Quake .mdl

[Galaxy_Stranger]

Somewhere I got it in the back of my head that GZDoom supports Quake .mdl models. That's not right, is it?

[leileilol]

That's not right at all. It's also great that it doesn't as the format is a mess.


It supports MD2 which is a more externally-driven stripped cousin of MDL though

[Zanieon]

it supports id Tech 2 (Quake 2) MD2 models and id Tech 3 (Quake 3, RTCW) MD3 models and the doomsday format .DMD

also, .MDL can be anything inside, Quake 1 MDLs have different code than Half Life 1 MDLs and other games as well

[wildweasel]

IIRC, Painkiller also uses a model format called .MDL - doesn't mean it's remotely the same file format at all.

[leileilol]

also, .MDL can be anything inside, Quake 1 MDLs have different code than Half Life 1 MDLs and other games as well

at least it makes sense for half-life as their model format directly grew from quake's, deriving off the smae tools and pipeline at one point.

[NeuralStunner]

What GZDoom really needs is support for a good rigged format. Vertex-based animation is hideous.

(Extra credit: Sharing an animation rig between multiple models.)

[leileilol]

IQM's intended to be that 'end all ' community skeletal format. Decent Blender pipeline, and I believe there's a SMD conversion tool to the format. Also Noesis can support to/and/from conversion to it. I use Noesis with IQM for my UnrealEngine2 pipeline


Some formats that promise the world such as COLLADA and FBX tend to have bad and inconsistent implementations....

[NeuralStunner]

IQM's intended to be that 'end all ' community skeletal format.

I'd love to see an implementation for GZDoom. Especially with external rig support, which has been a dream of mine for quite a while.

[HorrorMovieRei]

GZDoom doesn't support MDL. You can, however, convert MDL models to MD2 using "Quake II Modeller" and it will work just fine.

[leileilol]

^ highly advise against using outdated broken tools to do the thing. and don't suggest QuArK or qME either. For the sake of vertex precision convert to MD3 instead.

[Dark-Assassin]

There's a mdl import/export script for IDTech2 MDL format for Blender 2.63+
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Exten ... /Quake_mdl
I'm still stuck with 2.49b because of the MD2, MD3, MD5, PSK and PSA import/export scripts.

[Nash]

Quake II Modeller

Holy crap those are some of the ugliest editors I've ever seen. :O Oh and... Quake2.com Last updated 10/30/98 LOL!

[HorrorMovieRei]

Yup, it's ridiculous outdated, I know. To be honest, I only use it because it's a very basic tool and I'm too lazy to learn to use propper modelling programs, like Blender.

[Dark-Assassin]

Blender is actually quite easy to use for converting. Open, Import Model, Export Model, Done
But installing the scripts aren't so easy, but they usually have instructions.

[leileilol]

^ I also highly advise against using Blender to "convert" models. Blender MDL/MD2/MD3 i/o scripts tend to really suck as they're made for tutorial-made model viewers rather than real game engines. There will be some stuff very lost in translation

FWIW the Blender MD3 export script out there can't even export a proper bounding box. What does this mean? Well it means as soon as the origin of the model is obscured the whole model is gone