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the xreal project has managed to get the md5 model format (http://www.modwiki.net/wiki/MD5_(file_format)) working. since the xreal engine is basically the ioquake3 engine with realtime lighting added this means the md5 code could be ported to the standard ioquake3 engine and used to run openarena's content with md5 character models. obviously this would break compatibility with mods and would effectively be a fork of openarena, but having md5's skeletal animation system would be a massive improvement on the existing, segmented md3 model format. 

are there any coders who might be interested in attempting this?

MD5 is ugly. You've got
- broken normals
- broken normals
- broken normals

Did I mention
- broken normals

?

Oddly, the commercial game Iron Grip got MD5 support somehow too and they are closed source and I wonder if they are using the same implementation

That's a common mis-conception. Xreal is a complete re-vamp on practically every front.

especially in slowness.
how come it runs slower than the newest games. assassins creed with full effects runs fine but xreal is just a slide show

I agree with fromhell md5 is crappy format for a game
1) it is textual.... maybe good for debugging but for a real game loading time matters every ms of it
2) poor format for skeletal animation
3) normals...

massive improvement? not graphically(if you like degraded animations) but performance wise

Whatever the case, changing to skeletal animation (MD5 or otherwise) is a large task in terms of both code and content. I think this falls into the "next gen assets" category in the DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Roadmap]roadmap (http://([b).

hopefully by then I hope the Quake4 source will be GPL'd and out so work can start on "OpenArena 2"

leileilol-
thanks for the subtle hint on broken normals. :)  what's the story with that? md5 models seem to work fine in doom3, quake4 and xreal.
if you're considering using the next gpl'd id engine for openarena 2 then i understand why you'd be reluctant to waste time hacking new features into the ioquake3 engine.
would you consider adding a section to the forum for gpl content for quake4/doom3? it would be nice if people could start making the content now, ready for when one of the engines is released.

kit89-
yeah, that was a pretty major oversimplification on my part, but the fact remains that the md5 code could be ported to the ioquake3 engine from the xreal engine.

^_^
maybe md5 isn't the answer then, but i certainly think it would be better to have skeletal animation than md3's segmented approach. do you know of a more appropriate format that has good blender export scripts?

raven and open source?
doom3 is the only choice
...
only format that has good import/export support on blender is .blend files. really... you are on your own with the exporter and importers

How did you manage that?
For Xreal I get 80-60fps a 10-20fps increase from Doom3, using equivalent settings. My machine wont even look at Assassins Creed, not even reaching the minimum specification.

I quite prefer the .md5 format, it's nice & easy to work with & getting an animation working in-game is painless.

Considering the Quake4 source code is on id's private repository and there's no bink or mp3 decoding involved there's a chance of it being open.

anyway, didn't carmack said that id tech 4 will be open sourced later this year?

raven…sic…they adds a lot of interesting stuffs to the engines (see the modifications they did to q3 during the years with ef, jk2, jka and ef2...) but never release the code...

I think Ritual's doings with Q3 are more interesting than what Raven did IMO though. Wish someone could approach them and release ubertools under the GPL license as they now only care about casual gaming now. It wouldn't hurt

yeah if you close all the shadow stuff you can get more fps but what is the point then

sorry: i'm not familiar with ritual's q3 products...

anyway, i can say that the scripting engine in ef (and more in jk2 and later games) is awesome...

Didn't Raven replace the q3 rendering engine with GHOUL 2? I seem to remember it using .glm for character models.

From my experience with SoF2. :) Not sure about other Raven games...

GHOUL 2 is only a skeletal model format
GHOUL 2 is only a skeletal model format
GHOUL 2 is only a skeletal model format

Ritual's ubertools had the skeletal tik model format (complete with LOD and bone controllers), plus a whole lot more like lens flares, better more modern UI with nice server browser and console, node systems, etc.

Games that use this are FAKK2, Alice, MoHAA and EF2

I don't know if this is maybe the same thing you are saying, but ioquake3 seems to be already compatible with the MDR format (MD4 by Raven)

http://svn.icculus.org/quake3/trunk/md4-readme.txt?view=markup

It seems to have skeletal animation (will this maybe help the development of animated models for Openarena?)

- Nothing Free exports to MD4/MDR
- No vertex weights, so stuff will bend rather jaggedly
- No support for bone scale