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| Thread: Could we make a basic model editor? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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Pesmontis
Adventuring Hero
status revoked
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posted June 03, 2010 06:56 PM |
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.. besides, I still haven't got WoW animated creature models.
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Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
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posted June 03, 2010 11:17 PM |
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How hard is it to import/export/modify/create animations? I'm guessing that all of that is impossible and you have to leave all the bones where they are and just modify textures and meshes. Would it be possible to swap animations from one creature to another similar one?
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
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Pesmontis
Adventuring Hero
status revoked
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posted June 04, 2010 12:08 AM |
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Animation Op.'s
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.. How hard is it to import/export .. animations?..
It's so hard that I haven't made much progress with Warcraft III animations in a week.
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.. How hard is it to .. modify .. animations?..
That's easy if you've got the right tools (3DSmax 2008 for one).
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.. How hard is it to .. create .. animations?..
It's not hard, it's just a lot of work.
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.. swap animations from one creature to another similar one? ..
That's common practice in the gaming industry. If you make sure that both creatures can be controlled by the same skeleton, then it's 'just' a matter of re-skinning (ie. connecting the bones to the mesh).
However, this doesn't change the fact that I haven't got any WoW animated creature models.. 
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Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
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posted June 04, 2010 12:29 AM |
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Wait... so I can make an animation in 3Dmax and import it, but I can't import something that I've exported from somewhere else?
I am confidant I can find somewhere on the internet people with open source libraries of generic models, and I know people mod the models for WC3 all the time, so finding someone who has already exported models from WC3 to a more generic format should be trivial.
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
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Pesmontis
Adventuring Hero
status revoked
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posted June 04, 2010 01:50 AM |
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Trivial
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.. make an animation in 3Dmax and import it..
I'm not sure what you mean. If you're saying, import it in HoMM.V, then probably yes (I haven't tried it yet).
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.. import something that I've exported from somewhere else?..
It depends (at least) on scale and orientation of the 'model-from-somewhere-else'. For instance creatures from Oblivion and from Warcraft III are about 100x larger than creatures from HoMM.V.
Creatures from Oblivion are rotated 180 degrees, creatures from Warcraft III are rotated 90 degrees.
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.. on the internet .. generic models..
I guess so, but no animated creatures from WoW.
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.. exported models from WC3 to a more generic format..
In case you want the animations as well you'll have to use 3DSmax5.
A guide can be read here:
Warcraft III creature import tutorial for 3DSmax 5.1
It's no problem to pull creatures out of games, but to use them unaltered in other games, that's certainly not trivial 
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Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
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posted June 04, 2010 03:34 AM |
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Well what I'm wondering is why I can take something I've made from Max and bring it into the game easily, but its hard put something I have loaded into max from another game into HoMM.
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
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Pesmontis
Adventuring Hero
status revoked
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posted June 04, 2010 06:30 AM |
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Trivial II
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.. For instance creatures from Oblivion and from Warcraft III are about 100x larger than creatures from HoMM.V.
Creatures from Oblivion are rotated 180 degrees, creatures from Warcraft III are rotated 90 degrees..
That's why. I don't think anybody'd be happy to have creatures like this in HoMM.V..
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Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
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posted June 04, 2010 06:54 AM |
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Resizing and rotating should be trivial, its just matrix multiplication. Any program should be able to do that.
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
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Pesmontis
Adventuring Hero
status revoked
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posted June 04, 2010 11:35 AM |
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Trivial III
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.. it's just matrix multiplication..
True. Most 3D drawing programs are alas not as smart as to understand things like "Give me a matrix", and "Now multiply everything by that matrix".. (.. now! NOW! ).
An example
- Create or import a mesh in 3DSmax, with some bones;
- Apply the 'Skin' modifier to the mesh;
- Apply the default 'Vertex Weld' modifier to the mesh
(assuming there's something to weld);
- Apply a scale factor of 1% to the root bone.
What happens is that the scale factor is not picked up by the 'Vertex Weld' mesh modifier. Applying such a scale fator to the root bone causes many more vertices to cross the Vertex Weld threshold, resulting in an immense loss of mesh-detail..
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.. Any program should be able to do that..
You mean a modding program, or a 3D drawing program.
Yes, well.. 'should be' is a bit exacting, but I guess such programs wouldn't be very effective without.
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Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
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posted June 05, 2010 01:53 AM |
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Well that's annoying. What if you scaled the bones and mesh separately, then reskinned it?
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
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Pesmontis
Adventuring Hero
status revoked
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posted June 05, 2010 12:05 PM |
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No WoW
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.. scale the bones and mesh separately, then reskin..
This is the most prudent option. Reskinning is
advised for Warcraft III creatures, although it's not absolutely necessary.
I've just finished my 3DSmax7 Warcraft III Creature Conversion Guideline for HoMM.V , I'd like to suggest you take a look at it to see what's involved. A glance at the size of the document should tell you enough.
Yesterday I got some acceptable conversion results, so now it's time to try speeding up the conversion process and to convert all animations for one creature.
When that's done, testing in HoMM.V is imminent.
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Pesmontis
Adventuring Hero
status revoked
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posted June 06, 2010 11:52 PM |
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REPORTED BY TSoD
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TSoD: I can import the geometry and skeleton fine
However, they're oriented wrong.
The raster in the pictures is oriented correctly,
the geometry and the skeleton are both rotated 90°.
Another strange thing
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Usually, in HoMM.V, materials are in one of these modes:
- AM_ALPHA_TEST;
- AM_TRANSPARENT, and;
- AM_OPAQUE for the main ones.
First I didn't see the geometry nor the texture.
Then I activated the mode AM_OPAQUE and it worked!
The other modes aren't working,
surely because of some material setting you applied in 3DS max.
So for now we can't use the Alpha layer of the DDS texture.
I don't think it has anything to do with material settings in 3DSmax, because the geometry isn't exported with 3DSmax, it's exported with Archangel (from SMD). So if there are special material settings, Archangel should apply them (for example vertex colors).
Still it's weird, you've got the right tools and the right experience for making textures, so the only thing I can think of is the some kind of vertex color dependency. I did apply vertex colors to that Shadow Mistress of mine, so maybe it's that. For lighting any object in the game, I think vertex colors are as important as vertex normals in other games. If the vertex colors are all zero (including the Alpha channel) then maybe the model is entirely black and entirely transparent..
Anyway, AM_ALPHA_TEST should be the mode for the material I think.
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TSoD: For the animations, I tried the idle and the attack00 until now, but they didn't work (although I saw them working in Granny). Attack didn't do anything, but the 'idle' anim strangely deforms the model:
It doesn't move, it just poses weird as you can see and it remains immobile..
I'll try the other animations, maybe one will work after all..
No, no animation is working, they all deform the model strangely as in the second image.
However, I noticed something that could help you fix this:
The GR2 animations you sent can't be opened alone in Granny Viewer: the screen remains gray and empty.
The original HoMM.V animation files can be opened by simple drag and drop on Granny Viewer. Granny Viewer will show a moving skeleton without having a skeleton imported.
So you should try to export the animations including the skeleton Data (not only it's Reference).
The skeleton is imported OK, which is very good news, because we've never done this before.
I proved it by attaching a 'hair' effect to 'Bone_Head' (see the first picture).
O yeah! Very nice!
I must say you're very well informed on how to use and manipulate everything in HoMM.V Map Editor, maybe you should write a tutorial about it ;-)
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TSoD: I already did so:
NCF Based - Testing your creature visual easily
Furthermore, I started creating the texture but I'm not happy about it. Check out the UVmap yourself, it's so strange, there are many deformations I can't handle:
Well, I think the texture is quite nice actually, but maybe we have to reset the UVmapping in 3DSmax and start over.
I know it is possible to do texturing in 3DSmax, but I would have to learn it from the intarnet.
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e-lysander
Known Hero
Lysander
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posted June 11, 2010 01:10 AM |
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I've been reading these pages and what I've seen is very promising. However, I can't make heads or tails of it... so much mixed information, so I'll just ask:
Is it possible to effectively extract the Heroes V models, edit them, then put them back into the game? I would like to know, because I'm a modeler and I might be willing to help other modders out by making some basic model changes or whatever for people.
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Psatkha
Promising
Known Hero
H5 MODder
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posted June 11, 2010 06:51 AM |
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Quote:
I've been reading these pages and what I've seen is very promising. However, I can't make heads or tails of it... so much mixed information, so I'll just ask:
Is it possible to effectively extract the Heroes V models, edit them, then put them back into the game? I would like to know, because I'm a modeler and I might be willing to help other modders out by making some basic model changes or whatever for people.
Yes, it is possible!
I am very glad that you are MODELER!
I needing MODELER's HELP!
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Pesmontis
Adventuring Hero
status revoked
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posted June 11, 2010 10:28 AM |
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Pesmontis
Adventuring Hero
status revoked
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posted June 13, 2010 12:21 AM |
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Announcement
TSoD has succeeded in importing the Warcraft III Naga Myrmidon into Map Editor, complete with correct skeleton and animations:
Animations
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As you can see, the animation is distorting the creature's mesh a little, which is due to the limits of the conversion: the vertex weights are all converted to either 0 or 1. This can be remedied by editing the creature's skin in 3DSmax. Another thing which may need fine-tuning is the the proper start and end keyframes of each separate animation, so that no hickups occur in looped anims.
Technicalities
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atm. It seems that the best results are obtained with GR2 animations exported from Maya 6.0 (using granny2.dll version 2.5.0.5 and the Blitzkrieg 2 plugins). However, the successfully tested skeleton came from 3DSmax7 (using the Expotron plugin / granny2.dll version 2.6.0.10).
Effort
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I would like to thank TSoD for his efficient testing :-)
I hope that others will take up the thread and start bothering me with detailed questions about the conversion. Of course I'll update the manual ASAP.
Future
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More creatures, from various other games, for instance Prince of Persia, Oblivion, and Demigod. I've currently also got a Zombie from Half-Life..
Cheers,
Pesmontis
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festuc
Adventuring Hero
Modding
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posted June 13, 2010 12:23 AM |
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Awesome!
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TSoD
Promising
Famous Hero
NCF Blacksmith
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posted June 13, 2010 10:45 AM |
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I forgot to tell you about the start/end keyframes  But you'll understand, they were only details compairing to the AWESOMENESS of the event : importing animations in Homm.V is just too great =)
Also glad you could test yourself the animations
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NCFBank,
the complete and homogen NCF
library.
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Lord_Immortal
Famous Hero
DoR Dev Team
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posted November 12, 2010 04:33 PM |
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Gnoll_Mage
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted November 17, 2010 02:49 PM |
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Great to come back and see that this has come so far, but it seems almost ironic that one of the last posts is basically the breakthrough we were aiming at from the start! TSoD and the rest, did you ever take this any further? (Are you still here?)
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