Quake II Model .md2
Quake II models. Vertex animation baked frame by frame.
What an .md2 file holds
MD2 is the model format from Quake II, and it animates in a way modern formats do not. Rather than a skeleton, it stores a complete set of vertex positions for every frame and interpolates between them. That makes it very simple and very fast, and it quantises each vertex to a byte per axis, which is exactly why MD2 models have their characteristic shimmer.
Commonly seen in: Quake II, idTech 2 games, Cube, retro engines.
| Data | Stored in MD2 |
|---|---|
| Geometry | Yes |
| Materials and colour | Yes |
| Texture maps | Yes |
| Animation and rigs | Yes |
| Scene hierarchy | No |
| Read here | Yes |
| Written here | No |
Tested against a real file
The last sweep loaded dolphin.md2 from Assimp test models with its 1 sidecar files through the viewer on this site: 500 triangles across 1 meshes and 1 materials, in 2.2 seconds. Every format's result is on the test results page, run 2026-09-08.
Convert MD2 to another format
Every pairing has a page saying what survives the trip.
Other things to do with an .md2 file
Questions about MD2
How do I open an .md2 file?
Drop it into the viewer on this site and it opens in the browser, with the scene tree, the materials and the mesh statistics. Nothing is uploaded. If you want it in another program instead, convert it to GLB, which almost everything reads.
Is MD2 a good format to archive in?
MD2 carries geometry, materials, textures and animation, so an archive copy keeps nearly everything. The usual caveat applies: a format is only as future-proof as the readers that exist for it, and .md2 is well served.
Does converting MD2 lose quality?
Geometry is copied vertex for vertex, so the shape does not degrade. What gets lost is whatever the target format has no field for: convert to STL and the materials go, convert to OBJ and the animation goes. The comparison table on each converter page says exactly which.
Formats that hold the same things
Or go back to the full format reference.