AssetEditor v0.78 - DN v1.3

Changes since DN v1.2. Based on upstream AssetEditor v0.78.

Install: download AssetEditor_078_DN_v1_3.zip, extract it, and run AssetEditor/AssetEditor.exe. Windows x64; the .NET runtime is included. The title bar reads AssetEditor v0.78 - DN v1.3.

Upgrading from DN v1.2: accept the update prompt, or run AssetEditorUpdater.exe. From DN v1 or v1.1, download this release by hand; their update prompts still point to upstream.

LOD generation

• LODs are generated with meshoptimizer 1.3 by default. It is the first LOD option in the save dialog, named "Default".
• "Reduce mesh by 10%" uses it too.
• UV seams, open edges, skin weights and mirrored tangent frames come through intact. Every vertex it keeps is an original one, so weights and UVs are copied, not blended.
• The old decimator is still there as "Fast Quadric (old)", with three bugs fixed:
  • it aimed at the vertex count times the factor, not the triangle count, so LODs came out 13 to 23% short of what was asked;
  • UV seams were not preserved, so seams on curved surfaces folded;
  • the binormal was rebuilt without its handedness, flipping the tangent frame on every mirrored UV island (31% of vertices on the test models).

Measured on 19 LOD0 meshes from 9 Chaos Dwarf models, asking for 25%:

	triangles got / asked	worst deviation	flipped tangent frames	open-edge vertices moved
DN v1.2	0.87	25.8%	32.2%	1,209 of 12,499
DN v1.3 default	1.16	2.3%	0	0

Deviation is the surface distance between the LOD and the original, as a share of the model's size. At 75% and 50% the new default lands within 4% of the count asked for. At 25% it keeps 16% more triangles than asked, because it stops before the shape breaks instead of eating whole parts to hit the number.

Known limits:

• Hair and fur cards are mostly open edge, which stays locked, so they barely reduce. The old decimator did the same.
• At 25%, small flat props can lose their cut-outs: the bull centaur shield's notches fill in.

Documentation

• A VFX Editor page with a guide and a tutorial: AssetEditor/docs/Documentation/VfxEditor.html in the zip.

Source: v1.2 to v1.3 comparison.

AssetEditor v0.78 - DN v1.2

Changes since DN v1.1. Based on upstream AssetEditor v0.78.

Install: download AssetEditor_078_DN_v1_2.zip, extract it, and run AssetEditor/AssetEditor.exe. Windows x64; the .NET runtime is included. The title bar reads AssetEditor v0.78 - DN v1.2.

Upgrading from DN v1 or v1.1: download this release manually. Those versions' update prompts still point to upstream. Starting with v1.2, the app and updater both check this DN fork's releases.

Packfiles and backups

• File > Create a new packfile: choose a location and create an empty, editable .pack for the selected game. Existing files are protected; cancellation or a failed write keeps your previous editable pack selected.
• Restore backup: restore from a pack's context menu or File > Restore backup, including packs that are closed or have been deleted. The current file is backed up before replacement.

Undo and redo

• Redo in Kitbash and Redo pose in the KeyFrame editor.
• Undo and redo in the Skeleton, Audio, AnimPack, and Unit Simulator editors.
• Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y work while the 3D view has focus.
• Failed Kitbash operations no longer enter undo history.
• Unit Simulator verifies a saved animpack before replacing the pack's original.

KeyFrame editor

• Fixed errors when opening the editor before an animation was selected.
• Restored inverse kinematics and Interpolate across frames.
• An IK drag is recorded as one undo step.

Image import

• Reworked image-to-DDS import: PNG, JPEG, BMP, and TIFF in different pixel layouts.
• Fixed import of embedded glTF textures.
• Texture dimensions are rounded up to complete 4x4 compression blocks.
• Corrected Total War normal-map channels and material-map conversion.
• DDS format is suggested from the filename and can be changed in the dialog.

BMD and IPC

• Added the missing WH3 building, prop, VFX, and AI hint layouts. The parser was checked against all 6,008 vanilla WH3 BMD files; unsupported older write formats remain protected.
• Added IPC ping, load, and find actions alongside open.

Display and responsiveness

• Skeleton guides, grids, bounding boxes, and overlay text remain readable on dark backgrounds.
• Text-editor background setting and more readable syntax colours; theme changes apply without restarting.
• Fixed the loading popup remaining visible after startup.
• Closing a tab no longer forces a full garbage collection.
• Kitbash tint preview now defaults to off, with a setting to enable it; changing materials preserves the mesh's preview choice.

Updates

• The startup update prompt and standalone updater now use DerpyNewb/TheAssetEditorDN and compare DN release versions.
• Updates retain the previous installation in UpdateBackup.

Source: v1.1 to v1.2 comparison.

AssetEditor v0.78 - DN v1.1

A fork of donkeyProgramming's AssetEditor, built on upstream master as of v0.78. Changes since DN v1 are listed below.

Install: unzip AssetEditor_078_DN_v1_1.zip and run AssetEditor/AssetEditor.exe. No .NET install needed. The title bar reads "AssetEditor v0.78 - DN v1.1".

Updates: the update prompt still checks upstream's releases, not this fork's. Accepting it installs upstream's build over this one.

Saving

• Backup of the .pack before each save
• Autosave for a .pack opened in place, interval in minutes
• Settings > Saving: autosave interval, backups kept per .pack, backup folder
• Warning against editing the same .pack in RPFM at once (start panel, File > Open Pack)

Undo

• Kitbash material panel: sliders and colours
• Kitbash bone scale
• KeyFrame interpolation slider
• Anm.Meta editor and SuperView: Undo and Redo buttons, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Y
• One whole drag is one undo step

Look

• AMOLED theme
• Eight more render background colours

Fixed

• Muzzle flashes turned with the camera instead of their emitter
• Kitbash: Combine refused meshes split by submesh over GradientColours

AssetEditor v0.78 - DN v1

A fork of donkeyProgramming's AssetEditor, built on upstream master as of v0.78 (011e5fc), with 168 commits on top.

Install: unzip AssetEditor_078_DN_v1.zip and run AssetEditor/AssetEditor.exe. It is self-contained, so no .NET install is needed. The title bar reads "AssetEditor v0.78 - DN".

Updates: the update prompt checks upstream's releases, not this fork's. If it offers an update, accepting installs upstream's build over this one.

New tools

VFX editor (Tools menu)

• Opens vfx/*.xml and edits it in place: quality tiers, curve keys, properties, modifiers, emitters and references.
• New effect, new emitter, rename or retype an emitter, curve mapping and a curve graph.
• Undo for the last 100 edits.
• Live preview: fly the effect like a projectile to see its trail, add a guide model or a grid, take a screenshot.

Unit Simulator (Tools menu)

• Plays a rider on its mount the way the game pairs them, and lists every mount slot as paired, rider slot missing, anim missing, lengths differ or copy-only.
• Edits both battle tables and saves them back into their animpack, rewriting only the edited table.
• Finds a mount's attach bones in its tech skeleton.
• A Personalities tab adds battle_personalities riders on those bones, edits them live, and exports battle_personalities and junction TSVs for RPFM.

Particle preview, much closer to the game

• Flipbooks (cell blend, rows, random start cell, loops over life), trails, decals, sea overlays and the rare orientation modes.
• HDR colour and glow at the game's own bloom threshold, light particles lighting the ground and models, lit smoke, soft edges.
• Distortion and heat haze, and rigid-model particles with their models, colour, turning and animation.
• Terrain spawning and ground collision, vector fields, inherited velocity, maximum velocity, spawn and death effects.
• As in the game, a chain with no Ultra block draws nothing at Ultra; the preview used to fall back to a lower tier.

SuperView and the Anm.Meta editor

• Vanilla .anm.meta files re-save byte-identical. Upstream blanked two-space EFFECT filters and corrupted every tag after a non-ASCII path.
• Tag descriptions, undecoded tags shown, a New dialog, PROP_10 and above, and an unsaved marker on the tab.
• Draws EFFECT particles, LHAND_POSE and RHAND_POSE, and animated props in their own model space.
• A slot shows only the weapon bones it flags, the way the game does.
• WH3 slot ids carry their 9.0 names.
• Opens a .variantmeshdefinition and plays it.
• Render settings and screenshots; screenshots leave out every guide.

Kitbash

• Every number box changes when dragged sideways.
• The transform box moves the model as you type; rotate and scale work about the world origin; numpad + and - resize the gizmo.
• F9 no longer switches to bone selection, and the keyboard no longer gets stuck in a box or button.

Upstream bugs fixed

• The viewport ran at 37, 50 and 48 FPS on 75, 100 and 144 Hz displays; it now draws every frame.
• Faction colours tint WH3 models again.
• Skinned meshes with MatrixIndex 0 no longer ride the root bone in their bind pose.
• A model copied or renamed into the editable pack keeps its .wsmodel, so its textures no longer go missing.
• Looking up a file's path took 100 to 380 ms and now takes under 3 ms.
• 22 labels that printed {loc:Loc ...} show their text.