Warcraft III Viewer

So will there be a v3 or is the program done?

I hope that there will be a version 3, but for the moment I am lacking free time... Particle systems are mostly implemented, and I will *MAYBE* add some other useful functions for skinners.

When looking at icons in Warcarft 3 Viewer they all appear huge. I know you can manually zoom out, but that is hard if you're just trying to look at them quickly. Can I mkae it so that the icons appear the correct size?

Small suggestion, mdl support.

I think this is not possible, but a good suggestion for the Warcraft III Viewer. I hope TheProphet reads this. We need a setting where we can specify whether it displays them at original size or the way it currently is.

@35263526 : you can make other icons if you want
@Sypher : mdl support will be included as soon as Nub releases his mdl<->mdx converter
@Starcraftfreak : What are you talking about ? The icons ?

@TheProphet: I don't want to make new icons, I want to set Warcraft 3 Viewer to display them as the correct size. As it is, they are huge and cannot be viewed properly without zooming out manually, which takes time. The same applies to smaller peices of 2D art.

What me and Starcraftfreak are saying is that their ought to be a way to set Warcraft 3 Viewer to automatically display images at their correct size instead of showing them filling the whole window. Because this doesn't exist, I have to use Image Extractor 2 to get icon files, which isn't very convenient, and it doesn't have as many features.

It same for me with the dl thing, I tried to download it and it said something like: "The file is corrupted." This is when I try to download it and I can tell you my zip works perfectly and all other programs work!

@35263526 and @Starcraftfreak : I thought you were speaking about the icons of the toolbar of the Warcraft 3 Viewer... I'll check what I can do about that.

@Voi : use the following link :
http://www.xeberon.net/fichiers/125_warcraft3viewer.zip

Hey,

First of all, i find your program to be incredibly useful, and i use it alot. But a number of things have bothered me, i've not bothered about them as i can work without even if they are there, but i just decided to post them here.

Firstly, it seems that my video-card somehow doesn't like this program, or something, i'm not even sure, All models i load mess up pretty bad, it is clearest during motion or when rotating around the model. it happen most around the edges of the model and it is almost like you can see inside it and what you see is sometimes like a inverted polys or sumtin, it is very wierd. Check the avi i exported using the program for a small example, it's pretty bad res :P but anyways. I am using a geforce 2 mx440 64 meg 3d card. 256 meg RAM, 1600 mhz athlon xp. Have the newest detonator (or whatever the 50+ drivers name are) drivers...and...errr...I've never had visual artifacts in games/stuff before, although my system's performance is wierdly way lower than it should be.

Anyways, i hope you can identify this problem, if not, then whatever. And yes i use openGL even more than directX (if i get a choice).

EDIT: heh, forgot to attach my avi-file displaying the problem. Please get it here (note, it's only like 300 kb): http://crimson.wc3campaigns.com/cubasis/Problem.zip

Secondly are some feature requests, just some tiny stuff.

1) A current-file file-properties window. Best bet would be to replace the "show used texture names" with a more over-all file-properties window. What i'm most interested in seeing there is some general info about the file, for textures, i would like to see texture-resolution (yes i know you display this in the log window at load, but that window has some cons, and some other stuff), and other texture-related info that you already show in the log window AND "Size". When viewing models i would have liked to see their "face" count (poly-count), mesh-count, animation-count/details, ofcourse also used textures (and possibly additional information about each of those if possible, resolution and size mainly), size of the mdx in question, even "created/modified" info, material info (stuff you already show in log), and perhaps a total size.
This would be quite useful i think.

2) When/if you get nubs convertor stuff included, and have access to the mdl side of matters (you can even do alot of this with mdx access using hex editing), to have a User Friendly material-editor. Nothing complex, just something so if you don't know much what to do then you can try the different blend-types and stuff and see the effect in the preview window. But this is just for luxury if you'll get the chance.

3) Also, just a small thing, based on how it looks like you paint the model with a texture, if it wouldn't be too hard, i think it would be pretty cool if you can override the texture-address and load your own texture instead of it... that would mainly help if you don't have stuff in the right locations but still want to preview it. And it happens sometimes when you get a white (or whatever) model due to wrong texture-path, then this would be useful, atleast when you else have to convert one more time from mdl over too mdx with another texture-path. Anyways...


There really isn't much else as this software already is pretty incredibly good. Although one thing is that the control of the viewport is pretty uncomfortable, panning is screwy, but it's hard to do this well. What i can imagine is having a Art-Tools Previewer style "ground" (just simple, not even textures needed). And have right mouse button to pan along the x/y plane, and then have another button (pageup/pagedown) move up and down. Although i'm not sure how that would work, but it would be similar to world-editor stuff.

anyways.
Thanks for your program, and there were some other stuff i was wondering about, but i'll mention them later perhaps.

Cubasis

ps. oh, almost forgot, there is just this tiny annoyance where if the focus is on the previewer-window (after rotating around and stuff), and then if you want to switch animation in the drop-down in the tree-view, it firstly cancels the drop-down while giving the treeview-window a "focus"... and thus requiring you to press the dropdown list again. Not all that important, just a small thing, Although i myself as a programmer am not sure how to fix/control these things.

im not suer if its the program or my comp, but when viewing the animations, the models jump and bounce, and it looks weird

@Cubasis40 :

First thing to say : thanks a lot for your interest.

"Firstly"
Your display problem seems to have a solution, a mere solution I hope : One day, I had decided to add another option in the W3V : in the menu Render-> zBuffer depth you can choose 16 or 24 bits. This option was here especially because KDEWolf had just changed his video card, and with his new video card, he had the same problem than yours... And his new video card was a NVidia too. He helped me to identify the problem, and I added this option. To summarize : try to switch to 24 bits depth if you were in 16 bits, or in 16 bits if you were in 24. It theoretically fixes the problem.

"Secondly"
1) Someone else has already asked me such an information window - I think it is Electron - and it was in my plans to add it.

2) I am sorry, but I don't think that I'll include any editor for the moment. My program was at first here to preview/read/display MDXs, but not to modify them. Moreover, I am quite busy now, so the developement's progress is very very slow. I'll think about it when I'll have more free time.

3) Eheh, it was in my plans to add the possibility to load your own textures ;)


Here is a small summary of the control of the viewport when a MDX is loaded :
Left mouse button + movement = rotate
Left/Right arrow on keyboard = rotate
Left/Right arrow on keyboard + CTRL = rotate faster
Up/Down arrow on keyboard = rotate
Up/Down arrow on keyboard + CTRL = rotate faster

Right mouse button + movement = translate

Left+Right mouse buttons + movement = zoom
OR
Middle mouse button + movement = zoom
OR
Mouse wheel = zoom
Page up/Page down on keyboard = zoom
Page up/Page down on keyboard + CTRL = zoom faster


About your ground thing : I have not installed the Art Tools, so I don't see what your are talking about.

About the dropdown annoyance : I know this problem, and I'll check what I can do. Just to wait, to avoid it, just click on the treeview window before clicking on the combobox.


Thanks again for your suggestions, and tell me if the zBuffer depth has solved your problem.

At least it solved my pb. Thx.

man, thanks, it works great now.

'K, and good to hear that those are features that are on teh ToDo list (although i don't mind missing the material-editor thingy, the Art Tools now have a real material plugin to edit it).

What i ment with the control stuff is... To have it work like you look around in the WE. As currently if you want to translate...you can only translate along the Z/X (?) or Z/Y area. thus losing out on a whole axis, the depth that is. As i'm not that knowledgable about control-styles, i wouldn't know for certain about a better system. But the one in WE has translate along the X/Y, and then teh "Z" axis is raised with alternate means (could be "page up"/"page down"). And what i ment with the art tools, is that by default they show beneith the model in question a "grid", exactly like the one in WE if you turn of textured view, and just see white terrain-grid on black background. I'm not though sure if that would work well, but it would make X/Y scrolling more obvious.

Anyways, the most problems with teh current control sceme is when you wanna check out a 3d Menu screen, as they are big, and you can only trasnlate along 2 axis (where 1 of them is the Z axis). And also if you want to do sum special angle or whatever.

So anyways, the suggested (though no promise if it'll work well or not) control sceme might be the WE one.

Anyways...
Cubasis

Ahem, bumping.

This is a an awesome tool that should not disappear.