I've been playing around making models in Gmax and Milkshape and so far my experience converting them has been a bad one. [QME is nice but it doesn't have very much flexibility or precision.]
Both trying using Quick3D and Quark, I'm getting problems of an unclear nature that could involve invalid vertexes or who knows what.
I've read Preach's outstanding tutorial from QExpo 2006 ( http://www.quakeexpo.com/booth.php?id=32&page=79 )
Does anyone know where I can find the Quake .mdl specification detailed enough that I can write a program to write .mdl files?