR|Focalor]

I was hunting around and I found some Generations Arena (for Q3) and Quake2 Generations mod stuff. The Quake2 Generations stuff has md2 models for some guns etc from Q1, Doom, and Wolfenstein. I was trying to rip the Doom shotgun and double barrel shotgun outta that to use, but the models are kinda low poly and I'm not too fond of them. But in the Generations Arena stuff, there's also a few weapon models like the Doom shotgun and double barrel shotgun. These look a lot better to me and I'd like to play around with them in Quake2. So I downloaded the latest QuArK 6.6 beta 6 and tried to convert the md3's to md2 but didn't have any luck. I pretty much have NO CLUE what I'm doing with QuArK. Apparently these md3's are broken down into sections and I can only save the models one section at a time. I have no idea how to save the whole thing in one piece along with the original JPG skin to where it'll work properly in Q2.

So is there anyone who could do me a real solid and walk me through how to do such a thing? Basically, I just wanna convert md3 models to md2. If I gotta use something besides QuArK, that's cool. Any and all help will be much appreciated. With any luck, maybe this'll even help me get started figuring out how to make brand new models.

[The Happy Friar]

Not sure about recent versions of blender, but in 2.49 it has a md3 import/export & an md2 import/export.

Just import the models in to blender & reexport in to md2.  I'm betting the frame count is different though so it would take a little bit of work to either mod the Q2 code or change around the frames by hand for Q2 stock weapon replacement.

I'll try to get some more details tonight/tomorrow for ya.

[Whirlingdervish]

I was working on this a little and all I could find was a way to use milkshape to export the vertexes of the .md3 files to a .lwo or some other format q2 modeller would read. I was able to use this method to make some .md2 files with the models, but the skinning gets lost and the animations go too.

I think his goal at this point is just to make static gun models for the weapon pickups on the map, using the md3 models' geometry and hopefully retaining the skin references.

Doing the in-hand and view wep animations would be a much harder step.

[|iR|Focalor]

I've already got the dude over at the QuArK forums trying to figure it out with me, but so far we haven't really gotten anywhere.

http://quark.sourceforge.net/forums/index.php?topic=1008.msg5381#msg5381

Not sure about recent versions of blender, but in 2.49 it has a md3 import/export & an md2 import/export.

I'm hoping QuArK will be able to do this. It imports/exports md2 and md3 as well. I know squat about modelling, but it seems like QuArK should be able to accomplish this, it's just matter of finding out what the steps are. I was able to highlight one single component folder and export that one component to an md2 that md2viewer would load without crashing on me. The problem was trying figure out how to merge the different pieces/components to where it would all be one single wireframe model with one single skin. I'm fixing to make a new post over there detailing how I was able to make at least one portion of the model export properly, maybe that'll provide some clues about how to get the entire model into a proper working md2.