MDL Editing

11-23-2003, 08:49 PM	#1
B.N	How do you MDL edit? I want to know how to change a color on, say... the Fire in the cinimatic doodads to a dark red, or a particle emiter. Is there a tutorial somewhere or can someone help me?

11-23-2003, 09:15 PM

Oinkerwinkle

1) Use Yobguls' File Converter to convert the MDX to a MDL. I used Doodads\Cinematic\FirePillarMedium\FirePillarMedium.mdx

2) Open the MDL in Notepad. Search for "ParticleEmitter2" and it will bring you to the first particle emitter. If you scroll down a little, you will see a section called segment color. It might look something like this:

Code:

        SegmentColor {
                Color { 0.294118, 0.294118, 0.294118 },
                Color { 0.294118, 0.294118, 0.294118 },
                Color { 0.172549, 0.172549, 0.172549 },
        },

Those values represent this:

Code:

        SegmentColor {
                Color { BeginningBlue, BeginningGreen, BeginningRed },
                Color { MiddleBlue, MiddleGreen, MiddleRed },
                Color { EndBlue, EndGreen, EndRed },
        },

Contrary to standard, the values here range from 0 to 1 as opposed to 0 to 255. { 0, 0, 0 } is black, { 1, 1, 1 } is white, { 0, 0, 1 } is red, and so on.
Manipulate the values to change the color

3) Save and convert make to MDX.
4) Import back into your map.

11-23-2003, 09:21 PM	#3
B.N	Wow, It's that easy!0_o But since 1,1,1 is white and 0,0,1 is red am I limited to just five colors?

11-23-2003, 10:16 PM	#4
faxmaster	Well, theres .089,.9,.7, etc. So you have basicaly and infiante amount of colors you can create.

11-23-2003, 11:01 PM	#5
TopGun	Or as many colors as your somputer can tolerate.

11-24-2003, 12:01 AM	#6
Narwanza	instead of writing the guy a tutorial, why dont' you just show him a great one that has already been typed. Here is the best particle emitter tutorial I have seen. It only covers particle emitters, but it also gives you a look into what really happens inside of the .mdl and you can start to experiment yourself with other values inside of it. Particle emitter tutorial

11-24-2003, 12:21 AM

ChaoticPeasant

[offtopic] Narwanza, you got anyone in your nar4 production team? If you are accepting people, I would like to get in a team, because I like to trigger, do spells, make unites, towers, etc. and can skin somewhat,and you seem like the type that can think of something and stick to it, unlike me where I always think of something then think of something esle and dtich....if you are interested in letting me join, just e-mail or PM me, because I really want to be on a team.(sorry for offtopic)[/offtopic]

11-24-2003, 03:33 PM

B.N

Isn't there a way to get the color(colour) value's? I think Orvanis knows how. On his webpage he states

Quote:

If you wouled like me to make a certain color, E-mail your request with the color in 0-255 format.

or something like that.

11-24-2003, 05:19 PM

Darkblood

BN
Im not sure if this is how it works for warcraft...
but in art programs, color is dealt with from 0-255
0,0,0 is black 255,255,255 is white....

I BELIEVE those numbers have just been translated by an equation like (#*255) so that it will always be a decimal between 0 and 1.
Therefore.... figure out what value you want, say for a orange red youd want:
R-255 G-100 B-000...
then you devide that number by 255... so
R=1.00 G=.392 and B=0.00

Get it?
This SHOULD be how it works but im not definite...

So go into photoshop or other color program, write down teh RGB values and just divide by 255 to get the decimal to use...
Hope that helps some

-DB

11-24-2003, 05:28 PM	#10
B.N	Thank guy for all your help! Awesome sig Darkblood