2010-04-05, 04:05 AM
After staring at mdl files compulsively all weekend I think I understand this well enough to start modeling it.
It definitely bears no resemblance to mdl files. It's basically a quite involved packet based encoding not unlike Playstation primitives.
I'd like to document it somehow but I'm afraid anything short of a diagram would be a waste of time. I'd be happy to spell it out if anyone good at diagrams would like to bang out something pretty.
I'm confident I can get most files rendering / rip the basic geometry, but it could be a while before I'm convinced I'm aware of all the different control codes. There are very well codes that were never used with any of the Som mdl files. Of course more advanced stuff like animation will come last. And of course you probably won't want to start popping out custom mdl files until everything is mapped out. There might very well be ways to modify the existing files to a large degree first.
I'm going to add Som mdl format to Assimp in one form or another so the files will open up in the assimpview tool. At that point it would be a lot of help if you all could dig thru all the mdl files to see if any don't match up visually (which will probably be a very iterative process)
EDITED: I think btw, given the nature of the format it's probably possible to extend the format in such a way that we could add information to the files which would not keep the same files from being used by Som. That would/could prove very handy down the line.
It definitely bears no resemblance to mdl files. It's basically a quite involved packet based encoding not unlike Playstation primitives.
I'd like to document it somehow but I'm afraid anything short of a diagram would be a waste of time. I'd be happy to spell it out if anyone good at diagrams would like to bang out something pretty.
I'm confident I can get most files rendering / rip the basic geometry, but it could be a while before I'm convinced I'm aware of all the different control codes. There are very well codes that were never used with any of the Som mdl files. Of course more advanced stuff like animation will come last. And of course you probably won't want to start popping out custom mdl files until everything is mapped out. There might very well be ways to modify the existing files to a large degree first.
I'm going to add Som mdl format to Assimp in one form or another so the files will open up in the assimpview tool. At that point it would be a lot of help if you all could dig thru all the mdl files to see if any don't match up visually (which will probably be a very iterative process)
EDITED: I think btw, given the nature of the format it's probably possible to extend the format in such a way that we could add information to the files which would not keep the same files from being used by Som. That would/could prove very handy down the line.