Module reader 

MDL binary reader. MDL binary reader.

The reader uses a two-pass architecture:

Pass 1 (node tree): Recursive DFS traversal of the node hierarchy. Each node’s headers and type-specific extra data are parsed, and mesh nodes collect an MdxMeshInfo descriptor with stride, vertex count, and per-attribute byte offsets. Vertex attribute arrays are left empty at this stage - only structural metadata is captured.

Pass 2 (MDX vertex population): After the full tree is built, vertex data is populated from the MDX buffer (or from MDL content-blob fallback positions when no MDX is present). Meshes are visited in non-skin-first order - all non-skin meshes in DFS order, then all skin meshes in DFS order - matching the BioWare engine’s canonical MDX layout. A cumulative cursor advances through the MDX buffer, reading interleaved vertex attributes and skipping terminator/alignment padding between meshes.

This two-pass design decouples the node parse order (DFS) from the MDX data order (non-skin-first), enabling correct vertex assignment for vanilla game files where these orders differ.

Functions

read_mdl

Reads an MDL file from the given reader.

read_mdl_from_bytes

Reads an MDL file from the given byte slice.