Importing and file sizes.

Don't know if this is the right section, but its General Development so I am getting that its about stuff in general.

Anyways, I posted this because I have 2 questions about importing and file size

Question #1: Once you import a Model or Icon (what does BTN stand for anyways?) onto your map then save cheak if it works blah blah, do you then delete it from your import manager? or do you have to kept it there ?

Question # 2: I was importing some models and saw wow my map went from 444kb to !!!!3.33mb!!!! from 9 models??,How come they take so much space?. Also I was thinking since models take so much space there is tons of normal melee map models in my map (i.e Peasent, Grunt) if I deleted them would my map become much smaller? becuase they are models aswell?, like buildings too.

Wow that was more then 2 questions, lol well anyways could you please anwser these questions, and if you are going to post please don't just make a comment accsualy anwser more then one of my questions.

Thanks alot!

Those models were really bad and took a bunch of space.

YOu don't have to delete things from import manager unless you don't need the files any more.

Yes, they need to be kept inside your import manager. Think about it this way: when Warcraft III loads your custom map, it is going to look for two things in order to create and render the models/skins/everything. First, it's going to look at the stuff you have in your import manager. If the file path for some model (say, a Grunt) is overwritten with something you imported, then WCIII will load that Grunt model instead of the normal one. The second place it's going to look is in the .mpq itself. Obviously if you don't have something in the import manager to overwrite it, this is where it will draw the file.


Models are big; there's no way of getting around that. Your average model is going to range from about 100-250 KBs in compressed .mdx format, even more if it has a lot of animations. WCIII will compress them a little when you import it, but complicated models with a lot of vertices are always going to take up space. You don't need to worry about this unless you are designing a map to be played over Battle.net, in which case your map will need to be under 4 MB to distribute online. There is also no way to delete models of actual peasants, grunts, etc. without going into the actual .MPQ and altering it permanently. This obviously creates its own problems, as by doing so you will corrupt the .MPQ and likely have to reinstall your copy of Warcraft III. It wouldn't matter anyway, because the data for models like peasants are stored on your hard drive and don't take up space on the map itself. The biggest contributing factor to the size of your map is going to be the stuff you import, so work on paring that down first. Other things come to mind, but these play less of a role - variables, doodads, triggers, etc.

Actually if they were just 9 models and the map went to 3.3 MB the models are awfully done. Probably by a BIG-Ego artist that adds too much polies and uses things like custom skins and that stuff for no reason.

I've seen models that just add 66KB to a map and are incredibly cool

Yeah, many of the unit files available here are rather convenient if you know where to look. Things get more complicated when you're dealing with models with a lot of geosets, like druids of the talon and dreadlords. I guess the program you use has a lot to do with it?

Thanks for making that book model pack, vexorian. It's amazingly convenient and I'd been waiting for a long time for something like it.