Mapping with Blender

This tutorial is designed for Blender modellers who want to see how a model looks in the game, but don't know how to use Gtkradiant.

Blender comes with a quake3 .map exporter (File > Export > Quake3 .map) which can also be used to make Tremulous maps. This can export suitable meshes as brushes, Blender lights as game lights and it can export empties with the right logic properties to everything else required. Since I want this tutorial to be accessible to inexperienced Blender users I'll put as much detail in as possible.

Settings
First, it's worth changing a few settings in Blender to make your job easier. Open the View menu and select view properties

Delete the default cube, light and camera that were in Blender's 3D window when you opened it. Now we are ready to start mapping.

Brushwork
Add a cube (space > add > mesh > cube). Make sure you are in top view (View > Top). Go into edit mode (Tab). Select the vertices of each corner in turn (press B) and then move them (press G) till you have a 16x16 square like so.

At this point it's worth switching to wireframe view (press Z) so that you can see what you are doing inside the room.

You can leave these meshes separate, but I like to join turn them into a single mesh by selecting them all (press A) and then joining the selected meshes (press ctrl J). The script can still tell the individual component "brushes" apart as long as you [b]don't[/b] remove duplicated vertices.

Lights
This is fairly simple, just add a light in the centre of the box (space > add > lamp > lamp). Next set the buttons window to show the shading options (press F5) and adjust it's Distance to 1000. You can also change the colour of the light by clicking on the white box.

Later on you will probably want to experiment with multiple lights to light your model in a more interesting fashion, but this will do for now. Note that the md3 model I'll be using in this tutorial

Empties
Everything else in the game is exported by giving logic properties to empties. For this tutorial we need to create a model reference and the basics to make the work in the game.

Create an empty (Space > Add > Empty).

These can be a bit difficult to see so I'll share some tips on how to improve their visibility. Press F9 to bring up the editing options in the buttons window. Set the Empty display to "single arrow".

The _human_spawn, _alien_spawn and _player_intermission are set to 32 units (1 grid space) above the ground, but in the game they will be placed on the ground. Models are placed exactly were they are in the map, so I put _stasis_model only 1 unit above the ground. I did this by manually typing the LocZ (z location = height) value in the "transform properties" box (press N).

Exporting
Everything should be ready to export to a map now, so go to the top left hand corner of your screen and select File > Export > Quake3 .map.

Afterword
I hope this tutorial was helpful. If there was anything I didn't make clear, please let me know and I'll put it in.