.SMD File Format

Introduction

SMD is the text source format for Valve’s game models. Artists export meshes and animations from their modelling program as SMD files, and Valve’s studiomdl compiler, driven by a .qc script, turns them into the studio model a Half-Life or Source engine game loads. Decompilers also produce SMD files from existing models.

The same format holds two kinds of file: a reference mesh, with a skeleton in its rest pose and the triangles skinned to it, and an animation, with the skeleton’s pose on each frame and no triangles.

Structure

An SMD file is plain text. It starts with version 1, followed by sections that each end with end. nodes lists the bones, each with a number, a name in quotes and the number of its parent, or -1 for the root. skeleton gives, for each time (frame), the position and rotation of each bone. triangles lists the mesh: a line naming the material, then three vertex lines, each giving the parent bone, the position, the normal, the texture coordinates and, optionally, weights for further bones.

version 1
nodes
0 "root" -1
end
skeleton
time 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0
end
triangles
metal.bmp
0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0
0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0
0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1
end

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