Explain to me the Warcraft model terms

[stan0033]

Heyy. im wondering something,

with modelling as 3DS MAX, Wings 3D etc
there are bones,Vertex(points), Edges, faces, and select whole object.

With warcraft 3 there are: (MAGOS,MDLvis..)
bones,Vertex, Faces, Groups(???), extents(???), and Geosets(basically objects)


Can someone explain to me what's going on?

 

[GhostWolf]

Geosets = meshes.
Matrix Groups = not actually a modeling thing, just a way to declare how the matrices are stored in the file (not needed for Reforged HD because there "groups" are constant size = 4).
Matrices = bone indices.
Vertex Groups = tells you what matrix groups the vertices use for their skinning.
Extents = bounding shapes of geosets or the model as a whole. Generally used in games for collisions, physics, selecting objects with the mouse pointer, culling, etc., however in wc3 you have also explicit collision shape objects, I don't know exactly what wc3 uses for what. A wc3 extent represents both a bounding box and a bounding sphere, probably as an optimization.

As to what a mesh is, or how skeletal animations work, or what bounding shapes are, use your favorite online search engine.

 

[The_Silent]

Extensions for models in wc3 seems to exist to control clipping and rendering. How far away, or close, the camera is before the model should no longer be rendered. Also, it controls the position of the health bar.

 

[Macadamia]

Yes it does.
But thats not all. I wanted to reduce the pre-selection change of the cursor on one of my models ingame.

I initially thought I could solve this with a smaller collision shape, but it did not help at all. I guess collision is rather used for.... er collision with the other models in conjunction with the object editor collision size.

To be able to select other units right besides my model without this one preventing it with its huge pre-selection modifier for the mouse pointer, I had to alter the extents.
As a result, the model works perfect ingame so far, the hp bar displays lower and that helps, but the pre-selection now only changes when i reach the edges of the model, and as I set the extent quite low on the z axis, I don't have issues with the model height preventing the selection of other units ingame anymore.


Now what I did is change the extents to the desired "collision share" I wanted for all geosets and animations, and I am not sure I didn't only need to changed the main model extents, if anyone knows that would be really useful for all beginner modelers around !