You will need to wait for the game to be released? Or at least go into Beta? People seem to be holding off the converter tools for that reason.
The process seems to be to extract the models (easy), remove the un-recognized blocks (hard) and then import them into a map/mod (easy). They constantly are adding new blocks and if there is any block SC2 does not recognize the model will fail to load (despite the rest being fine). Most people do not think Blizzard would be very happy if their alpha content was leaked to the public.
Some models are also missing animations (incomplete).
Not only blocks is the problem. I stopped since the header changed heavily. They removed some shit they weren't using anymore (Threads objects for instance) and added some new references. The problem right now is that they added Cloth Physics, if I remove those blocks then I need to fix the references for the other blocks and I haven't even finished reverse engineering the m3 format for Sc2:HotS version (pretty close, though. I only need to reverse engineer physics shapes with convex hull, ragdolls and turret behaviors). This means that if I leave uncaught references without fix, the model won't load because basicly it will read wrong corrupted data.
The best solution would be to create an m3 importer for 3dsmax 2011 Art Tools which handles any modern format. The m3 tools for 3dsmax in this site not only are very outdated but the code is unmantainable.
About animations. Most of the models use m3a files for animations, they must be added in.
Btw m3a files are not really animation files but "model patch files". You can even change materials and textures with them. quite aswesome to be honest.
Not only blocks is the problem. I stopped since the header changed heavily. They removed some shit they weren't using anymore (Threads objects for instance) and added some new references. The problem right now is that they added Cloth Physics, if I remove those blocks then I need to fix the references for the other blocks and I haven't even finished reverse engineering the m3 format for Sc2:HotS version (pretty close, though. I only need to reverse engineer physics shapes with convex hull, ragdolls and turret behaviors). This means that if I leave uncaught references without fix, the model won't load because basicly it will read wrong corrupted data.
The best solution would be to create an m3 importer for 3dsmax 2011 Art Tools which handles any modern format. The m3 tools for 3dsmax in this site not only are very outdated but the code is unmantainable.
About animations. Most of the models use m3a files for animations, they must be added in.
Btw m3a files are not really animation files but "model patch files". You can even change materials and textures with them. quite aswesome to be honest.