Blizzard releases WarCraft 3 assets for StarCraft 2 modding

[Orcnet]

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Blizzard has released Warcraft III official assets to be used for StarCraft II Arcade modders or so called the PTR (Public Test Realm).

A post on the Battle.net blog explains all the hero models for the primary four races, all neutrals creatures along with their sounds, structures, spell effects, ambient sounds, music and custom user interfaces for each race are all available via quote:

We’re excited to announce the models and assets that made Warcraft III an amazing universe to explore are now available in the StarCraft II PTR.

This brings over three thousand new materials for the amazing Arcade development community to work with, including new hero models for the 4 primary races, all of the original Warcraft III models including neutral creatures and their sounds as well as doodads, structures, spell effects, ambient sounds, music and custom user interfaces for each race.

See the full information on Battle.net blog here: LINK

The Arcade serves as a portal for modders to share their creations, and other members of the community to download them. While some change game modes or other features, the more ambitious in the community have the ability to build entire games from scratch.

This news is based from IGN's game report.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Apparently the mod is not as user friendly as people would like at the moment. Some people needed to physically move the mod file to use it.

 

[Deleted member 212788]

Have they updated them (adding to poly count/uprezing textures)? If no, then that's really lazy.

 

[Tauer]

Have they updated them (adding to poly count/uprezing textures)? If no, then that's really lazy.

According to the news on Blizz's site, it includes new hero models for the 4 primary races. So that would mean paladin, dreadlord etc.. all the standard heroes are remade in HD. But everything else, as far as I understand, are the same models/textures as WC3.

Still if somebody could put all of this into a SC project and release it, it could serve as a great base to expand on for other modders to remake WC3 in SC2's superior engine. Even just importing the original assets would look better because of better shaders and real-time shadows etc.

I'd sure like to see some screenshots/gameplay videos of this in action.

 

[ShadowDemonLord]

I doubt they did this, but I think it'd be interesting to watch the buildings fall apart instead of just explode. Maybe have some rag dolls in there as well... With all these new models, it certainly would make starcraft 2 tower defenses more diverse.

 

[Deleted member 212788]

And they'd still have almost 4 times less models than Wc3.

 

[Hawkwing]

These were posted on mmochampion the other day. I don't have the PTR so I can't check if these models are indeed there, but they make for some great eye candy regardless.

Doodads, Neutral Buildings, and Human Towers

Demons and Creeps (Inlcuding a Frog!)

Heroes and Summoned Units

Edit: Made the image links a lot more obvious because I want people to see this.

 

[Selaya]

Doesn`t really change a thing.
An open SC2 would be a godsend, but this will happen on the day when 1 + 1 = 3

 

[Dr Super Good]

An open SC2 would be a godsend, but this will happen on the day when 1 + 1 = 3

What on earth is "an open SC2"?

 

[Selaya]

LAN option, playing maps vanilla BNet style (create your own game from a local mapfile of your choice), not having to log into your BNet account to use the editor, just to name some.

 

[Rui]

These were posted on mmochampion the other day (1, 2, 3). I don't have the PTR so I can't check if these models are indeed there, but they make for some great eye candy regardless.

Oh man those look great. I was under the impression from some posts in SC2Mapster that they had ported straight from wc3. They apparently did miss the chance to add decals though. That's a damn shame :s Footman shield definitely should have decal.

 

[LordDz]

Oh man those look great. I was under the impression from some posts in SC2Mapster that they had ported straight from wc3. They apparently did miss the chance to add decals though. That's a damn shame :s Footman shield definitely should have decal.

You can probably add them in the editor, so you can have custom decals.

 

[Hawkwing]

Oh man those look great. I was under the impression from some posts in SC2Mapster that they had ported straight from wc3. They apparently did miss the chance to add decals though. That's a damn shame :s Footman shield definitely should have decal.

Support for decals would be super easy to add with the plugins for 3D Studio Max, so long as there's an easy way to import the models into the program. I don't know how reliable the importers are.

 

[Dr Super Good]

LAN option

SC2 does support that via some form of local play system. Not that anyone ever uses LAN anymore outside of VPN WANs.

playing maps vanilla BNet style (create your own game from a local mapfile of your choice),

Except BattleNet gives you all the maps? I guess they had to do this for legal reasons (as we all know some maps from WC3 were iffy).

not having to log into your BNet account to use the editor

You do not have to? Once you log in once, it will cache the authentication. Generally I find I never need to log in to use the SC2 Editor as I use BattleNet 2.0 and SC2 enough that the cache is always valid. It might need re-authentication every 30 days or so and if you do not play any Blizzard game in that time period something is probably wrong with you.

Oh man those look great. I was under the impression from some posts in SC2Mapster that they had ported straight from wc3. They apparently did miss the chance to add decals though. That's a damn shame :s Footman shield definitely should have decal.

Apparently there is some random buggy data that accompanies it as well. Some assets were also remade or enhanced (possibly based on internal high-quality versions made for WC3 that were reduced for release due to limitations of the time?). Sadly I think most will be straight ports. However the SC2 engine will still make them look better since they will still render with real time shadows and the advanced illumination model.

They apparently did miss the chance to add decals though. That's a damn shame :s Footman shield definitely should have decal.

They had limited resources to do all of this. The fact no fan has already done this for all WC3 models shows that it is not an easy thing to do as is.

Maybe some expansion models could be added to the footman to add the decal? I recall hearing that you can add/replace model chunks from an expansion file. This would mean that decal support could be added with a smallish user made mod while the bulk of the assets still come from the SC2 WC3 standard mod.

 

[Gilles]

Kinda neat. Don't think it will change much.

 

[Tauer]

These were posted on mmochampion the other day. I don't have the PTR so I can't check if these models are indeed there, but they make for some great eye candy regardless.

Doodads, Neutral Buildings, and Human Towers

Demons and Creeps (Inlcuding a Frog!)

Heroes and Summoned Units

Edit: Made the image links a lot more obvious because I want people to see this.

Oh yeah, that's looking way better than I had imagined. Looks like they upped the polycount, texture size and generated normal maps for them as well. That's pretty cool.

Here's a comparison, from another angle:

Comparison

 

[Orcnet]

I always had this eye-bugging issue whenever I see a Demon Hunter and its black tattoos as lacking, and in some point I was hoping it should be team colored, Blizz finally got that idea (or maybe too late for warcraft 3) to fix it.

Now he looks like he's ready to slice demons and chew mana, and he's done chewing mana. Also PotM having uh nice jugs made her look visible in comparison with the original.

 

[Rui]

Demon Hunter looks cool indeed, but I think the Dark Ranger has lost her gloom, when I looked at her she looked more like Shandris.

Btw, did anyone notice the black raven next to the night elf heroes? Is that the druid of the talon or is it medivh's raven form? I remember druids' color on raven form being something between blue and magenta.

 

[Deleted member 212788]

I have a question to the people who have more exprerience than me. How feasible is taking these models from SC2 and porting them back to wc3? I know that may seem like a step backwards but if we had the whole reworked wc3 library, we could just update the mpq files wc3 has with these assets. Assuming that's even possible though. Just a simple idea.

 

[LordDz]

Demon Hunter looks cool indeed, but I think the Dark Ranger has lost her gloom, when I looked at her she looked more like Shandris.

Btw, did anyone notice the black raven next to the night elf heroes? Is that the druid of the talon or is it medivh's raven form? I remember druids' color on raven form being something between blue and magenta.

It's medvih. The druid of the talon is purple.

And I think if you apply a darker team colour for the Dark ranger, she might look more undeadish and evilish.

 

[oger-lord]

Now we only need a trick to increase the ground texture resolution and we can make a Wc3 HD mpq.

 

[Dr Super Good]

I have a question to the people who have more exprerience than me. How feasible is taking these models from SC2 and porting them back to wc3? I know that may seem like a step backwards but if we had the whole reworked wc3 library, we could just update the mpq files wc3 has with these assets. Assuming that's even possible though. Just a simple idea.

In theory it is possible, however it is certainly a bad idea. WC3 being Direct 3D8 technology cannot cope with high polycount assets. Spam enough Tauren Chieftains as is and the graphics will literally melt in front of you into a swirling mass of triangles. The high resolution textures might also push the API beyond what it is designed for.

 

[Deleted member 212788]

Is it really that bad? I mean, I've seen some projects like "Requiem" and "Memento Mori" which have rather high poly stuff and they don't seem to be having issues. There must be some sort of workaround.

 

[Rui]

I'm starting to think maybe a joint effort is better in the endeavor to port WC3 models into SC2. SC2: Armies of Azeroth has done it pretty well and I've seen good ports elsewhere too.

 

[emperor_d3st]

If they did this and other moves like this when SC2 came out then perhaps the modding scene (and SC2 arcade) wouldn't be in this lifeless state.

 

[_lycan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--FxGGW3aY0#t=12

 

[Tauer]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--FxGGW3aY0#t=12

Hm, looks like it's only the models in those pictures that have been remade, everything else is the same.

Hopefully they'll upgrade the others over time.

 

[knight26]

^ I don't think that's what Blizzard has released. I just checked it out, it seems fan made.

HEY GUYS, How do I find the these wc3 models in the Stracraft 2 Editor? I can't find them anywhere. I did download the PTR, I have that editor.

 

[Dr Super Good]

HEY GUYS, How do I find the these wc3 models in the Stracraft 2 Editor? I can't find them anywhere. I did download the PTR, I have that editor.

I already answered that...

Apparently the mod is not as user friendly as people would like at the moment. Some people needed to physically move the mod file to use it.

By "move" I mean that they moved it to their SC2 mod folder and imported from there.

 

[Heinvers]

Doodads, Neutral Buildings, and Human Towers

I hope those are not the final tree models, they look awkward.

 

[oger-lord]

You know how Wc3 trees look like?

Trees

 

[Heinvers]

Of course I do, I haven't been born yesterday.
That's why I don't use them.

Still the new trees look shitty compared to the rest of the in-game ones in sc2.

 

[Gilles]

They're not great, but not that bad either. The trunks are weird, but I bet from isometric they look ok.

 

[knight26]

@Dr super good
Thanks man, well that's the part I didn't understand. I thought it would be as easy as have a group in the editor which said Wc3 assets. :/ I have no idea how to do what you just said, though.
Edit: @Dr super good, could you please elaborate further as to how one 'moves' these files to the mod folder? I don't want to risk breaking the game and am not willing to take any chances. I assume it has to do with the folders wc3 assets and wc3 data, which are now in the PTR folder of starcraft II?.
It's a shame, having them there, and not being able to view them.

To all the others, after you download the PTR, there will be a mod there with wc3, that is NOT the blizzard assets. Those models are the imported wc3 mpq models(originals/vanilla) and they look utterly like shit.
So do not get pessimistic, I hope there's a workaround at the availability of the new assets, for easier modding of course. I hope in the near future we get new campaigns and maps, completely in starcrat 2. It seems like a good idea, to be honest. Though it sucks how little informative they are for this change.
There seems to be an update how mods will work on Starcraft 2, there's a new 'method' where modders don't necessarily need to constantly modify mods, they can simply create a blank "super mod", called extension mod. Which will basically serve as a game mechanic, within the game mechanics. Which sounds awesome and complicated at the same time.
And Heinie, I suppose we will need to see them ingame, in action, to make a comparison.

 

[Dr Super Good]

@Dr super good
Thanks man, well that's the part I didn't understand. I thought it would be as easy as have a group in the editor which said Wc3 assets. :/ I have no idea how to do what you just said, though.
Edit: @Dr super good, could you please elaborate further as to how one 'moves' these files to the mod folder? I don't want to risk breaking the game and am not willing to take any chances. I assume it has to do with the folders wc3 assets and wc3 data, which are now in the PTR folder of starcraft II?.
It's a shame, having them there, and not being able to view them.

No I cannot as I do not have the PTR.

I am only forwarding what other people have said. They have said that you need to move the mod files from where they are located to your mods folder and then import the mode locally from that folder. When it is released it will probably become a standard part of SC2 so will not be a problem however until then you need to do such a work around.

To all the others, after you download the PTR, there will be a mod there with wc3, that is NOT the blizzard assets. Those models are the imported wc3 mpq models(originals/vanilla) and they look utterly like shit.
So do not get pessimistic, I hope there's a workaround at the availability of the new assets, for easier modding of course. I hope in the near future we get new campaigns and maps, completely in starcrat 2. It seems like a good idea, to be honest. Though it sucks how little informative they are for this change.
There seems to be an update how mods will work on Starcraft 2, there's a new 'method' where modders don't necessarily need to constantly modify mods, they can simply create a blank "super mod", called extension mod. Which will basically serve as a game mechanic, within the game mechanics. Which sounds awesome and complicated at the same time.
And Heinie, I suppose we will need to see them ingame, in action, to make a comparison.

If you read the Blizzard post carefully they said that they upgraded the 4 heroes for each race and the rest were ported. They did not say anything else has been upgraded. The images people are posting above come from some site and might not be the actual official models.

Some models may be better quality for the reasons I said earlier, they might have had higher than allowed versions for WC3 that they optimized down for release.

Some people report some "hacked together" data for the assets. However it is far from usable and most likely was Blizzard testing stuff.

The fact is that if you want an ogre, orc, elf or whatever in your map this mod allows you to have one. Even if it looks like a dump compared to your super power armoured marine. It also will look better than WC3 as SC2 illumination model is far superior supporting real shadows (gasp, WC3 used blobs) and HDR (if you ever learn to use it properly).

 

[handclaw]

If you read the Blizzard post carefully they said that they upgraded the 4 heroes for each race and the rest were ported. They did not say anything else has been upgraded. The images people are posting above come from some site and might not be the actual official models.

Hey there, just wanted to quickly address this:

Here is the guy who made these screenshots 1 2 3 and posted them on "some site".

They are official models from the PTR. I made the screenshots to have a proper overview what they actually updated and shared them on several sites to clear things up.

 

[Dr Super Good]

I really should get the PTR so I can make side-by-side comparison photos.

 

[Zaramorus]

Warcraft 4 confirmed?

 

[Duke]

damn I should probably install sc2 again

 

[knight26]

Warcraft 4 confirmed?

More like totally scraped forever. :/

Edit:

If you read the Blizzard post carefully they said that they upgraded the 4 heroes for each race and the rest were ported. They did not say anything else has been upgraded. The images people are posting above come from some site and might not be the actual official models.

Yes, though, in the PTR, there seems to be a mod with imported wc3 material, and those are the original/vanilla ones. What I was saying is, that mod doesn't have the HD-ish new hero models, trees, doodads, etc. It has the same wc3 ones, imported into the sc2 engine.
And as the person above explained, quite a few things have been redone, such as the neutral buildings, walls, new trees.
Probably blizzard is still holding back these assets until the new update goes public for all :/

 

[Rui]

I'm sorry to be the one to ask this nooby question, but what the heck is the PTR and what does it stand for? xD

 

[LordDz]

Public Realm Testing, in your battle.net program, click on starcraft 2 and just over the big Play button there is a region select, you can select PTR there.

 

[knight26]

I made a few screenshots, for comparison.
Now, most will stay the same however, the starcraft II version will get a heroes, trees, and a few building revamps. Keep that in mind.
I must say, after a few gameplays, I can really notice the huge difference.. Dr Super Good, was right after all. I mostly like how the units "hide".
Note:
-there are a few things missing, example only one UI.. which is totally lame
-some missing mechanics, like selecting the wisp, while building altar or moonwell, etc.
-It is not standard to the newest wc3 patch, meaning there are differences in game balance.
-A few other things
(Both games are in ultra graphics and 1920x1080 full HD screen)

1.Starcraft II wc3 assets(not complete, yet)
2.Wacraft III normal

 

[Orcnet]

I'm sorry to be the one to ask this nooby question, but what the heck is the PTR and what does it stand for? xD

Its called a Public Test Realm, I only knew this when I was building up the news haha, I forgot to place some links.

I'll do keep up some important materials next time when I'll batch up news on upcoming articles.

 

[Rui]

Thank you, Orcnet && LordDz.

I'm glad Blizzard decided to update the trees. Although they look awkward, wc3's vanilla trees have shadows embedded by default. You'll notice if you rotate them around. Still, the Lordaeron Summer trees look somewhat awkward with SC2's shading because their shadow doesn't cover their roots.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Yes, though, in the PTR, there seems to be a mod with imported wc3 material, and those are the original/vanilla ones. What I was saying is, that mod doesn't have the HD-ish new hero models, trees, doodads, etc. It has the same wc3 ones, imported into the sc2 engine.
And as the person above explained, quite a few things have been redone, such as the neutral buildings, walls, new trees.
Probably blizzard is still holding back these assets until the new update goes public for all :/

It has both. The originals are "Wc3" while the remakes are "Wc3HD". Look more carefully through it and you will find them.

 

[Talavaj]

In theory it is possible, however it is certainly a bad idea. WC3 being Direct 3D8 technology cannot cope with high polycount assets. Spam enough Tauren Chieftains as is and the graphics will literally melt in front of you into a swirling mass of triangles. The high resolution textures might also push the API beyond what it is designed for.

Is it really that bad? I mean, I've seen some projects like "Requiem" and "Memento Mori" which have rather high poly stuff and they don't seem to be having issues. There must be some sort of workaround.

It probably has something to do with bones or matrix groups. Tauren Chieftain actually has less polies than most heroes but he has many more bones and matrix groups than others.
Spamming high poly doodads without animations has no ill effects however, at least not as far as I know.

It is safe to assume these models would have much more complex skinning so it could be a problem yeah, but even then we are talking about like 16,500~ bones or 30k matrix groups having to be on the screen at the same time.
As for textures, that is probably irrelevant as the game forces a maximum of 512px or below mipmaps regardless of their full dimensions anyway.
MM has no issues because there aren't many units running around really.

 

[Jaina Proudless]

These are so beautiful compared to the original, especially the priestess of the moon and the farseer.

 

[_lycan]

So dsg tell me how do you expect us to map in sc2 when the map limits are so small (which means no azeroth wars or gaias) and the water is simply a graphical element...

 

[Dr Super Good]

when the map limits are so small

They are the same as the default limits of WC3? Both support 256*256 maps. WC3 never preformed well with larger maps anyway.

The building grid is half the resolution I do admit however mostly in WC3 buildings were 2*2 anyway (which is exactly 1 tile in SC2 and WC3).

A lot of WC3 maps did not have to be as big as they were. Especially RPGs I often find "waste" a lot of space by failing to re-use. For example all the "low-level" areas become wasted space if everyone in the game is beyond needing them. If such areas were recycled and re-populated with more useful content then you will find suddenly you have tons of space.

and the water is simply a graphical element...

Just like in WC3. SC2 water has awesome physical effects such as rubble floating, splashes as units move through etc however it is limited to being completely flat and in large cells. WC3 water had no physical effects associated with it at all with the only some generic effects for shorlines and units however it supported per-node resolution, slopes and as many height levels as terrain nodes.

If you are talking about water pathing that is a completely different issue and is completely unrelated to any form of water visuals on he map. You could easily make water land walkable and land water walkable just by painting different pathing over that area (a feature World Edit lacked). SC2 has the issue that there is no separate water pathing map meaning that hacky work arounds are required. That said using boats are only one way of delivering units around the map, nothing stops you migrating to goblin zeppelins and other air units which are even better supported in SC2 than in WC3.