- Joined
- Nov 11, 2004
- Messages
- 1,985
I've been working lately on expanding my NeoDex toolset into Sc2. I started these project as NeoDex's new direction. I looked into many tutorials and I realised that, in avarage, getting a WoW model with decent quality into Sc2 can take a long time. Specialy if the model you want has a LOT of textures.
For this purpose I looked into the most time consuming and boring parts of the whole process. Here's how you convert them as of now:
1º You extract your model's .m2, .skin and textures from WoW. (2 mins max)
2º You create the diffuse, normal, specular and emissive maps. (3 mins per texture) (10 textures = 30 mins! without stopping)
3º You import the model using ufoz & Nintoxicated's m2 importer. (1 min)
4º You must rescale and reset up the model and its materials (10mins to 1 hour)
5º You must redeclare each of the sequences for Sc2. (5 minutes to some hours)
6º you must create the sc2 helper objects (10 minutes at max)
7º Preview and change some values with live update (20 mins to many hours of refining).
Problems with the current workflow:
1º Imported models are buggy and hard to edit.
2º The importer does not translate WoW materials and sequences into Sc2's.
3º There's no automatic way to get the diffuse, normal and specular components from a texture. (There's a big bad conception that the diffuse and normal WoW texture are the same, the first only describes colors, the second one has shading).
4º too much time is wasted recreating things that the importer can handle.
5º No easy way to integrate WoW and Wc3 models for major edits.
6º No current way to convert ribbon/particle emitters.
Solutions:
1º Improve the importer, make it faster and fix the big problems.
2º Integrate the importer into NeoDex and Sc2ArtTools.
3º Create a photoshop script to take the diffuse, normal and specular out of each texture as fast as possible.
Artefacts:
M2 Importer:
Now how an scene imported correctly looks like just as the importer finishes (no extra touches):
The Photoshop actions:
Now a test on a WoW texture:
After running Make Diffuse:
(as you can see, a lot less shading)
After running Make Normal:
Quite decent.
After running Make Specular:
Now let's do a simple test on a complex model:
The model has 13 textures! Omg who could convert that? No problem there's batch operation in photoshop.
We organize our files in the next way:
Our m2 and skin are on the main folder, all the textures as .tga are in the OriginalTextures folder. Now we need to pass 3 batches to the original textures in photoshop, to create the maps.
First I pass the Diffuse Batch using MakeDiffuse2 (these one generates .dds unlike MakeDiffuse):
I used my sourced folder, the originalTextures and my destination folder as my main main folder.
After 1 min, I have the diffuse map of each texture:
Now I'll repeat the batch for normal map and specular map:
Done, this should have taken me about 10 minutes.
Now I'll Import the model:
After I have imported it, it looks like this:
Now, without any changes, I'm going to preview it, but I'll do it with the liveUpdater so I can tweak the material properties.
I hit LiveUpdate and then Update All now:
Now this is how it should look in-game:
Normals:
Close look:
Quite close, but it may need some tweakings. For instance, some materials may need more specularity so you must change the specular multiplier. The wood planks, need a more defined Normal map, so it must be done by hand to scale off a bit more. However, it's very close to a perfect export and it only took 15 minutes!
Now some other tests, the SpellBreaker made using WoW's BF Guard and some meshes and textures from wc3:
It took me 1 hour and half to make, but works like a charm:
on night:
from the back:
Things I did after importing: I created the emissive maps by hand, added the SPbreaker mask from wc3, added teamcolors, added Sc2 Helpers, tuned a bit the animations, added attachments, made the sword use an envio mask and added some particles.
I expect to release the tools in about 1 week. I still have a lot of work to do:
For this purpose I looked into the most time consuming and boring parts of the whole process. Here's how you convert them as of now:
1º You extract your model's .m2, .skin and textures from WoW. (2 mins max)
2º You create the diffuse, normal, specular and emissive maps. (3 mins per texture) (10 textures = 30 mins! without stopping)
3º You import the model using ufoz & Nintoxicated's m2 importer. (1 min)
4º You must rescale and reset up the model and its materials (10mins to 1 hour)
5º You must redeclare each of the sequences for Sc2. (5 minutes to some hours)
6º you must create the sc2 helper objects (10 minutes at max)
7º Preview and change some values with live update (20 mins to many hours of refining).
Problems with the current workflow:
1º Imported models are buggy and hard to edit.
2º The importer does not translate WoW materials and sequences into Sc2's.
3º There's no automatic way to get the diffuse, normal and specular components from a texture. (There's a big bad conception that the diffuse and normal WoW texture are the same, the first only describes colors, the second one has shading).
4º too much time is wasted recreating things that the importer can handle.
5º No easy way to integrate WoW and Wc3 models for major edits.
6º No current way to convert ribbon/particle emitters.
Solutions:
1º Improve the importer, make it faster and fix the big problems.
2º Integrate the importer into NeoDex and Sc2ArtTools.
3º Create a photoshop script to take the diffuse, normal and specular out of each texture as fast as possible.
Artefacts:
M2 Importer:
Now how an scene imported correctly looks like just as the importer finishes (no extra touches):
The Photoshop actions:
Now a test on a WoW texture:
After running Make Diffuse:
(as you can see, a lot less shading)
After running Make Normal:
Quite decent.
After running Make Specular:
Now let's do a simple test on a complex model:
The model has 13 textures! Omg who could convert that? No problem there's batch operation in photoshop.
We organize our files in the next way:
Our m2 and skin are on the main folder, all the textures as .tga are in the OriginalTextures folder. Now we need to pass 3 batches to the original textures in photoshop, to create the maps.
First I pass the Diffuse Batch using MakeDiffuse2 (these one generates .dds unlike MakeDiffuse):
I used my sourced folder, the originalTextures and my destination folder as my main main folder.
After 1 min, I have the diffuse map of each texture:
Now I'll repeat the batch for normal map and specular map:
Done, this should have taken me about 10 minutes.
Now I'll Import the model:
After I have imported it, it looks like this:
Now, without any changes, I'm going to preview it, but I'll do it with the liveUpdater so I can tweak the material properties.
I hit LiveUpdate and then Update All now:
Now this is how it should look in-game:
Normals:
Close look:
Quite close, but it may need some tweakings. For instance, some materials may need more specularity so you must change the specular multiplier. The wood planks, need a more defined Normal map, so it must be done by hand to scale off a bit more. However, it's very close to a perfect export and it only took 15 minutes!
Now some other tests, the SpellBreaker made using WoW's BF Guard and some meshes and textures from wc3:
It took me 1 hour and half to make, but works like a charm:
on night:
from the back:
Things I did after importing: I created the emissive maps by hand, added the SPbreaker mask from wc3, added teamcolors, added Sc2 Helpers, tuned a bit the animations, added attachments, made the sword use an envio mask and added some particles.
I expect to release the tools in about 1 week. I still have a lot of work to do:
- Fix some little importing issues.
- Add neodex support, in order to edit the models using wc3 tools.
- Add an option for the NeoDex Importer to import the model for sc2 art tools.
