NeoDex 2.7 Wc3 Modeling Kit for 3dsmax & GMAX

[Unryze]

Try extracting a model from the game and import/export it.

Also I need certain info: which 3ds max version are you using.

EDIT: I've looked into the model and it appears to be buggy for NeoDex. I'm not sure what can be causing it.

EDIT 2: Seems like an exporter problem (the importer looks fine), try downgrading to NeoDex 2.65, 2.61 or 2.6.

As I said I use 3ds Max 2014 Student Version and latest version of NeoDex, I will try using the older ones and see what's the problem.

Andreich is reporting the same problem as me, meaning it exports animations fine, but half of the vertexes are no longer attached to the bones, I can record a whole video of it if you want, and I think I should, as seeing the problem > reading about the problem.

 

[BlinkBoy]

As I said I use 3ds Max 2014 Student Version and latest version of NeoDex, I will try using the older ones and see what's the problem.

Andreich is reporting the same problem as me, meaning it exports animations fine, but half of the vertexes are no longer attached to the bones, I can record a whole video of it if you want, and I think I should, as seeing the problem > reading about the problem.

yep appears to be a problem with geometry. I'll remake the geometry algorithm soon.

no, exported directly to .fbx...



im trying now to get animation right and don't care about materials\textures...
can it cause problems..?



before export i select mesh, go to modifier panel and add "mesh select" (without doing this neodex wont export mesh at all)
to be honest i never worked with 3dsmax... is there a right way to do this..?


are you talking about setting note in track sheet..?

use .obj instead of .fbx is what I'm saying.

yeah but that fbx used quads for some weird reason.

yep track sheet.

 

[Traggey]

Hey there Blinkboy! I'm having some issues with NeoDex for Max 2014 64 bit, trying to export to WC3.

When exporting my mesh on its own, it works perfectly fine, however as soon as I add a bone into the scene I get errors trying to import the model into for example War3 Model Editor v1.07, it reports the error ''Unknown tag "" in Node!''

I have no clue what this is refering to, but at first I wasn't using notes for export, I went through a tutorial and added notes for a small testing animation using only 2 bones. However now NeoDex does not seem to pick up on the fact that I HAVE added notes.

Any idea what I might be doing wrong here?

 

[Kyrbi0]

^This guy is making greatness HELP HIM for the love of all that is good. ; P

 

[Spacebuns]

For some reason I think Max 9 works with better with NeoDex than the modern versions of Max.

 

[Tauer]

This probably wont work, but I remember having some similar issues when opening recently exported models in Magos. I solved it by converting the model to mdl and then back to mdx. Then I could open it in Magos just fine. No idea why.

As I said, it probably wont work for you but it's worth a try I guess.

 

[GhostWolf]

It means your node contains an invalid tracks chunk for some reason with an empty name, hence "" (where valid node tracks are KGTR, KGSC, and KGRT, for translation, scaling, and rotation, respectively).
I don't know why NeoDex exported it, but if you can save your model as mdl, you can find this invalid chunk and delete it.

 

[Traggey]

Oh, hm alright well I can't find anything in the Dopesheet that looks wrong, then again I've never really worked with dopesheets before, any clue how I could fix this inside of max itself?


Okay so after having done some more testing I've managed to get the dopesheet thing working, the only error my mesh has now is the unbalanced weights problems, this is the entire error log.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Weights
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// The next objects have unbalanced weights,
// they may be wrongly animated.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Box001
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Now I figured that wouldn't be much of a problem, as it was a new model, just a cube that I skinned to two bones to learn how to export stuff properly, completely clean scene. HOWEVER! When importing to War3 Model Editor I am still getting that exact same Unkown tag "" in Node! Error, if it isn't related to my dopesheet then I have no idea what is happening here.


Also, Tauer, your MDL conversion trick seems to be working!

Using the MDLX converter and turning it into an MDL instead of MDX now lets me import the mesh and view the animation, although all my inbetween keys seem to be missing, does Neodex not bake animation?


EDIT: So my mind is absolutely blown, after having converted the model to MDL instead of MDX, I once again tried to load the MDX, it now loads into the viewer, I export the MDX a new from max, and BAM, it actually loads, I made no other changes to the max scene inbetween it working and not working.

The only thing that is not functioning now is that my animations do not interpolate between the keys, instead the animations just snap to the keys making it look like a stop-motion mess.
It is also not registering rotations correctly.

 

[GhostWolf]

Your interpolation type is set to None instead of an actual type (Linear, Bezier, Hermite).

Can't say anything about the rotations without seeing data, but if you have keys with a 180 degree difference between them, split them to multiple keys instead. Quaternion interpolation is not deterministic when you have 180 degrees (more than one solution).

About the unknown tag, like I said, if you can export to MDL, which you apparently can, then search for this empty tag and see what it actually is.

 

[Traggey]

I've actually made sure to split the rotation keys to avoid that exact issue, where would the setting for interpolation mode be? Are you refering to one inside of max itself, or a Neodex one?

 

[Tauer]

Not sure if this is it, but what rotation controller have you assigned for your bones? You can check this under the Motion panel in Max. As far as I know, Neodex supports Bezier, TCB and Linear.

 

[Traggey]

I'm using the default controllers, I read up that I should be using Bezier and as I clicked into the controllers it seems that they're set to Bezier by default.
Bezier float to be precise, but as I clicked add more controllers there were nothing that simply said Bezier, not sure if these have been removed from newer verisions of max or if I'm just being blind.

 

[Tauer]

Hmm not sure. It says Euler XYZ, that might not be supported, just guess work though. Maybe try changing it to TCB and test it? I usually use TCB position/rotation and Bezier scale for my models.

 

[Traggey]

Theeeeere we freakin' go, alright cool! Thanks a ton Tauer, now the only problem left is the unbalanced weights, which quite honestly I have no clue what they even mean, I have 1 single bone in my test mesh so I don't understand how anything could be unbalanced.

The weights are deffo freaking out though, most anims look fine, but the looping stand animation has some of the upper verts snapping around for some reason.

 

[Tauer]

Awesome
About the weights, have you tried removing zero weights from your skin? You can do this in the Weight Table. It does seem weird that they would be unbalanced with only 1 bone.
Try checking out BlinkBoys animation tutorial. Very useful for rigging. Maybe try checking all the vertices in the Weight Table and see if all of them are set to 1.0.

 

[Traggey]

Oooooh my lord that seems to have done it, it's been AGES since I had to remove any zero weights so it completely passed over my head, unreal engine spoils me. Thanks again Tauer, savin' the day! I've gone through the animation tutorial a few times but I couldn't find any answers to the problems I was having due to differences in the user interface from modern verisions and all that. But now I am exporting with zero errors in the log, cheers mate!

 

[Tauer]

No problem, glad you got it working! Now start releasing those badass models you're holding on to!

 

[Traggey]

So the node problem is back, I've managed to track it down to my actual keyframes, I set up a notetrack specifying where my animations are, without actually adding keyframes, I export, everything works fine, I import to War3 model editor and the animation track is there and the model loads perfectly fine. HOWEVER, if I now add a keyframe inside that animation to make the model actually move, the note error suddenly appears again. I wasn't getting this error with my test box but with my rigged character it suddenly appears.

What am I doing wrong to cause the keyframes themselves to screw up the tracks?

I should also mention that after converting the exported MDX to an MDL, everything works 100 %

 

[Tauer]

I just tried exporting my Durotan model again, and I get the same node error as you do when I open it in Magos. It's easily fixed by first converting it to mdl and then converting the mdl back to mdx, for me. I'm thinking it has to do with Max version. I used to use 2013 and I never got this error. Lately I've been using 2014 and now I do. What version are you using?

I have no idea what exactly causes it, but if converting to mdl fixes it, it shouldn't be too big of a deal. There are a lot worse exporting errors to deal with, trust me

Then again, I might be wrong and there might be a very simple fix for it inside Max.

 

[Traggey]

As I expected then! Yeah I'm on 2014 X64, so that would be it.

It's not the end of the world for sure, a bit a bottleneck but that's alright I guess, is there any functionality that I lose from using MDL instead of MDX?

 

[Tauer]

Okay, I just tried rigging a box and animating it, then exporting it in 2014. I didn't get the error :/
I really have no idea then. For my Durotan model I think I just did the convert-reconvert every time I exported.

Anyway, you have to convert the mdl back to mdx, since the mdx format is what you actually import into the Warcraft 3 engine. Do you still get the error if you convert the mdl back to mdx?

If so you might need someone who knows more about this than I do to fix this, like BlinkBoy himself. The convert-reconvert workaround is all I got.

 

[Traggey]

Same thing with my box, not getting the error there. NO clue why.

I've imported the MDL and that works perfectly fine, however no, after converting the converted MDL back into MDX the error goes away.

 

[Tauer]

Huh, I didn't even know you could import mdl directly into WC3. Well then it's probably because mdx is more compressed, lowers the filesize. I think mdl is almost 3 times the size of mdx.

 

[Traggey]

Oh my god totally right on that one, the mistweaver is 61 KB's in MDL format, whilst MDX is 20.

Oh well I will take the approach of converting the files back and forth, it seems to do the trick. Thanks again Tauer, you're clearing up alot of my headaches here.

 

[Traggey]

Aaand here we go again! Feel like a total bummer by spamming this stuff, but the exports keep failing. After having exported the model with two bones and getting it to work, I got to work on building the actual rig, now when attempting to export it, this happens.

I have absolutely no clue what this error means.

After playing around a bit more, it looks like this is caused by having more than 2 bones skinned to my mesh, if I take my root join and ONLY skin the mesh to that, it exports fine, however as soon as I add 1 more bone from my rig into the skin, the export breaks.

EDIT: Managed to fix this one, it turns out that after chain linking bones to eachother and freezing the transforms max changes the controllers to Position controllers, so I had to go through every bone again and change it to TCB.

 

[Kyrbi0]

It's great to see you getting help with this stuff. : )

 

[Traggey]

Alright so I'm back again with some more issues, after alot of struggling with animating my model the way I would like to, I have deleted all my animations and gone back to the rigging phase.

There are however three things that I am not entirely sure of how to set up, so I'm building a control rig right and want to be able to independantly control the weapon of my character, aswell as the hat he is wearing, yet of course I still need to be able to link these objects to the characters body. Normaly I would simpl do this through a link constraint but as they are not supported I have no clue how I would set this up.

Secondly I'm having some issues with my IK, I'm using the standard hi-solver and it's working great for the leg movements, however normaly I would be able to grab the characters pelvis bone and move it around after having asigned IK's to the legs, this is not the case when using TCB controllers, the only way to get that behaviour is to move the root bone instead which seems like a bad work around.


Then there is also the problem of making a control rig for other body parts, since we can not use the link constraint, how would I go about doing this properly?

In this tutorial it seems that all constraints are supposed to be supported.
Happy Animating with IK

 

[Tauer]

Neodex fully supports linking bones using the Select and Link tool, so I can't see why there would be any problems with that? Any particular reason you use link constraint instead of just linking them with the link tool?

I also don't have an issue moving the pelvis bone using IK, but I use IK Limb not Hi-solver. Maybe try using that instead? Anyway I actually normally move the root bone instead of the pelvis myself, dunno why. Just a preference I guess.

About constraints:

NeoDex since version 2.3 can export IK systems naturally. It does not, however, support all the constraints and Ik Solvers.

NeoDex Supports:

• IK Solvers:
  • HI Solver.
  • Limb IK Solver.
  • SplineIK Solver.
• Constraints:
  • Orientation Constraint.
  • Look-at Constraint.

From the Animating with IK tutorial.

 

[Traggey]

The reason I want to use link constraints is because it can use animated re-linking, so I can link the weapon to the characters hand, and whenever I want to, link it to the world instead. I do not believe you can do this with just the normal chain link tool.

 

[Tauer]

Ah, got it. Yeah this isn't supported far as I know. In WC3 these effects (like dropping a weapon) are usually achieved by having a copy of the geoset linked to its own bone and then animating the visibility. This can be used to mimic de-linking animations. A hassle for sure, but the only way this is possible in WC3 as far as I know.

 

[Traggey]

Aaah, didn't even consider that, clever. That's a bit of a pain for the polycounts though.

 

[Tauer]

Indeed it is. That's the main reason I rarely do it. It works fine for the most part though.

Remember to use a supported controller for the visibility though. I usually use On/Off controller for weapons.

 

[Traggey]

Oh well, looks like I'll disconnect the bones from the rig all together and animate them that way. This'll be a blast!

 

[WereElf]

I can't find the download link. The post is so long and has too many links >.<
Can you put the download link on top of the post??

 

[ShadowMidas]

help

 

[Traggey]

help

Wiiiiiith..?

 

[ShadowMidas]

Wiiiiiith..?

nvm

 

[Kyrbi0]

Ok then.

 

[Hantoo]

Wanna ask, By any chance if I animate the model in Blender/Maya and import with .fbx or .dae format to 3DS MAX with neodex able to export properly into warcraft model? I have not started yet but due to what i am going to learn in college and my personal love to blender, most probably I'm going to use Maya and blender for most 3D work...

or the converting the setting is too painful that it is better to just reanimate in 3DS Max?

 

[SABREWULF]

Is your tool now can convert very big models or still not?

 

[karaulov]

How to open model with one object : Light ? (i allways get error at import and export)
(gmax and 3dsmax51)

 

[Idaero Ace]

I can't find the download link. The post is so long and has too many links >.<
Can you put the download link on top of the post??

here : http://www.hiveworkshop.com/attachments/neodex-2-7-zip.145229/

Wanna ask, By any chance if I animate the model in Blender/Maya and import with .fbx or .dae format to 3DS MAX with neodex able to export properly into warcraft model? I have not started yet but due to what i am going to learn in college and my personal love to blender, most probably I'm going to use Maya and blender for most 3D work...

or the converting the setting is too painful that it is better to just reanimate in 3DS Max?

based from my knowledge* about 3d tool, it will work
*my knowledge is 0
edit:
i make some experiment:
1. inport a fbx from game rip, and export t, cant open the mdx
2. same, i delete all bones, abled to export and open it
3. inpoert a mdx, export as fbx, and inport the fbx, then export ad mdx, cant open the file.
also, all of my fbx will make leyframes on each frames

 

[karaulov]

How to use in 2017 3ds max ?

 

[Tauer]

How to use in 2017 3ds max ?

Until we get confirmation from BlinkBoy, I think you should consider NeoDex incompatible with 2017.
I can confirm that it works on 2016.

 

[karaulov]

I FIX IT!

Just rename Dictionary to noDictionary in code, and it works in 2017 3ds max. (but need reinstall neodex after this changes)

 

[Lt_Hawkeye]

Can someone tell me the possible reasons as to why some mdx files can't be imported in neodex?

 

[karaulov]

Yes, i have same problem. For example all sky models can't be imported.
and models with Light can't be exported (error in script, "k.count" )

 

[Forthfate]

I FIX IT!

Just rename Dictionary to noDictionary in code, and it works in 2017 3ds max. (but need reinstall neodex after this changes)

karauluv,

can you help me a problem you fixed ?

i want fix this plugin for 3ds max 2017 but i couldt understand this


"Just rename Dictionary to noDictionary in code, and it works in 2017 3ds max. (but need reinstall neodex after this changes)"


how can i do this??

 

[karaulov]

Need rename string "Dictionary" to "other_string" in NeoDex files , "Dictionary" is 'reserved word' in 3ds max 2017

 

[Spacebuns]

From my experience it's best to use an old version of Max with NeoDex such as Max 8 or 9.