What you're looking for does (sort of) exist. First of all, there is in fact a plugin that works for later versions of max.
http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/...neodex-78b-mdl-kit-3dsmax-6-2010-gmax-115767/
Unfortunately, it does not do everything you want it to and even if it did you would still be screwed. It is a near exact copy of the warcraft 3 art tools plugin blizzard made, and it works for 3ds Max versions 2006 - 2010. It provides the warcraft 3 material, warcraft 3 particle systems, converts vertex animations to bone animations, does some inverse kinematics modification (I'm assuming this is to make it compatible with warcraft 3, I've never tried it.) It also converts Max files to MDL files, but does not convert any warcraft 3 file types to to max files. In order to do that you need to go through a long and complicated process involving unstable third party software, milkshape, and max plugins.
If your friend has 3ds Max 2006 - 2010 he can make it in there or make it in 2012 and import it.
If you do figure it out, here are some general rules of thumb for making warcraft 3 models in 3ds max. Show these to your friend if things work out.
<> The material type needs to be changed from standard to the warcraft 3 material that comes with neodex in order to apply textures. You then click on texture settings and assign the bitmap, and only the bitmap. You cannot assign multiple texture layers to a warcraft 3 model. (Ex- normal maps, bump maps, specular etc.)
<> Warcraft 3 only supports polygonal geometry. Splines and NURBS surfaces will export wrong. Also, before you export the model, you MUST either convert all geometry to an editable mesh or apply the edit mesh modifier at the top of the modifier stack, and then select the entire model before exporting.
<> Warcraft shades models via smooth shading. The problem is, it isn't actually smooth shading. It shades models via individual triangles, and doesn't even do that very well. You need very clean topology or the shading will look very, very bad. Try to make the model out of as few surfaces as possible, so it will shade them more realistically. If you use boolean operations, (which is not advised) it will screw up the shading. This can be solved via retopology and retriangulation if you do it right.
<> Animation is tricky. Anything assigned to the skin modifier as a bone will be exported as a bone. It is advised you use bone animations. Vertex animations need to be converted, and afterwards can severely warp the model and are very inefficient. And to add to the fun, you can't use IK solvers on bone chains, because warcraft 3 doesn't support that. There may be a way to use the NeoDex IK snapper to convert these, but I don't know how that works.
<> Use as few polygons as possible, but don't make the model look bad. You can get away with up to 4000 - 5000 polys on some (some!) of the bigger and more complex models, but the average model should max out at about 1000 - 1500 polys. That does not, however, mean that you need to use 1500 polys on all models. Use the lowest number of polygons you can get away with without compromising the model's appearance. Generally you should save higher poly counts for humans and creatures. You can take those up to about 2500 and maybe 3000 polys if you need to.
<> Remember to attach all geometry that has the same texture together with the attach button before you export, and check the model in MDLVIS for texture bugs, and make sure that you change the file extension of the textures to .blp in the mdl file (which can be opened with notepad) before you export. NeoDex does not always export textures flawlessly.
This is the tool I use to convert mdl to mdx. Don't use mdlvis becuase it messes up the normals.
http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/tools-560/mdlx-converter-62991/
That's all I can think of off the top of my head. If you have any more questions feel free to PM me. (I use 3ds Max 2010, I should be able to answer most of them.)
