Saturday, November 9, 2019

Griffon Studios Warcraft 3 Reforged Model importer

Since the dawn of creation of Warcraft 3 Reforged, I've been looking into the new 3D Model formats.

This new(ish) format is very comparable to the old mdx format... however

If you want to import these models, well, now you can.
The import script can be downloaded here:

Download Warcraft 3 Reforged Import Script for Max

Unzip the archive into your startup folder of 3D Studio Max, currently every version (2016+) has been tested.

The tool installs some plugins for Max:

In the create pane, select the helpers, there you will find 6 new plugins:


Opening the Material editor, you will find the Material Plugin:


During the import, the script will use these plugins. If they are not installed, you will not be able to use the importer.

To run the importer, first select the Asset Root folder, this is used to automatically map the correct textures, if not set correctly, no bitmap will be imported

Navigate to the utility pane, and select MaxScript to open the script


Once the path is set, press the import button and select the model you want to import:

Some layers are hidden, especially when you decided to import all the LOD's. To view them, open the Layer Explorer and hide/unhide what you need:



Open my Animation Properties window to view the animation sequences, click on any of them to change the timeline and check out the animation. This can be found in the Macro scripts, if you don't find it, check the Griffon Studios folder you unpacked earlier and run the GriffonStudios_AnimationProperties.ms script again and select the macro.


Now I know this is a importer on beta models, that are not ready to be released yet, neither is this importer fail safe ofcourse
But for studying models this should be good enough

A quick way to look through the whole list of models is to use my  3D Model Viewer, this can be downloaded here:

3D Model Viewer

Open up the viewer, select the root path of the files you extracted and feast your eyes


Next on my todo list is to create a custom exporter for the new mdx file format



Warcraft III Modeling Tools for 3D Studio Max

Check out my Warcraft III Tools on github Warcraft III Tools on github