This animation program was made by
Oinkerwinkle. Since its development was eventually discontinued, many features are missing\not working, however it's still good enough to make something fully usable by warcraft,
like this model.
- Running the program
Warshape is written in Java (so in theory, it should work both on Pc and Machintosh). If you have problems running it, see the
guide in the official page. In that page there is also a dowload link for Warshape:
ignore it. While being the most recent, that version has more bugs than the previous;
use this version instead.
Known bugs and issues
- For some reasons, Warshape cannot modify blizzard models. Apparently, it works only with models exported from 3ds and Milkshape.
-
Only movement and rotation keys works.
- It seems that after several sessions, some bones (usually only one) may be cloned several times. It isn't too much of an issue, unless in the process the pivotpoints coordinates were changed. Anyway, you can use Magos' model editor to remove the clones later.
- Again, after several sessions, you can see some bones going the opposite way than they did before. This happens only in warshape, not in the actual animation.
- Getting started
- Finding a compatible model.
As I wrote before, Warshape is not compatible with standard blizzard models (or geomerges for that matter). However, it seems to work with model exported from 3ds and Milkshape. If you want to start right away, you can use my old
rogue.
- Convert the model in mdl format and open it with Warshape. Press "3" to enter the animation mode. At this point you can select one animation; from the "animation" menu select "go to" and click on one of the animations on the list.
- Now you should see some blue marks in the 4 preview windows. These are bones; each one is tied to a specific part of the model. Select one or more(left click+drag): they should turn red.
- By now, you should see some red and blue rectangles appearing in the white bar at the bottom of the program. They are
keyframes. Keyframes are objects used to determine a bone movement\rotation\size in a given moment (aka frame). The red rectangles are movement keys, the blue rectangles are rotation keys. Size keys are green, but Warshape can't handle them. Should you find a model that type of keys, just do not touch them.
You can move the keys in the animation timeline by selecting them (left click+draw) and moving the mouse (hold the right button). To clone the selected keys, hold shift and move them. To delete them, press "canc".
It's actually more hard to make a guide than learning the basics by myself.