WhiteoutFlakes: Warcraft III Reforged Previewer

[Wyrelade]

Interesting stuff! Neat little tool. Cheers!

 

[prizraknadache]

Whoa... interesting. Hope it more accurate than Blizzard's Leaked Previewer!

 

[IronBladeClan]

How'd you decide on the name?

Also, for someone like me who wants to start learning about basic model editing, how would you describe the differences between this and Blizzard's Reforged Previewer?

 

[BlinkBoy]

How'd you decide on the name?

Also, for someone like me who wants to start learning about basic model editing, how would you describe the differences between this and Blizzard's Reforged Previewer?

The name is based on a set of Blizzard games related tools. I started with WhiteoutLib as a reference to old blizzard's StormLib. So evry single tool coming from it has been Whiteout, WhiteoutDex, WhiteoutTex, WhiteoutFlakes. WhiteoutFlakes itself came by when I asked DennisH to get an icon for the 3ds max renderer and he gave me an icon with a window and some cornflakes looking things inside, so I called the renderer WhiteoutFlakes (and redid the icon).

About Blizzard's Preview. WhiteoutFlakes is based on the reverse engineering of the game engoine while Preview actually uses the game engine itself. So Preview will always be more accurate than WhiteoutFlakes unless we achieve perfect accuracy.

WhiteoutFlakes differs from Blizzard's Preview in this manner:

• WhiteoutFlakes is being made as a "Service" aka a renderer that you can annex to other tools like 3ds max (see WhiteoutDex )
• WhiteoutFlakes works perfectly with the current client, while Preview is no longer compatible with current Reforge shaders.
• WhiteoutFlakes is designed to be portable, so it could in the future be in MacOS and Linux.
• WhiteoutFlakes doesn't support PopcornFX or FaceFX. This is because both features use very heavy propietary SDKs which are not accessible to the public. Reverse engineering and reconstructing them is a lot of work.
• WhiteoutFlakes is designed to be recycled for other Blizzard games,

 

[Spacebuns]

Aww yiss!
However, I think I will not delete Preview.exe yet because it supports rendering PopcornFX.

There seems to be an ORM rendering problem. For some ORMs, I packed them without an alpha channel (for lighter size), and in the material I configured the Team Color layer to also use the texture in the Diffuse layer. While this approach works fine in the game, WhiteoutFlakes seems to ignore the Team Color texture that I used in the material, and uses a solid color texture instead.

Spoiler: Image

 

[BlinkBoy]

Aww yiss!
However, I think I will not delete Preview.exe yet because it supports rendering PopcornFX.

There seems to be an ORM rendering problem. For some ORMs, I packed them without an alpha channel (for lighter size), and in the material I configured the Team Color layer to also use the texture in the Diffuse layer. While this approach works fine in the game, WhiteoutFlakes seems to ignore the Team Color texture that I used in the material, and uses a solid color texture instead.

Spoiler: Image

View attachment 586138

Could you pass me the model or send it over PM? I'd like to have a look.

 

[Spacebuns]

Could you pass me the model or send it over PM? I'd like to have a look.

Sure.

 

[Spacebuns]

Also, the CASC storage cannot be opened by this app if WC3 or WE is open. So you can't have this app with full functionality and WE open at the same time.

 

[BlinkBoy]

Also, the CASC storage cannot be opened by this app if WC3 or WE is open. So you can't have this app with full functionality and WE open at the same time.

Both of your issues have been fixed. On this new release.

New Release 1.1:

• PopcornFX support
  
  • Still experimental and lacks many features.
  • Uses an emulation layer called CornFlakes! based on reverse engineering.
• Support for Event Objects.
• Proper DNC lighting support.
• HDR Tonemapping support.
• Walk simualtion.
• NonLooping sequence support.
• Further fixes to particle emitters.
• Optimizations for massive scenes.
• Fixes to Particle emitters 1 when the child models had Particle emitters 2 or Ribbons.
• Implement Shadow cascades.
• The renderer can now run along World Editor or even Warcraft III.
• Fixed an issue where teamcolor layer would always be replaced by team color in HD even if the user set up.
• Added transparent pass and basic priority plane ordering.

 

[Spacebuns]

Both of your issues have been fixed. On this new release.

New Release 1.1:

• PopcornFX support
  
  • Still experimental and lacks many features.
  • Uses an emulation layer called CornFlakes! based on reverse engineering.
• Support for Event Objects.
• Proper DNC lighting support.
• HDR Tonemapping support.
• Walk simualtion.
• NonLooping sequence support.
• Further fixes to particle emitters.
• Optimizations for massive scenes.
• Fixes to Particle emitters 1 when the child models had Particle emitters 2 or Ribbons.
• Implement Shadow cascades.
• The renderer can now run along World Editor or even Warcraft III.
• Fixed an issue where teamcolor layer would always be replaced by team color in HD even if the user set up.
• Added transparent pass and basic priority plane ordering.

Aw yiss! Anyway, I think I've found another issue, albeit minor:

• The camera picker doesn't use the animated Translation/Rotation values configured inside the model's camera.

 

[BlinkBoy]

Aw yiss! Anyway, I think I've found another issue, albeit minor:

• The camera picker doesn't use the animated Translation/Rotation values configured inside the model's camera.

weird that works on the campaign screens.

EDIT: confirmed regression.

EDIT2: Fixed

 

[Spacebuns]

If I were a Tool Reviewer this would be an instant 5 star from me.
With a newer version Previewer not being leaked to the public updated, this comes very close to its capabilities and even surpasses it in some ways.

 

[BlinkBoy]

Version 1.2:

• Added new Vulkan backend
• Alpha support for Linux and MacOS.
• Added 3D sound.
• Added Dear Imgui engine shaders and reworked the UI to use Dear Imgui.
• Fixed an issue which would turn some custom models black.
• Improved performance considerably in taxing models.
• We are now open source: Here

 

[Spacebuns]

Loving the new update using Dear Imgui, but model lights have been broken, and the font is a bit too small for 4K users I think.

 

[BlinkBoy]

Loving the new update using Dear Imgui, but model lights have been broken, and the font is a bit too small for 4K users I think.

What do you mean model lights have been broken?
Can you show an example?

 

[stan0033]

It would be great if you can evolve this tool into an editor.
Also i didnt see an option to set the path of the MPQs of the game from which textures are are used. maybe you only rely on registry which can be an inconvinience.

 

[Spacebuns]

What do you mean model lights have been broken?
Can you show an example?

You can try again with the model I sent in my earlier post here:

Sure.

Previewer shows that the lighting is different between Portrait 1 and Portrait 3, but this lighting change doesn't show up with Flakes.

 

[BlinkBoy]

You can try again with the model I sent in my earlier post here:

Previewer shows that the lighting is different between Portrait 1 and Portrait 3, but this lighting change doesn't show up with Flakes.

Ahh right, it's a portrait. Try changing lighting from Ingame to Glue or Dynamic. I still haven't added Portrait DNC.

It would be great if you can evolve this tool into an editor.
Also i didnt see an option to set the path of the MPQs of the game from which textures are are used. maybe you only rely on registry which can be an inconvinience.

Yeah currently I use the registry. I can add that.

On the editor thing, well in the source code, next to the viewer there's a Max plugin.

 

[eejin]

Nice viewer and good to have. Using the game's shaders itself is an interesting way of having pixel perect accuracy.

Just some minor feedback:

• The download includes the 3 OS versions, perhaps this could be split into 3 downloads?
• The orientation indicator has its text flipped.

 

[Wyrelade]

Now this is great. Nice work.

 

[BlinkBoy]

Nice viewer and good to have. Using the game's shaders itself is an interesting way of having pixel perect accuracy.

Just some minor feedback:

• The download includes the 3 OS versions, perhaps this could be split into 3 downloads?
• The orientation indicator has its text flipped.

View attachment 591259

The hiveworkshop only lets me post a single bundle. So I can only pack all 3 into one.

Anyways, new version:
Version 1.3:

• Added new WebGPU backend
• Warcraft III folder can be manually set in Settimngs -> IO
• Custom MPQs and MPQ ordering can now be configured.
• Further fixes to the UI borders.
• MDL files can now be opened
• Models can now be exported into MDL, 2 dialects are accepted Warcraft III's (used by the game) and Hiveworkshop (used by Retera model studio and other tools here).
• Added a new feature to be able to export animated sequences as sequential PNG files, Animated PNGs, GIFs or Animated WebP.
• Improved the resolution of TeamGlow on classic.
• Improved the performance of CASC loading.
• Improved Font rendering.

EDIT: It seems Animation Frames Export is semibroken in WebGPU. Use D3D12 or Vulkan for the time being.

Some really cool feature there is the Animation Baking:

 

[deepstrasz]

Added a new feature to be able to export animated sequences as sequential PNG files, Animated PNGs, GIFs or Animated WebP.

Just thinking how to use this to make a composite custom campaign screen turned all to .webm. I need it for Classic/SD though.

 

[BlinkBoy]

Just thinking how to use this to make a composite custom campaign screen turned all to .webm. I need it for Classic/SD though.

Classic/SD is fully supported. Warcraft 3 1.27 sadly doesn't support webp unless you plan doing SD/Classic stuffs for Reforged client.

What you could do if you want to do an animated render in Classic is output the sequences as .png, use WhiteoutTex to convert them to BLPs and then use a Screen Model with a flipbook texture id animation for showing the animation.

EDIT: For longer videos, it may be better to actually generate proper videos and make the Wc3 engine play the videos. I think thast for Warcraft 3 Classic Blizzard uses AVIs with DivX codec, if I recall correctly. Use the PNG sequences to feed them to a video editing tool like Shotcut.

 

[Deme3s]

This tool is very helpful!

 

[BlinkBoy]

Just a little update for MacOS users:

Version 1.3b:

• Improved support for MacOS considerably.
• Fixed crash on close with MacOS.
• Added Metal backend for more native experience.
• Improved styling of the the Cocoa window to match the inner interface.

 

[Spacebuns]

There are some animation speed issues I think.

 

[BlinkBoy]

New version:

Version 1.4:

• Fixed Shadows.
• Fixed IBL sRGB Cubemaps like Day/Night and Dungeon.
• Added a new Storage Explorer which allows you to explore models and effects within Warcraft III's CASC.
• Multiple models can be opened at the same time.
• pkb files can now be opened individually.
• Added Ambient Occlussion pass
• Added Bloom pass
• Added Depth of Field pass.
• lots of fixes for corn effects.

 

[Spacebuns]

What exactly is this error in the latest version?
Also, users of this tool should be aware that it can may your display to go black if opened for a long time.

 

[BlinkBoy]

View attachment 595911

What exactly is this error in the latest version?
Also, users of this tool should be aware that it can may your display to go black if opened for a long time.

did you update the shaders as well?

 

[Spacebuns]

did you update the shaders as well?

How do I update the shaders?

 

[BlinkBoy]

How do I update the shaders?

The shaders are next to the exe, if you just copied the executable over the old version, you'll be using the old shaders.

 

[Spacebuns]

The shaders are next to the exe, if you just copied the executable over the old version, you'll be using the old shaders.

Oh the "shaders" folder, yeah I already updated it. I made sure to overwrite everything in the old folder with files from the new version.

 

[BlinkBoy]

Oh the "shaders" folder, yeah I already updated it. I made sure to overwrite everything in the old folder with files from the new version.

delete a file called pso_trace.bin then. It could be that.

 

[Spacebuns]

The automatic loading of CASC resources is pretty taxing on performance when users open a folder with multiple PopcornFX. You might wanna use a collection of snapshots instead.

 

[loktar]

The hiveworkshop only lets me post a single bundle. So I can only pack all 3 into one.

On the right side of the "Contents" part is an "Add resource" button which allows you to upload additional resources to the bundle. That way you can add separate downloads for each OS.