Having many different model formats isn't that bad; most companies that 'encourage' modding release tools for it fairly quickly, or at least information that will allow other people to develop tools to do so. Blizzard, for whatever reason, made the decision not to do this for reasons I cannot fathom.
The reason for not using only one format universally is that many of them store irrelevant information to the game, so they write their own that condense everything, or leave things out, to minimize the space requirements for installation.
Quote from Eimtr:
The problem isn't buying the product.One could get it 'by other means' lol. The problem is some of us want to just to convert to sc2 models, which requires assigning and giving them the additional textures and of course pretty much what the M3 export plugin has. And for just converting while using another modelling program such as Milkshape or Blender, having to install a large program just for conversion seems not right. I can't work with Blender but it was OK to use it even as a conversion tool, as it is only 100MB and you can unzip it, no install. But there is no M3 export for blender.
One has the source code of M3 export plugin of 3ds max, cant a tool that opens obj or other model files and export to M3, assign textures and that's all - be made as a stand-alone tool out of that plugin? Even without animations, for a starter until at later phase that is also made.
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It's not as simple as just re-writing the code in the 3DSM exporter. You would then have to rework the code to convert the format of the data in any other model into M3, which in itself is an extremely complicated file.
Having many different model formats isn't that bad; most companies that 'encourage' modding release tools for it fairly quickly, or at least information that will allow other people to develop tools to do so. Blizzard, for whatever reason, made the decision not to do this for reasons I cannot fathom.
The reason for not using only one format universally is that many of them store irrelevant information to the game, so they write their own that condense everything, or leave things out, to minimize the space requirements for installation.
Quote from Eimtr:
The problem isn't buying the product.One could get it 'by other means' lol. The problem is some of us want to just to convert to sc2 models, which requires assigning and giving them the additional textures and of course pretty much what the M3 export plugin has. And for just converting while using another modelling program such as Milkshape or Blender, having to install a large program just for conversion seems not right. I can't work with Blender but it was OK to use it even as a conversion tool, as it is only 100MB and you can unzip it, no install. But there is no M3 export for blender.
One has the source code of M3 export plugin of 3ds max, cant a tool that opens obj or other model files and export to M3, assign textures and that's all - be made as a stand-alone tool out of that plugin? Even without animations, for a starter until at later phase that is also made.
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It's not as simple as just re-writing the code in the 3DSM exporter. You would then have to rework the code to convert the format of the data in any other model into M3, which in itself is an extremely complicated file.
It in no way makes sense. Besides, the poor man's option of Internet sleuth always exists.
60 dollars for Starcraft does not equate to 3500 for 3ds Max by stretching your budget.