Making letters in Blender

This tutorial will teach you how to make simple letters for your map in Blender and export them as MD3 models, along with textures/shaders.

Getting started

• Download and install Blender.
• Open Blender, create a new General project.
• Before starting, install the MD3 export plugin.
• Unzip the file to a location of your choice.
• In Blender, go to Edit -> Preferences -> Add-ons
• Select Install... at the top, browse to the extracted file and select Install Add-on
• Click on the checkbox next to the plugin to enable it. The plugin should now be visible under File -> Export -> MD3 (+shaders)

Creating the letters

• Delete everything in Scene Collection

• Press Add button on top left or Shift + A and select Text
• Go to object data properties menu: green a symbol on right side menu.
• Under Paragraph -> Alignment, set both Horizontal and Vertical alignment to Center.
• Under Font, press the folder icon next to Regular text field and select your desired font.
• Unless you want your text to be 2D (why?), go to Geometry and Extrude the text to your liking.
• Hit TAB to edit your text.
• Select Object Mode from the top left.

• Right click on 3D window and select Convert to Mesh.
• Under Object Properties, Scale section, pump it up like 40x.

Texturing

• Navigate to Material Properties menu, red ball thing on right side menu.
• Hit New and press the small circle next to Base Color and select Image texture. Click the folder icon and find your desired texture.
• Change the material name to match your texture / shader path. If using a shader, do not specify a file extension.

• Select UV Editing tab at the top.
• On right side window press A to select everything, press the UV button at the top and select Unwrap
• If you want to scale the texture, press A -> X -> S on the left side window and move your mouse to scale.

• Go back to the Layout tab at the top
• Select Modifier Properties on the right, Add Modifier -> Triangulate
• At the bottom of the 3D view, there are animation controls; set End to 1

• Make sure your object is selected, and go to File -> Export -> MD3 (+shaders)

Results

Tutorial by Fate