In order to remove unnecessary spam here I want to point out the facts about the Art Tools.
Don't post your opinion about the Artist Tools, just use them if you are capable of doing so.
Download them
here. I created my own installer, that is 60% smaller than the official one. I didn't remove anything.
I will quote CitizenSnips, who posted the following on the Bnet forums:
Quote:
Originally posted by CitizenSnips
For those disappointed that the art tools come in the form of plugins please remember that they were made for advanced users. By advanced users Blizzard means artists which have skill in polygonal modeling, UV mapping, texturing, character rigging and animation.
Creating models and animations for a game is not a trivial process, it requires mastery of software which is rather complex. There is simply no way Blizzard could make any kind of magic software that lets anyone create models without skill. Making models and animations is hard work, no way around it. Even if they made a program on par with 3dsmax of their own it would require such significant investment of resources Blizzard would have to charge us for it.
Many mods that we host over at www.wc3campaigns.com have failed as a direct result of failing to realize the complexities of creating custom models and animations.
Blizzard has merely given a small segment of the modding community what we asked for, the mdx exporter for 3dsmax. We have written letters and petitions requesting these tools and Blizzard has graciously decided to grant it. Our request has always been for the 3dsmax plugins themselves, or file format specifications so we could write our own plugins for 3dsmax. We have created two thus far. We were able to create robust geometry exporters but our animation exporting was always pretty rough. We barely started touching on particles and materials. So we always hoped that Blizzard would release these tools because it seemed like by the time we'd finally decrypt the entire mdx/mdl file format that war3 modding would be done with.
In a nutshell if you are upset that the art tools require additional software to be able to use them you need to consider one of these two things.
1) These tools were not meant for you.
2) You have a great deal to learn about modeling and animation. Visit us over at www.wc3campaigns.com , check out our modeling forum subsection and visit our IRC channel (you might even see me there!), we'd be glad to bring you up to speed. We have lots of mods which are in need of modelers and animators.
We should be thanking Blizzard for giving use these tools. Be happy and let the artists go to work and wait for some great mods to come. Or better yet, become an artist your self :)
Answers to some miscellaneous questions:
To those that were only hoping for a way to create skins easier, again visit www.wc3campaigns.com. Unlike the modeling and animation aspect of modding, skinning is something we locked down a long time ago and we have excellent tools for skinning. You need your own painting program of course; just like the model exporter it's pointless to create our own painting tools. You can either use Photoshop, paint shop pro, Corel paint or many other commercial paint applications if you are willing to pay for them. The GIMP is also a good paint program which is very similar to Photoshop, except it's free; it is perfectly suitable for skinning.
Also some expressed some disappointment that no exporters were released for other 3d apps like Maya, Lightwave etc. If you are able to get access to 3dsmax or to a friend with 3dsmax you can use the free .fbx plugins available at www.kaydara.com. It's a suite of plugins for all of the major 3d apps that provides a means of sharing data between applications. So you could export your animations from Maya as a .fbx for example and give them to a friend with 3dsmax and ask them to export as a .mdx for you.
Why no gmax support? Blizzard didn't pick 3dsmax as the platform of choice to give us the art tools for. They don't have the resources to be developing tools for free like that, they just packed up what they used to make ROC and TFT and gave them to us at a relatively low cost to Blizzard. In order for there to be a gmax module it would either cost money for us to download, or it would need to be bundled with another expansion for war3. Both of which are unlikely.
I hope this information was helpful to everyone.
Best Regards,
CitizenSnips
|
