Overview

There are many programs out there for creating, animating and editing 3D models. Each program has a variety of formats it can export to. Sandbox, however, currently only supports .md2, .md3, .md5, .obj, .smd and .iqm formats. What are these formats, and what do each of them do? How can you make them?

MD2

the md2 format originated in the idTech 2 engine and was used in Quake 2 and other games. the format is a vertex animation format and has no support for skeletal animation.

the md3 format was used in the Quake 3 engine and is relatively popular. An md3 model can be either static (no animations) or animated. The md3 format is better than the obj format for static models due to a smaller filesize. Many programs can export md3 via plugins or addons. NPherno's md3 compiler is a very useful tool for importing md2, md3, ase and 3ds files, remaking the files, and exporting as md3. Noesis also has support for importing a variety of formats and exporting them to md3.

The md5 format is a skeletal format which comes in two parts: a mesh and animation files, specifically md5mesh and md5anim files.

the Wavefront OBJ format is a format created by WaveFront Technologies. It is a universally accepted format, with nearly all modelling programs supporting it.

The smd format, also known as the studiomdl format, is a format used primarily by Valve's Source engine (which was used to power the Portal and Half-Life games). While Valve now uses the DMX format, Cube 2 (along with a few other engines) has support for smd. You can use Blender to export the smd format by following this tutorial.

the iqm format was created by Lee Salzman, a developer working for a variety of groups, including Sauerbraten and Red Eclipse. The iqm format is supported primarily by Blender, but iqm meshes can be imported into Noesis. The iqm format is similar to the md5 format in how it uses a mesh file and animation files, but both have the .iqm extension.