View SMD files in your browser
The text Valve's studiomdl compiles Half-Life and Source models from, and that Blender and Crowbar write. Open one right here in 3D, with its animations. Nothing leaves your device.
Or drop it anywhere on this page
What you'll see
Your model opens in 3D with its own textures, its parts beside it and its animations on the player under it.
- Turn, zoom and move it • Double click to center on a point
- Every part in a list • Hide one or see it alone
- Its animations • Play, pause and scrub each take
- Export • PNG, GLB, USDZ, STL and OBJ
About SMD
Valve's studiomdl has built the models of Half-Life since 1998 and of every Source game since, from SMD files: a reference SMD for each body and an SMD for each animation, with a QC file that says which is which. Modelers export them from Blender, Maya and 3ds Max, and Crowbar writes them when it takes a compiled MDL apart.
An SMD is plain text: its nodes, the bones and their parents, then its skeleton, each bone's place and turn at each frame, and for a reference its triangles, each naming its material's texture, with each corner's place, normal, UV and the bones it moves with.
Filepeek reads a reference with the textures its triangles name, from the files dropped with it, and the SMDs dropped with it as its animations, each a take on the player. An animation alone plays on its own bones.
Studiomdl Data
.smd
Format
- MIME type
- text/plain
- Made by
- Valve
- Released
- 1998
Inside the file
- Kept as
- Plain text
- Nodes
- Bones and their parents
- Skeleton
- Each bone's place and turn a frame
- Triangles
- Material, place, normal, UV and weights
Opens in every browser
Filepeek opens an SMD in 3D in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari. On their own, browsers download it or show it as text.
- YouChromeOpens through Filepeek
- YouEdgeOpens through Filepeek
- YouFirefoxOpens through Filepeek
- YouSafariOpens through Filepeek
Apps that open SMD
- WindowsBlender with Blender Source Tools • Crowbar
- MacBlender with Blender Source Tools
- iPhone and iPadNo app opens it
- AndroidNo app opens it
Questions
How do I play an SMD animation on its model?
Drop the reference SMD and its animation SMDs together, with the textures its triangles name. Each animation plays on the player.
Why is my model gray?
Its triangles name textures, like lantern.bmp, that weren't dropped with it. Drop those pictures, in BMP, TGA, PNG, VTF or DDS, with the SMD.
Where do SMD files come from?
Modelers export them for studiomdl from Blender with Blender Source Tools, and Crowbar writes them when it decompiles an MDL, with the QC that compiles them back.
Is every .smd a model?
No. Sega Genesis games copied by Super Magic Drive are .smd files too. Filepeek opens a Studiomdl Data file by its text, and shows a Genesis game's About card.