Guide on adding a new model, animation, and creature to HoMMV

P.S. What's the deal with Blizzard – is there any positive news?!

Unfortunately, there's been complete silence from them so far. Even though I sent requests to several addresses.
Although, to be honest, Blizzard's Technical Support immediately told me that I shouldn't expect a quick response, especially regarding "Copyright" issues.

I hope my letters don't immediately end up in "spam" and are actually read...

In the .xdb Material, set the Is2Sidеd parameter to true – by default, this parameter is false!

Just in case, I just checked this parameter on the same model that I tested the first time, but then "Is2Sidеd" didn't work for me.

The error turned out to be trivial and simple, from the everyday life of IT guys, like "The monitor doesn't turn on, what should I do? - Don't panic, plug the plug into the socket"...

In general, after setting the "Is2Sidеd" parameter to "true" in the material, you need to save and reload the map, because for some unknown reason, the map editor doesn't apply all settings for certain models "live" without reloading. It was enough to reload the map, and "Oh, miracle, IT WORKED!".

It's a little embarrassing to mess up on this and, instead of using the "standard parameter," waste time inventing a workaround with a modifier.

well, there is a function. you just need to figure out if it works efficiently in terms of performance. Any thoughts? You can test it with the Ripper, as I wrote above.
But I think that in any case, it would be more useful for beginners to create a tutorial using this function, because it is easier than editing the model in Max.

I don't think that the performance issue is relevant for this game at the moment, since now you can play it on any calculator, and even increasing the polygon count of the models is unlikely to have any effect.

Cool, that will be cool and very useful. The main thing is to try to describe the process more clearly, as if for complete... beginners.

Understood, I'll keep that in mind. We'll simplify it.

no. unfortunately, it's just adjusting the coordinates in Max, nothing new.

That's a pity, I thought there might be a chance to avoid the tedious adjustment.

Is this about attaching a separate object (say, a sword or shield) to a specific bone? And will this be saved when exporting to Heroes 5?

Well, in general, you can say that. It's cheap, it works. The main thing is to make sure that the bone hierarchy is preserved when converting formats.