I have been searching a little and the Half-life .mdl format seems to be
widely used. However, that is intended for games primarily and I guess it is
mostly used for low-polygon models. I'm also fairly sure I wouldn't be able
to make a reader for it in Java. But the Half-life SDK can be downloaded and
I've read that a description of the format is available, if anyone's
interested.

One program that is also low-poly is Milkshape:
http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/
It can convert between many different formats, and supposedly it's easy to
write one's own export plug-in too. It's shareware, but not very expensive
($25).

I'd be interested in working together with others to find a solution how to
handle skeletal/boned meshes in POV-Ray. I only know POV-Ray SDL and Java
have no experience reading and writing binary files.

Basically I have a Java program that will control the movements of the bones
in a skeleton, and I'm hoping that I will in some way or another be able to
use this to deform a mesh so that I'm not restricted to animating robots,
crude toon characters and other inorganic shapes.

Rune
-- 
3D images and anims, include files, tutorials and more:
rune|vision:  http://runevision.com
POV-Ray Ring: http://webring.povray.co.uk

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