QuakeMix 3D

QuakeMix 3D is a remixable avatar framework for transforming any MD2 format model into a living Whirled avatar. These models generally come from other games that used the Quake 2 engine, which supported MD2 models.

QM3D uses PaperVision for rendering. For help with programming your own 3D avatar, join the Whirled in 3D group as we make Whirled a little more polygonal.

Basic Usage
First, visit a model repository somewhere online. The best one by far is at Polycount. Now the fun part: Look through the list until you find one that strikes your fancy. Download it (For Polycount you'll need a Fileplanet account... it's worth it :) and open it up.

You should find a tris.md2 and a weapon.md2 in the zip, these are your body and weapon models. You'll also find some texture images, for the model and weapon. The skins may be included as .PCX images, so make sure you convert them to PNG, JPG or BMP with an image converter before you upload them to Whirled! Upload your tris.md2, weapon.md2 and two skin textures (one for each the model and weapon) into the avatar remixer, and you're ready to roll!

If an error occurred, your avatar will turn invisible. This is usually because you accidentally uploaded your model or skin into the wrong remix component, so triple-check that your MD2s and textures are going only into the correct fields.

Bugs

 * Doesn't blend properly from the last frame of a sequence to the first.
 * Skins are horizontally backwards?
 * Long load time.

Common Problems
1. Looping through all animations

Some models will loop through all of their animations when used on QuakeMix. This is likely because the creator named all of the frames the same, so Whirled treats it as one long state. The way to fix this is to give each frame set a unique name so that they may become different states in Whirled.

You will need a free tool called Quake 2 Modeler, and you can download it here. Run mdl.exe and open your md2 file in it. You can see every frame in the model by sliding a bar at the bottom. Notice that at the bottom left of the window there are 2 blue arrows, with the current frame's name in between them. First, find the sequence where the model is standing idle. This should be the first one. Rename each frame in the sequence to stand###, with the three numbers corresponding to the frame number in the sequence. Frame 0 will be stand000, frame 1 will be stand001, frame 2 will be stand002, and so on. Be careful not to miss any frames or the avatar will disappear when on Whirled. When you're done, export the model as md2.

2. Avatar won't move properly

Like above, this solution requires the Quake 2 Modeler. This time, you want to find your model's run/walk sequence. Once you're pretty sure you've found it, rename each frame of the sequence to run###, again with the #s being the frame number in the sequence. You will want to start over counting from the previous sequence, if you have made a stand sequence to correct the looping animation. E.g. if your stand sequence ends at stand020, you will then make the frame after that run000 and count up again.