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Mdlvis 1.41

This tool originates from here

Mdlvis, a pretty easy war3 model-editing and animating tool.. it can work around the mesh and rewrap quickly, separate geosets easily, tweak normals, transfer meshes from one model to the other and rig them, position bones, particle effect nodes, attachment points, can make global, and regular animations, can compress and optimize models..

This tool was originally created by Alexey from xgm.ru.

Note to those on patch 1.28+:
Due to some of the archive changes/migration in 1.28, you may run into some issues getting MDLVis to run. Check out this post for a potential solution:
Mdlvis

Changelog:
MDLVIS 1.41

-Wotlk alpha and beta support
-minor bugfixes (not specified)


Keywords:
mdlvis, model, editing, and, animating, tool
Contents

MdlVis 1.41 (Binary)

Reviews
20:10, 9th Nov 2013 Ralle:
Level 1
Joined
Jan 25, 2015
Messages
1
can someone help me with UV map editor. can i somehow change .blp tiles in UV map editor, for example blizzard have ice.blp, and I want put some another .blp like flame4.blp?
 
Level 15
Joined
Sep 6, 2015
Messages
576
Can someone explain to me why this tool has (outdated) Warcraft 3 game files in its folder? The tool (only the .exe) is supposed to go into the Warcraft III directory (to use the game files). There is a possibility that these old-patch game files create an incompatibility which affects the models edited with this tool on the new patches (some of these old-patch files are even differently named than the new ones and one of them doesn't exist any more in the new patches).
On the other hand, when I downloaded the tool from xgm.ru (there, only the .exe is provided) and put it into the Warcraft 3 directory, MdlVis was really unstable and shaking all the time, which draws me to the conclusion that MdlVis is maybe incompatible with the new patches, and that's why it needs old Warcraft 3 game files to function properly.

Edit: If you tick "Workplane" on the right, there is no more shaking and unstableness with the new-patch files. You can use the new-patch files without any problem instead of using the provided old-patch files. The shaking exists with the old-patch files too when "Workplane" isn't ticked, it's just that the Hive download has a pre-set setup with it ticked. You can also copy the new-patch files from the Warcraft 3 folder into another folder which contains MdlVis.exe for MdlVis to use them separately from the game.
 
Last edited:
Level 4
Joined
Jun 19, 2010
Messages
49
Alerts: "It has been a while since you downloaded Mdlvis. Please consider leaving feedback and a rating."
Well, wanted to answer following question anyway, since there still is no info in the description:
xorkatoss said:
also which version is it?
- It's Mdlvis1.40Eng [2007_03_06] (Alexey2005) & i think it's still the latest...

my feedback:
- bad: annoying bug: you cannot open MDL files with any comments inside (= "//...")
- good: strong in MDX/MDL conversion: for converting i would prefer mdlvis, because it could convert the human cannon tower (the one with 3rd upgrade) while Magos just gave error msg!
 

Kyrbi0

Arena Moderator
Level 44
Joined
Jul 29, 2008
Messages
9,487
"Roundabout"?

I don't know about him, but I simply copy-pasted the MPQs from my standard Wc3 install folder a long time ago, when it was readily available (v1.26 maybe?). Since the MPQs are now 'hidden', all these old programs that directly utilize them will need a copy to continue doing so (& will probably miss out on anything new added (as unlikely as that is)).

It's worked pretty well for me so far.
 

Kyrbi0

Arena Moderator
Level 44
Joined
Jul 29, 2008
Messages
9,487
What I mean is, I can't find the original .MPQs and I'm wondering if I've gone and overwritten them by accident.
I don't know about 'overwritten', but from what I have learned (don't quote me on this), one of the newer updates to Warcraft 3 changed it's back-end in a number of substantial ways; most pertinently, it 'removed' or rather 'hid' the MPQs 'behind the scenes' so they are not readily accessible anymore. This has caused some frustration to folks like me who depend on custom MPQs for my stuff, and for people using those 3rd-party modeling tools (also like me) that depend on them as well.

HerrDave said:
If this is the case, this update effectively ended my modeling and animating for Wc3.
Oh come now, no need to be hyperbolic. : ) I'm 100% sure you can get a copy of the older MPQs from somebody here (if it isn't already uploaded somewhere on the Hive). Heck I'd do it if I could figure out how.
 
I used to have the Mdlvis .exe in the WC3 folder, that's why I didn't have any copies of the MPQs.
I still had a 1.27 installer for both ROC and TFT downloaded from battle.net on my computer so I just copied the MPQs from that (they're in the Installer Tome.mpq).

I also have the War3ModelEditor .exe in the WC3 folder, which still works fine.
 
Level 11
Joined
Jul 4, 2016
Messages
626
having a problem with mdlvis causing the model to crash during loading of the map even without using any of the optimizer features when saving some models in it.
 
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Is this tool open source? I might like to play with the code.

If you need old style MPQs, here's a quick fix: download build 3 from this MiniWc3 link, it's 100 MB and contains ultracompressed MPQs from before the new patches:

https://www.hiveworkshop.com/attachments/build3-zip.259156/

When MdlVis loads the ultracompressed textures they're going to look low-resolution, but I think it should get the program working again if you were stuck and don't like torrenting.
 
I am not aware of whether the developers of Mdlvis or Magos are still active at all. If they are active, I should talk to them about merging codebases with the Matrix Eater and building one single tool. So, if there is somebody updating Mdlvis out there, please message me.
 
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