Up to date Modeling tutorials

[Eikonium]

Hey guys,

I've just started being interested in modeling for warcraft 3 to create a few things for mapping projects of mine.
To learn the stuff, I've crawled through the web searching for beginners information, including the nice modeling tutorials hosted here on the hive.

However, it's super hard to find up to date information about modeling. Most beginner tutorials are dated 15 years ago and refer to software like 3DS Max 5 (and Blizzard Art tools), which doesn't seem to be available anymore and was created for Windows XP.

My question now is, which modeling software is still available (and affordable) and can be used on Windows 10? Are there either new (beginner) tutorials or are there old tutorials that are still up to date? How do you convert the stuff to mdx files nowadays?

I have found so much different information on this, often looking outdated, that I currently really don't know where to start.

Looking forward to your suggestions and thanks in advance!

Best regards
Eikonium

 

[Fingolfin]

My Blender plugin and associated tutorial are pretty up to date: Exporting models from Blender using the MDL exporter plugin

The tree tutorial is more recent and probably better: [3D Art] - Creating procedural trees using Blender

It's what i use for my modeling anyway!

 

[Eikonium]

Great, thanks a ton!
I give it a try!

 

[Kyrbi0]

Also check out @Retera 's "Matrix Eater" software; it uses many of the tools & sensibilities of the venerable elders of the pack (Magos, MDLvis, Oinkerwinkles) but it new & current & muuuuuch better overall for most things. Actively "developed", too! : )

 

[Retera]

Actually I rewrote half the code of my tool and changed the name to Retera Model Studio, so rather than old "Matrix Eater" downloads I suggest using this one:
Retera's Model Studio

This tool is best for editing existing Warcraft III models or combining them in unique ways, like if you wanted a footman riding on a kodo beast, you could probably make it in five or ten minutes.

If you want to make totally new art from scratch, it might be wiser to use the blender plugin in that case. Or so I'm told. There is also a thread where I hacked my tool to support Warcraft III Reforged Beta models. But that version requires hours to setup because it doesn't natively support the game's encryption so you basically need to use someone else's tool to make a decrypted copy of the game. It'll probably be fixed later.

 

[Eikonium]

Much appreciated!!