Which format?

One of the MD* formats (like MD2 for Quake 2, MD3 for Quake 3, MD5 for Doom 3, etc.) would probably be a good place to start. The later ones basically add more features.

3DS format would be another good one as well.

Here are some resources for the file format if you are interested:

http://www.the-labs.com/Blender/3DS-details.html
http://www.whisqu.se/per/docs/graphics56.htm
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lib3ds/

Try the md2 format, it'll be a good learning process. Then you could try to move onto skeletal animation, md3/md5.

Don't want to highjack this topic but... Are there proper MD5 exporters by now? ~2 years ago I wrote a MD5 file loader( @fitfool, I remember there was a good demo/tutorial somewhere on a Doom3 forum that describes how to load MD5 files). But I didn't find any proper exporters. Normally I use Milkshape or LightWave for modelling. There was one plugin for LightWave, but with lots of bugs.


You can write a file loader, but you also need a format that you can export with your favourite modelling program! 3DS and OBJ are often used in demo's. So was/is MD2 and the Halflife animated model format. But I don't know what use nowadays. I guess that differs per engine, and each engine writes exporter plugins for their modelling program(s)...

Greetings,
Rick

Quote:

Original post by spek Don't want to highjack this topic but... Are there proper MD5 exporters by now? ~2 years ago I wrote a MD5 file loader( @fitfool, I remember there was a good demo/tutorial somewhere on a Doom3 forum that describes how to load MD5 files). But I didn't find any proper exporters. Normally I use Milkshape or LightWave for modelling. There was one plugin for LightWave, but with lots of bugs. You can write a file loader, but you also need a format that you can export with your favourite modelling program! 3DS and OBJ are often used in demo's. So was/is MD2 and the Halflife animated model format. But I don't know what use nowadays. I guess that differs per engine, and each engine writes exporter plugins for their modelling program(s)... Greetings, Rick

When you know the file format, writing an exporter shouldn't be too hard.
Modeling software companies usually provide some sort of SDK for those purposes.


Regards,
zEeLi

Thanks, I think I'll try the MD2 format, then work my way up.