War3 Model Editor

[BogdanW3]

...there would be some group of users who would complain and say that they want a GUI for making quick model edits...

That's what Blender would be, there's a lot about modelling that shouldn't be taken for granted, and knowing even the basics of Blender translates well into knowing how stuff works: Blender's animations can do more than War3SD, that's true, but most of what you'd want in a game like War3 is exactly doable in both Blender and War3; skinning in Blender is more sophisticated not to make it harder to understand it, but to make it easier, the "many buttons" can translate really well to War3 stuff, I've just yesterday made use of Blender to fix a model with multiple broken animations and very broken skinning, but do players of War3 even know what skinning vs rigging is, and then again, why texture-swaps shouldn't be called skinning?

Anyway, I got carried away there, the main thing I wanted to say is that it took only a few basic commands to fix those animations, the largest part being to even find the bone, which is the same chore in any tool. And the part that I'd love to get fixed up in the very near future is that I had to redo materials a bit manually, nothing daunting though, just took a min

But yes, your last statement stands its ground... until there's a plugin that even claims to do this, let alone that users trust not to break, there will always be those that stay with old tools, afraid of change or just happy to keep doing their thing their way. And that's fine - we just can't help them in ways other than try to keep at our respective maintenance positions for a while longer.

 

[Retera]

do players of War3 even know what skinning vs rigging is, and then again, why texture-swaps shouldn't be called skinning?

I mean, it's possible that the vernacular on Warcraft 3 predates the modern graphics technology and its naming conventions.

I'm not here to tell people that they need to change their language -- I just hope to have very solid and working modding technology. Even if you named the blender plugin you're describing "My Little Pony Cute Skinning Retexturing Edits Anything Plugin With Great Name" probably people would pretty quickly be telling each other to download MLPCSREAPWGN to edit their MDX files, and whether people would use it I think would depend on whether it handled all of the technology problems accurately and not on what it was named.

we just can't help them in ways other than try to keep at our respective maintenance positions for a while longer.

Nobody is paying me to be in a maintenance position, and although trying to care about the opinions and affections and gratitude of others might in some cases be laudable, I think it is almost certainly not helpful to oneself. I am here and Ghostwolf and Magos are not, because I am self-interested. If we look at what they were doing, taking requests from other people to help them, there is always eventually burn out because no one could pay anyone enough to make this kind of hobby a job, so it's totally just done by free will, and the free will based on pretend internet love and affection burns up when somebody realizes they need to have real friends in the face to face world, and have some good times, some close friends, and some good laughs away from the computer.

So, I don't think I would call it a maintenance position. If Retera Model Studio was my job, I'd probably be pretty concerned, because it was never finished. The parts that work are only the ones that are useful to me. There are actually quite a number of buttons in the UI on Retera Model Studio that someone else asked me to create, and then I created about half of what they asked for, and then I just stopped because I didn't feel like doing it anymore, and I did something else.

Above: This has been this way since like, 2019 before Reforged released. And it can stay that way for all I care. It's also not the only one like this.
So, if I do a Magos and just disappear, there isn't anyone to stop paying me (although, as with my Hive Hero sub, I might stop paying them funny as that is). I wouldn't have failed in my duties to my "maintenance position," because I don't have one.

there will always be those that stay with old tools, afraid of change

But to be honest, I think I can help people who are afraid of change.

By telling them the truth, which is often that the change to the new thing is bad, and the new thing is worse, and the people who made it should feel bad for promoting it.

It is situational and depends on which "new thing" they are being told to use.

What if there is a user who wants to edit his particle emitters to make models that look cool like Vinz! What program should he use?

Probably Magos 1.07 because Retera Model Studio isn't finished

[Edit: Despite probably giving this recommendation to other people, no, I don't seriously use Magos anymore.]

 

[BogdanW3]

...

ye, I didn't mean it as in job, just however we currently place ourselves in in our relationships with the tools
If anything, there is no good answer to most of the points you bring up, and the reasonable thing to do is give up, quit, go for the IRL fun instead. That doesn't make it the right choice, just the easy one. Right might not even exist, for all I know, the only palpable reason I'm trying to get W3ME to work with v1100 MDX is just so I can use it, so I would try to keep it running even on Win12 just because that'd be what my usecase is. And similarly with RMS, if it broke, someone would come around to try and prod it back into running. These kinds of tools have become unkillable only because they're the only ones that can do any of what people will want, and many people will want to do War3 modelling

Anyway, I think this discussion is going on a bit too long, it's not related to the tool itself is it?

 

[Retera]

it's not related to the tool itself is it?

I think it's related, but maybe not enough so. Not my intention to derail the thread any further.

 

[SuperBRO]

please make the Tail function in particle emitter 2 visible

 

[Retera]

please make the Tail function in particle emitter 2 visible

if you know how to render tail particles, please post here indicating what it is that everyone else on Earth who ever tried doesn't know, to get us straightened out on why they're sometimes visually different than we thought

 

[SuperBRO]

if you know how to render tail particles, please post here indicating what it is that everyone else on Earth who ever tried doesn't know, to get us straightened out on why they're sometimes visually different than we thought

ok bro!

 

[Cheshire]

does this have to be in a certain directory in order to have access to the mpq. data? is there a way to set the folder path for my wc3 so I can keep this program somewhere else? thanks!

 

[BogdanW3]

does this have to be in a certain directory in order to have access to the mpq. data? is there a way to set the folder path for my wc3 so I can keep this program somewhere else? thanks!

It doesn't have to be in a specific directory, read the PS at the bottom for how to tell it where to look

 

[Cheshire]

It doesn't have to be in a specific directory, read the PS at the bottom for how to tell it where to look

thanks! I set the location (C:\Program Files (x86)\Warcraft III) using the new functionality with the properties tab, but it's still not recognizing it. Is it possible there has been some restructuring of the folders in the recent patches that is causing problems, or did I do something wrong?

(I tried the registry key method, but I can't find my warcraft folder there. maybe something got messed up because I redownloaded warcraft and it recognized my old key from my user, so somehow the download wasn't directly through the blizzard client...)

 

[BogdanW3]

thanks! I set the location (C:\Program Files (x86)\Warcraft III) using the new functionality with the properties tab, but it's still not recognizing it. Is it possible there has been some restructuring of the folders in the recent patches that is causing problems, or did I do something wrong?

(I tried the registry key method, but I can't find my warcraft folder there. maybe something got messed up because I redownloaded warcraft and it recognized my old key from my user, so somehow the download wasn't directly through the blizzard client...)

Well, how exactly is it not recognizing the folder? Do models' textures just not get loaded or are there errors too? And which patch are you on?

 

[Cheshire]

Well, how exactly is it not recognizing the folder? Do models' textures just not get loaded or are there errors too? And which patch are you on?

I just redownloaded so it should be the latest patch. when I try to use the mpq browser (I am trying to get to the AI script files) I got the attached error. this confuses me since why is it looking there? that's where the model editor is,but I already put the location of wc3 in properties...

 

[BogdanW3]

I just redownloaded so it should be the latest patch. when I try to use the mpq browser (I am trying to get to the AI script files) I got the attached error. this confuses me since why is it looking there? that's where the model editor is,but I already put the location of wc3 in properties...




View attachment 481085

Versions after 1.30 no longer use MPQs, that's the problem, you'll want to either use the Casc Viewer tool or find an old patch to plug into the MPQ editor.

 

[Rubellu Sidus]

Wait, I am kinda outdated in this. This new Model Editor will be able to open reforged models?! Or I just had a stroke?

 

[BogdanW3]

Wait, I am kinda outdated in this. This new Model Editor will be able to open reforged models?! Or I just had a stroke?

Reforged SD yes, but HD are quite different so no support there yet

 

[Rubellu Sidus]

Reforged SD yes, but HD are quite different so no support there yet

Oh, alright. I hope you guys find a way to be able to port HD models to W3ME in a way of being able of editing with MDLVis.

Good job everyone.

 

[Stefan.K]

Is there a way to make War3 Model editor use new AI upscaled textures instead of the old ones?

 

[SuperBRO]

Is there a way to make War3 Model editor use new AI upscaled textures instead of the old ones?

FOR EXAMPLE?

 

[BogdanW3]

Is there a way to make War3 Model editor use new AI upscaled textures instead of the old ones?

I guess you could extract the textures using CascView, but I don't know if the files on disk take preference over the game data sadly. Renaming the textures is an option, but likely more effort than desired

 

[Villagerino]

Where would we be if not Magos.

 

[Retera]

Where would we be if not Magos.

Well, I would basically be almost nowhere different. I used the Prophet's War3 Previewer for this purpose, and oinkerwinkle's tools for editing, during my formative years with these things. I remember being shown Magos circa 2005 or 2006 and I thought it seemed like it felt a bit like someone looking for attention at the time. Seemed like if you tried to put everything into one program, some parts would inevitably end up inferior to their existing counterparts in other programs. What I had was already good enough, I was change resistant, and I kept using the Prophet's War3 Previewer and oinkerwinkle for many years after that. It was probably only 6 or 8 years later, where from what I recall there was a post saying that writing my own program was not needed because it was "another Magos" or "another Mdlvis" that it occurred to me to review the existing landscape of technologies used by other people.

 

[Villagerino]

Well, I would basically be almost nowhere different. I used the Prophet's War3 Previewer for this purpose, and oinkerwinkle's tools for editing, during my formative years with these things. I remember being shown Magos circa 2005 or 2006 and I thought it seemed like it felt a bit like someone looking for attention at the time. Seemed like if you tried to put everything into one program, some parts would inevitably end up inferior to their existing counterparts in other programs. What I had was already good enough, I was change resistant, and I kept using the Prophet's War3 Previewer and oinkerwinkle for many years after that. It was probably only 6 or 8 years later, where from what I recall there was a post saying that writing my own program was not needed because it was "another Magos" or "another Mdlvis" that it occurred to me to review the existing landscape of technologies used by other people.

And where would we be if not Retera!

 

[tillinghast]

I thought it seemed like it felt a bit like someone looking for attention at the time

magos made one tool, according to your resource tab you've made 6, that makes you a bigger attention whore
if "making a tool" is looking for attention, then what do you call these giant rambling walls of words you post everywhere?
i am surprised you didn't squeeze in "hello, my name is retera, creator of warsmash" or some variation of it into this particular wall, it seems like such a staple of your replies

 

[Retera]

that makes you a bigger attention whore

fair point. I was trying to relate how I felt back then at the time, not focused on my present state

 

[Gtron]

Without @BogdanW3, @Retera, and @twilac Warcraft 3 model editing and by extension updating Warcraft 3's graphics would be nearly impossible on any sort of scale. Their software is priceless. Only a fool would speak negatively of their collective efforts.

 

[Retera]

Only a fool would speak negatively of their collective efforts.

At different times, and in different places, I have both praised Reforged as being the best Warcraft 3 mod ever and also insulted Reforged as being the ruination of my beloved game. At different times and in different places, I have sat for hours doing Retera Model Studio software work upon request for internet avatars who do not represent people I know and who might not even be real people, only to then to and ignore feature requests from real people that were incredibly bright, on-point and well-meaning feature requests. I have made at least 2 Hive accounts for the purpose of multi-accounting, and by the time of that second one at least, I knew that this was a rule violation. I have about 15 discord accounts that have filtered through different Warcraft 3 related discord servers at different times. But long before any of that, there was a time when I used to make Warcraft 3 custom games content without the internet, totally offline, and was a technologist and not a communicator.

People change over time. Last time I looked up Magosx who wrote this War3 Model Editor on this topic we have here, what I encountered was a YouTube account whose avatar icon was the Joker from the Batman movies.

Do you want to know how Magos got these scars?

In the end, humans are multi-faceted creatures. To defend internet personalities as being universally beyond reproach simply because, at times, they accomplished good things -- in my opinion -- is probably the actual case of foolishness. If I change my avatar on my Retera account on Hive to instead be a picture of flat earth, with a link to a flat earth believers website, and go totally nuts making political statements that have no basis in reality, folks would probably still be able to distinguish when Retera Model Studio was a good and useful program even if they concluded that I had become mentally lost and useless to talk to.

Edit:

I also find it interesting that you cite the modern active internet users instead of some of historically most-skilled technologists. For example, why is the user "Ghostwolf" elsewhere known as "PuffTheMagicDragonIsNoMore" not on your list? Why is the official War3ArtTools plugin not on your list, or perhaps @BlinkBoy and Neodex? If these do not make the cut because they are from too far back in history -- like Magos, I suppose -- then there seems to be some recency bias here. But if we are selecting who is important based on recency bias rather than on the depth/extensiveness of their work, then we open ourselves up to modern era manipulation. For example, it's possible that me, @BogdanW3 or @twilac might have insider information or back channel access to Microsoft Activision Blizzard, and we might have requested software changes to the game such as the MDX1100 format cutoff in 2022. For example, if I have back-channel access to the insiders who run the company, I could have asked them to make this change to put the Twilac version of Retera Model Studio behind my official one in terms of features, to increase the recency and relevancy of my work by essentially forcing people to use it or to spend substantial technical effort upgrading their older tools for literally no reason.

So, I think that to blindly accept what is newer or more recent as better and more superior might actually be something that is not always the right choice.

For some reason, I don't really see the opinion of tillinghast as foolish in this case. I'm getting a bit tired of the Reforging of software, and I mean that as a blanket concept of new authors working on a project who aren't informed about all of its original design decisions -- or who simply do not care -- and not only the specific software upgrades to Warcraft III that we call the "Reforged."

Some examples:

• The tw1lac fork of Retera Model Studio is better in certain ways but bugged in other ways that the original isn't. Most of the code was rewritten and reorganized to be "better" and in some case this involved deleting performance optimizations because Twilac told me that caring how smoothly or quickly the program would run was a mistake and a sign of being uninformed, because we live in the future where computers are magic
• The DRMS build of Retera Model Studio uses a notably slower render pipeline than the OpenGL 1.0 old counterpart, and RMS itself can only show one model at a time instead of the tabbed experience of Matrix Eater. The startup time on DRMS is notably slower because of parsing extraneous junk such as the camera geometry model for use with a camera animation feature that doesn't even work
• The Bogdan War3ModelEditor v1.08 was made by forking off of the code of Magos 1.05 instead of 1.07 because we do not have the source code for 1.07 because Magos did not bother to publish it. So the attempt to move forward involved first moving backward because of community data loss
• Reforged 2.0 changing how unit portraits work is an example of a new developer who thinks he's smarter doing something without concern for what existing technology it breaks. I'm not totally opposed to the feature but I wish these things were handled with care so that it was available when building new maps, but was zero impact on the behavior of existing old ones
• Some people convinced me to move from Java 8 forward to Java 17 on my tools (such as Retera Model Studio) but the move seems 95% pointless. Also, the UI scale stuff mucks up how the LWJGL code handles viewport sizes. At some point I had to write code into Retera Model Studio to ask two different APIs for the size of my same program's UI and then compare the values returned by the APIs to determine which one is lying to me, so that I can then start scaling properly. If you use Retera Model Studio on two monitors where one is on a different UI scale, or if you change the UI scale of Windows without restarting Retera Model Studio, then your 3d view will go nuts and you'll see what I mean (either it will be in a small cutoff area, or it will be centered off the screen instead of in the center of the window)
• When I upgraded from Windows 10 to the Windows 11, I gained nothing, but certain parts of my workflow and software stopped working properly. At some point, should we be more honest with ourselves and refer to this as downgrading Windows 10 to the Windows 11, or at least refer to it as Windows 10 Reforged?

If we just use War3 Model Editor alongside the Patch 1.22 game version from before the Activision merger, you don't have these problems

 

[Kyrbi0]

Gtron didn't defend you (guys) as "beyond reproach". They just said that work was good, and much appreciated.

===

I don't know how all this stuff works, but is there any way to take the program(ming) or the code or something from the new Previewer that was just leaked & stuff it into our little version of Magos? Resolve some of the lingering display/error/rendering issues that it has long suffered from?

 

[Jumbo]

Very useful.

 

[Marcus777]

I think I am having a stroke, can someone help me if anyone is watching this thread still?
I am trying to download Magos 1.09 version, but having trouble setting up the correct registry?
This is what it shows when I try to open it:

Then, I followed what StormKnight wrote about setting up registry Installpath. But I can't find Warcraft 3 folder. This is what i get once I try to follow the instruction by StormKnight:

There is no Warcraft III folder. I did found a folder under Launch Options , called W3, so I tried installing it there.

Under "Value Data" I put the path where my warcraft II was installed. Or should I put the Casc Viewer folder path? If someone can help me, that would be great!

 

[Ravager16829]

I think I am having a stroke, can someone help me if anyone is watching this thread still?
I am trying to download Magos 1.09 version, but having trouble setting up the correct registry?
This is what it shows when I try to open it:
View attachment 516018

Then, I followed what StormKnight wrote about setting up registry Installpath. But I can't find Warcraft 3 folder. This is what i get once I try to follow the instruction by StormKnight:
View attachment 516019

There is no Warcraft III folder. I did found a folder under Launch Options , called W3, so I tried installing it there.
View attachment 516020

Under "Value Data" I put the path where my warcraft II was installed. Or should I put the Casc Viewer folder path? If someone can help me, that would be great!

You are using the Reforged version, right? Since there is no "Warcraft III" registry key for this version inside "Blizzard Entertainment", you can simply create it by yourself and then just create that required key with your game installation folder (usually in "C:\Program Files\Warcraft III").

Alternatively, try using this one: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Blizzard Entertainment\Warcraft III".
Instead of "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Blizzard Entertainment".

 

[Marcus777]

You are using the Reforged version, right? Since there is no "Warcraft III" registry key for this version inside "Blizzard Entertainment", you can simply create it by yourself and then just create that required key with your game installation folder (usually in "C:\Program Files\Warcraft III").

Alternatively, try using this one: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Blizzard Entertainment\Warcraft III".
Instead of "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Blizzard Entertainment".

Hey Ravager, thx for the reply. I tried both of your methods and I am still stuck. Maybe i did something wrong? I am on Reforged. Here is me trying your first method:

I created "Wacraft III" folder as you suggested and then created new string as StormKnight wrote.
Tried opening Model Editor, still gives me the same error:

2) I tried your alternative method as well, and got the same error. Maybe I am doing something wrong?

Any ideas by any chance?

 

[Ravager16829]

Hey Ravager, thx for the reply. I tried both of your methods and I am still stuck. Maybe i did something wrong? I am on Reforged. Here is me trying your first method:
View attachment 516024
I created "Wacraft III" folder as you suggested and then created new string as StormKnight wrote.
Tried opening Model Editor, still gives me the same error:
View attachment 516025

2) I tried your alternative method as well, and got the same error. Maybe I am doing something wrong?
View attachment 516026

Any ideas by any chance?

Sadly, I have no idea how to solve this problem. It could be related to your game installation problem.

Unless others are able to help, and since you are using Reforged, your best option would probably be to use alternative like Retera's Model Studio.

 

[BogdanW3]

...

Then, I followed what StormKnight wrote about setting up registry Installpath. But I can't find Warcraft 3 folder. This is what i get once I try to follow the instruction by StormKnight:
View attachment 516019

Create the folder in this "Blizzard Entertainment" folder, then create installpath in there. Also the one with "onedrive/documents" is not the correct path to the game.

 

[Marcus777]

Yeah, I also think it has something to do with installation path.

@BogdanW3 Yep, created the folder inside Blizzard and set it to game path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Warcraft III

Also, changed the path that you mentioned for the 2nd one to the same path as the first one:

Still, the model editor gives the same error that it's unable to load the data. I am definetly doing something wrong, just not sure what. I read and followed what everyone else wrote in this thread previously.

Btw, I can open Model editor 1.07 without any issues Just needed 1.09 since I need Casc Viewer instead of MPQ.

 

[BogdanW3]

Yeah, I also think it has something to do with installation path.

@BogdanW3 Yep, created the folder inside Blizzard and set it to game path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Warcraft III
View attachment 516032

You called it "Wacraft", missing the first r...

 

[Marcus777]

Oh, good catch, corrected it, but the same result.

 

[BogdanW3]

Hmm... not sure why this would be so, but for now you should be able to modify the properties file instead if I remember well, I forgot about that. It should have the folder set as empty by default iirc to fallback to registry search

 

[Marcus777]

Not sure what you mean by that. I am pretty noob about all of this xD. Are you talking about this property file?

 

[BogdanW3]

Not sure what you mean by that. I am pretty noob about all of this xD. Are you talking about this property file?
View attachment 516035

Yes, feel free to open it and try to change a warcraft 3 path variable to your War3 path, C:\Program Files (x86)\Warcraft III sounds correct

 

[Myke-F]

I have warcraft 1.30+ and I downloaded the latest version of war3model to open the .casc files but when I install the program and open it I get this error. What I do?

 

[Ravager16829]

I have warcraft 1.30+ and I downloaded the latest version of war3model to open the .casc files but when I install the program and open it I get this error. What I do?

The file you are trying to open might be corrupted, as stated on that error message. I'm not sure if it's true.

Edit: Since you are trying to open CASC file, you are going to need Ladik's Casc Viewer, as Warseeker said.

 

[Warseeker]

I have warcraft 1.30+ and I downloaded the latest version of war3model to open the .casc files but when I install the program and open it I get this error. What I do?

You can't open casc files using this tool. You need Ladik's Casc Viewer instead.

 

[Marcus777]

Yes, feel free to open it and try to change a warcraft 3 path variable to your War3 path, C:\Program Files (x86)\Warcraft III sounds correct

Meh, still nothing. Idk lol

 

[Myke-F]

Still nothing... I have these errors and the modeler doesn't open at all. It's version 1.09. and my Warcraft is 1.30.

 

[stan0033]

Still nothing... I have these errors and the modeler doesn't open at all. It's version 1.09. and my Warcraft is 1.30.

all of these problems come from you not having the game path in the registry. Warcraft III Registry Fixer 1.0