sitemap Viewing MD3's with Npherno's GLViewer - by Tabun

Viewing MD3's with Npherno's MD3 Viewer

A simple tutorial by Tabun

What you need:

What's this about?

This tutorial gets you acquainted with the useful and concise tool titled 'Npherno's GLViewer', which can be used to view models for Q3/ET based games and mods.


Step 1: Loading a model

Launch the MD3 Viewer. It's the "NGLMD3.exe" file.
This is what you'll see:

MD3 Viewer

fig.01 - Npherno's MD3 Viewer


Now, click the '+' button marked by the orange arrow in figure 02, to load a model.

MD3 Viewer - loading md3

fig.02 - Importing a model


The model will be loaded (but will be 'invisible' because it won't have a skin).
So, let's load up a skin. Check the selected model part in the top-most dropdown list. Then, click the '+' button indicated in figure 03, and load the proper skin bitmap.

MD3 Viewer - loading a skin

fig.03 - Loading a skin


Repeat this step for all model parts, if there are more than one.

MD3 Viewer

fig.04 - Viewing a model & skin


You can rotate the model by holding the left mouse button and moving the mouse in any direction. You'll give the model some spin, which can be halted by simply clicking the left mouse button anywhere in the view screen.
Holding the right mouse button will allow you to pan the view.
You can zoom in or out by holding the both left and right mouse buttons and moving the cursor vertically.

Sometimes the utter blackness of the viewer's background can be annoying, or undesirable for making screenshots. Thankfully, it is possible to change the background color. Open the 'Rendering' top menu and select 'Background Color...'.
MD3 Viewer - Background

fig.05 - Selecting a background color


The input fields shown in figure 05 are in the order Red, Green and Blue, and require numbers in the range from 0 to 1. (The shown values make for a nice blueish backdrop that I prefer to use)

That's it. Hope it made some sense to you.

Greets,
    Tab.