Panda3D uses a custom file format for its models, called egg. To create an egg file, you will need to use a modeling program (like 3D Studio Max or Maya) combined with either an export plugin or a file format converter. You can read more about this process in the following sections. Panda3D also provides a binary file format bam, which is quicker to load.

Both file formats contain:

• Vertices
• Triangles and larger polygons
• Joints (aka Bones)
• Vertex weights
• Texture pathnames (textures are not stored)
• Bone-based animation keyframes
• Morph targets (aka Blend targets)
• Morph animation keyframes
• Many control flags

Texture pathnames in an egg file are first assumed to be relative to the egg file itself. If the texture is not found at that location, panda will search its model-path, which is specified in the panda config file. When doing this, panda concatenates the directory which is part of the model-path to the entire string in the egg-file. So if the model-path names the directory "/d/stuff", and the texture-path in the egg file is "mytextures/tex.png", then panda looks in "/d/stuff/mytextures/tex.png."