auromolean
For the sake of experiment purity, I tested the functionality of importing models from Archangel into 3DsMax2018 according to the instructions in the video; everything worked the first time, without any issues, and it took less than 2 minutes.
Hello, I only saw this post a few days ago.
Thank you for the detailed description of the process; I tried it on several models, and it looks like it can significantly speed up the export of animated models. GrannyExporter works very well; it converts Heroes of Might and Magic GR2 animations even better than the NWN2Utils plugin for 3ds Max 2008 or Noesis. For example, the idle animations of some units (swordsmen, vampires, and many others) noticeably twitched when viewed in GR2 files in Noesis and when imported into 3ds Max 2008, and there was also a noticeable problem with how, in certain frames of the animations, the weapon slightly started to "fall out" of the unit's hands. When running such idle animations through GrannyExporter, the resulting FBX file did not have these problems, and that's great because we had to fix these problems either manually or with custom scripts that processed the SMD animation file.
grnreader98, unlike Archangel, correctly processes bone names, which avoids problems when applying animations, but I noticed that on a couple of models, if you take the FBX skeleton obtained from the GR2 skeleton through GrannyExporter and convert it to SMD, it differs slightly from the SMD skeleton obtained through grnreader98, mainly in the rotation of some bones, but sometimes also in the size of the skeleton (for example, for the demon hero). I also noticed in the readme file that grnreader98 is based on GR2skanim v1.2 source by GR2 Decode / tazpn (NWN2 dlu for 3DSmax2008), and if you try to import the GR2 skeleton into 3ds Max 2008 through this plugin, an SMD skeleton will be automatically created in the folder with the GR2 skeleton, which is completely identical to the SMD skeleton obtained through grnreader98.
In general, it turns out to be very convenient that GR2 animations can be converted to FBX and immediately imported into Unreal Engine without other intermediate steps, and in one version of 3ds Max, you can prepare a Skeletal Mesh from an SMD file (previously, we used 3ds Max 2008 because of the NWN2Utils plugin, and then we saved all the animations in MAX format so that we could later open them in 3ds Max 2024 and create an FBX export with a modern version of FBX).
Strangely, I noticed that even when performing all the steps from the video and using 3ds Max 2020 with the SMD plugin from Wonderboy, the demon hero model had a strange defect: the chain that should be around the hero's waist began to move very far away from his back and hang in the air, although there was no such problem with 3ds Max 2008. I even tried to export the idle animation in SMD format and apply this animation in 3ds Max 2008, and there really was no such defect; perhaps this is some specific problem with 3ds Max 2020, most likely with the SMD plugin.
Also, the banshee model still hasn't been mastered; it remains as problematic as before 
, with the exception of ghosts, because with ghosts, Archangel crashes when trying to load the GR2 skeleton (this is the only model with this problem).
Thank you again for the guide and the links to the programs!
UPD: I tried 3ds Max 2018, but the problem with the idle animation of the demon hero remained there as well; apparently, for some models, it will still be necessary to use 3ds Max 2008, because there are no defects there.