Quake model formats - Modeling for Quake

2023-07-13 Modeling tutorials kleskby 0 314

List of model formats that can be used for Quake Modding.

Quake MDL

Most basic original model format used in Quake. Basic vertex frame-by-frame animations. Can hold multiple textures. Supported by all Quake engines. Very limited. Do not use, unless absolutely need to.

Half-life MDL

Very nice model format that can contain meshes, skeleton, animations, and textures. However, this format is proprietary (not open source). You can not legally use it even if your engine supports it.

MD2

MD2 is a model format developed by id Software for Quake II. Almost the same as Quake MDL but with extended limits. Do not use.

MD3

MD3 is a model format developed by id software for Quake III. It can support a very high amount of polygons. It uses float precision for vertices, so the wobble is almost completely invisible. It supports multiple surfaces on one mesh. Still does not support bone animation. Animations make model file very huge. It supports tags, a feature where you can dynamically attach entities onto vector points. For example, you can add hats for player model that has tag_head. Recommended. Supported by many quake engines.

MD5

MD5 is a proprietary but open format specific to Doom 3 and allows models to be animated by the use of an internal skeleton (finally). It is very good for file size and is widely open for use and easy to work with as it is stored as ASCII plain text. Supported by FTE.

DPM

DarkPlaces model format. Badly documented. No framegroups/animations (just individual poses). Supported by DarkPlaces, FTE.

IQM

This is the Inter-Quake Model format by Lee Salzman, and it offers us several advantages over the aging MD5 format that we’ve been using for all of our new models. Of course, while MD5 itself is superior to MD3, namely by allowing for skeletal animation, it is very old and is not particularly well-supported by most 3D modeling programs, which gives us severe migraines every time we try to export things. Models may or may not appear to look better with the IQM format, as it is something that remains to be seen once we export all of our existing material to it. As you can see from the article shot, the new reactor model we added this summer will certainly look better, considering that MD5 averages out normals and results in particularly bad shading, something that doesn’t look good on hard surface models. IQM supports vertex normals and will not suffer from this. Of course, it will take some time for us to export everything and make sure it looks right in-game, but the support is now there in our engine. You can expect our new models in successive releases to take advantage of the format. Format supported by GZDoom, DarkPlaces, FTE and many other quake engines.

glTF

Cool model format. Was designed to be efficient and highly interoperable with modern web technologies Supports PBR materials. The binary .glb files generally embed all textures in a single file. Format supported only by FTE.

OBJ

Most simple and almost limitless model format. Format supports parametric surfaces, smooth groups, N-Gons (this will glitch in DP). Can not be animated. Format supported by DarkPlaces (can be used as level if you and .ent file) and FTE. Recommended.

BSP

Yes! You can use BSP as model for your entities. Compile it just like you compile maps. Can not be aniamted, has lighting issues.

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Tags: 3d, DarkPlaces, model, modeling, quake