Reforged Art Tools for Maya 2018 (Official)

[Retera]

@wiselen on the Retera Model Studio Users Group discord server provided the following screenshots in the general chat:

I hope that this does not offend them for me to share their work in discovering that this was present in the leak. If so I am happy to remove these screenshots so that I do not appear attention seeking. But I thought it would be beneficial for this to be on Hive Tools page.

Per the other leaks in 2020, the original author of this plugin is Keith Seizemore. Thanks to Keith for writing this software. This is how all Reforged models were made.

Now you can make your models without Retera Model Studio! Retera's reign of terror is ending!

 

[ShadiHD]

I'm a Maya user, HOWEVER, I completely missed how this can be installed in Maya, does it go to the plugin's folder or something else is missing?

 

[wiselen]

Plugin works with OpenMaya 2018 C++ API, so I'm not sure if it can run on newer or older versions of Maya.

Plugin consists of three modules:

• W3_MDL_Exporter.mll. This module adds the W3_MDL_FILE translator to the File -> Export Selection menu, which allows you to export the scene to Warcraft III MDL format.
• W3_PBR_Shader.mll. This adds the W3_PBR_SHADER shader, which allows you to customize the model's material.
• W3_AnimTrack_Node.mll. This adds the W3_AnimTrack_Node node, not entirely sure how it works, but it seems to help split animations into Warcraft sequences.

Each plugin has 4 builds, I have no idea what the ac and ae builds are for, but I think the build without letters at the end is the release build, and the build with letter d is the debug build.

Installation:​

• Place the files W3_MDL_Exporter.mll, W3_PBR_Shader.mll, W3_AnimTrack_Node.mll (or other builds if you choose) in the directory …\Maya2018\bin\plug-ins
• Open / restart Maya, go to the menu Windows -> Settings/Preferences -> Plugin Manager, enter “w3” in the search field and then check all three modules.

 

[wiselen]

I have a feeling that there is another module or some script or node preset missing for configuring Warcraft objects (like particle emitters, event objects, etc.).

Plugin can parse mesh, rig, light, and camera from scene using Maya API, but it is more complicated with other objects, parser processes them simply as nodes using getAttr("attribute") method. The exporter determines type of Warcraft object by the prefix in the node name. Here is a list of prefixes that I found in the plugin code:

"CS_" — Collision Shape
"EO_" — Event Object
"P1_" — Particle 1
"PS_" — Particle 2
"FX_" — PopcornFX
"RE_" — Ribbon
"AP_" — Attachment Point
"FA_" — FaceFX

If you place, for example, a locator and change its name using such a prefix, it will be exported as the corresponding object. As in the picture below, I got an attachment.



I mean problem is that the exporter tries to get custom attributes from nodes, which are not available in Maya by default. Like "Rows", "Columns", "SortPrimsFarZ", "LineEmitter", etc. Actually, I have no idea how we can fit these custom attributes into locators or other objects. This problem would not exist if one or more ready-made templates for Warcraft objects were added to Maya using a plugin.

Although it is possible that this is an imaginary problem and I just do not know the node editor in Maya well enough.

 

[ShadiHD]

@wiselen I think you're right, I tried opening it on my Maya 2023, didn't work.

It's gonna be wild having two versions of Maya now.