Best Model Editing/Creation Tools?

[Tommi Gustafsson]

Hello!

We are thinking of creating some edits or completely new models for Warcraft III this year. I'd like to ask people around here, what they think are the best tools for beginning and intermediate model editing/creation for Warcraft III?

We have the following tools at our disposal:

1. Autodesk 3ds Max 2016 with NeoDex 2.7
2. Autodesk Maya 2016
3. Blender
4. GMAX with NeoDex 2.7
5. Magos' Model Editor
6. MdlVis
7. Matrix Eater
8. Oinkerwinkle's tools

We would like to do something like changing the head and the texture of a model, as well as creating some completely new models, maybe. We do not have so much experience with 3D editing, but some people have used Blender, at least. Also, one of our friends can teach us 3ds Max, but he hasn't done any Warcraft III editing with it (he is working for a game company, though).

Let me know, what do you think that we should use for learning Warcraft III model editing/creation!

Best regards,
Tommi

 

[HappyTauren]

In all honesty, it's better to just get someone who knows how to do all of this. Learning all of this from scratch (especially with small modelling knowledge) in 2018 is kind of too late, because there are way too many intricancies of wc3 modelling in general.

Those tools are all good and I've used them all in past, so I have nothing to add there.

 

[Tommi Gustafsson]

Thanks, we'll then post our model ideas to the request forum, without any reward this time I think.

 

[HappyTauren]

Yeah, if your project is nice and fun, and you can gather a good player base, you can also probably find people to make stuff for you. But as I said, starting to get into all of the modelling stuff in 2018 is just not worth it, unless the people doing it plan to expand onto other engines/games, in which case they're better off learning basic modeling/animation/texturing and then shooting to create unity/unreal assets, rather than wc3 assets, because the techniques and the format are very dated.

 

[GhostWolf]

I've never used Matrix Eater, but from what I can gather it is the standard tool for geomerging nowadays?

For making models from scratch, the best is clearly 3ds Max 5 + Art Tools

BlinkBoy said he is working on a new rewrite of NeoDex a while ago. When that comes out, 3ds Max should probably be used by everyone.
I am not saying it should be used by everyone right now mostly because it's very confusing with some things, and has no proper guide on how to use it. Feature-wise it already supports Art Tools afaik and has lots of extra features (like IK animation baking, etc.)

Blender has no updated plugins for WC3 last I checked. Once upon a time someone made Warblender, but it was never finished, nor did it ever support animations and any advanced usage of models.

Some people use Milkshape for model editing, but it's so outdated that you can't even extrude faces, and need to create and connect vertices manually to form faces. It supports WC3 models out of the box as far as I remember.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Free community tools have become so good that I rarely ever use the "hard stuff" anymore.

It's been years I last used Blender or 3DSMax.


The only thing I ever use 3dsmax or Blender for is creating a basic mesh. Blender recently got some sculpturing tools added to the toolset, which is amazing.

Other than that, I only ever use Magos, MDLVis and Matrixeater for all rigging, mapping and animating purposes. After I finish the unrigged and unmapped mesh, I do everything in these tools and never convert back.


Granted, Blender and Max have some ease-of-use tools for faster animating, but I hate the converting and compatibility issues and MDLVis is good enough for professionally looking animations anyway, as can be seen here: Zwiebel's animation corner
Everything you see there has been made from scratch completely in MDLVis, including mesh, UV-mapping and animations.


Magos (managing nodes, effects and materials) + MDLVis (modelling and animating) + Matrixeater (merging geosets) is a nice combo that can do pretty much everything.

 

[Kyrbi0]

Magos (managing nodes, effects and materials) + MDLVis (modelling and animating) + Matrixeater (merging geosets) is a nice combo that can do pretty much everything.

Really? What is it about Matrix Eater that makes it ideal for Geoset merging? I thought only Mdlvis had that schweet literal "copy & paste" functionality...

Honestly I always understood the big 'draw' of Matrix Eater was primarily the Animation Merging; e.g. being able to merge any two animation sets (or even just parts thereof) & maintain both in the merged modelb(ala perfect mounted units).

 

[Cuore]

Mdlvis copypasting tends to screw up the rigging. If you copypaste animated geometry then often you have to re-rig it.
Matrix eater import functionalities let you control with relative precision how the imported geoset is rigged.
Just my 0.02€, to be taken with a grain of salt. People with more experience than me surely can explain the differences better.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Really? What is it about Matrix Eater that makes it ideal for Geoset merging? I thought only Mdlvis had that schweet literal "copy & paste" functionality...

I don't know what it is, but MDLVis copy & paste has several bugs and issues when it comes to combining multiple geosets sharing the same texture into one.
With Matrixeater, I never had these issues. Also, the inbuilt-geoset merger of Matrixeater is imho more convenient to use that copy/pasting in MDLVis.

But that's just me. Yes, Matrixeater is optional. It just adds some layers of convenience.