This template for 010 editor allows you to modify PHYS files from Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor.


Some notes and technical information:

How to load a PHYS file in-game
Change your model globalflags to 32 (or 160 if your model casts shadows as well):

The bones with physics must have flag 1024:


Bone coordinates
Bones with physics will take their position coordinates from the phys file and ignore the position given in the m2.
Position is set in the WELJ, SHOJ or SPHJ chunks.

Bone hierarchy
Bones with physics will not be affected by the rotation, scaling and translation of the parent bones unless they are added as an attachment.


As you can see in the image above, the gourds with physics are not affected by the m2 animation and will only move if their coordinate in the world changes.

This is why Blizzard makes separate m2 files for parts with physics. Exampe:

creature/fishmount/fishmount.m2 (base model without physics)
creature/fishmount/fishmount_wiskersleft.m2 (left wisker with physics)
creature/fishmount/fishmount_wiskersright.m2 (right wisker with physics)

The wiskers from the fish mount are in different m2 files, attached server-side as a vehicle accessory. You can also add them as spells or items. If the whiskers were part of the base model, they will just be floating next to the head, since they would not be affected by the parent bone movement.
It's not necessary to separate meshes with physics if your model is static (i.e. helmets, weapons, shoulder pads, etc.).
However you can add physics to a bone, and animate all the bones connected to it.
(Since 7.1 models with physics don't have to be separated - See Dragon Tail Costume as an example.)

Difference between MoP and WoD
The Phys file structure is the same for MoP and WoD.
However, the only thing I noticed is that in MoP physics are more sensitive and the shapes feel lighter.

This mod is basically for my blend mode overrides tutorial. Includes 11 wings.
I used some modified textures from Diablo 3 and Heroes of the Storm. The geometry is 10 bent planes with some basic rotation.
To make it work in-game you have to create a custom spell and attach the wing model to the back of your character (attachment 12), as you do with belt buckles.

If you want to increase or reduce the beam density, play with the "TexLookupTable" in 010editor:


Download:
-For Wrath of the Lich King
-For Cata, Mop and WoD

V2.0:
*Fixed crashes.

Hello everyone.
In this tutorial I will explain how texture animations work. It's based in WotLK but it's exactly the same for Cata and beyond.
We will add a basic texture animation to this test model:

(you can download it in the Tools section)

This method is quite useful to simulate waterfalls, energy beams, fire and much more.
If you want to add an advanced opacity mask, check my other tutorial.

TOOLS
-PyModelEditor.
-My test model.

Take in mind that it can be done in 010editor as well, but it's a little more complex. Once you know how texture animations work with PyModelEditor, feel free to explore it a little further creating multiple animation layers with different renderflags or adding them with 010editor.

THE TUTORIAL
Run PyModelEditor and open the test model (TexAnimPlaneTest.m2).
1- Go to GlobalSequences.
2- Write "1500" (without the quotation marks) and click on "OK". This is the ammount of time our animation will take. 1500 milliseconds is 1,5 seconds. The more milliseconds, the slower the animation will be.
3- Go to Edit UV Animations.
4- Click on "Add" to create a new texture animation.
5- Once the new texture animation is created, go to "Edit Translation".
6- A new window will open. Go to "Add AnimSub".
7- Change the Interpolation to "Linear".
8- Apply the global sequence you just created.
9- Paste this line:
0:{ 0.0 , 0.0 , 0.0 }
1500:{ 0.0 , 1.0 , 0.0 }
Now, click on Ok on all the windows you have open to apply the changes.

10- Go to Edit Materials.
11- Select the material of the mesh you want to add the texture animation (in this case, the test model only has one) and assign the texture animation you just created.



You can now save your model. If you test the model in-game, you will notice that the texture animation works fine, but there is some kind of dragging bug and it doesn't loop correctly:


This happens when the texture is not tiled. To tile the texture, open the model with PyModelEditor, go to Edit Textures and check both "X-Wrap" and "Y-Wrap":


This should fix the problem! (you can also do it in 010editor by changing the TextureFlag to "3").

TL;DR VIDEO


UNDERSTANDING THE ANIMATION SEQUENCE
Now that you managed to make your own texture animation, you may be wondering how to reverse the animation, or move it sidewards instead of upwards.
The key is in the animation line we added in PyModelEditor:


As you can see, each line has 4 segments: time frame, horizontal movement, vertical movement and an unused stack of data that we will never touch.
In frame 0, your texture stays on its default pose (0, 0, 0), but in frame 1500 it moves vertically (0, 1, 0) and goes back to where it started (it loops).
"1.0" is the ammount of times the texture loops. If you change it to "0.5", the texture will start moving but will return to its defult state when it has traveled half the texture. If you replace "1.0" with "-1.0", the texture will go downwards instead of upwards.
So, basically, "1500:{ 0.0 , 1.0 , 0.0 }" means that in 1.5 seconds your texture will loop vertically once. Another example: "3000:{ 0.0 , -1.0 , 0.0 }" means that in 3 seconds the texture will loop vertically once (but downwards).



If you put "1.0" in the horizontal segment instead of the vertical segment, you'll see something like this:


And if you want it to move to the corners, you simply need to put "1.0" (or -1.0 if you want it to go to the opposite direction) in both the horizontal and the vertical segment:


CONCLUSION
Texture animation is quite easy once you know how the numbers work. You just need some practice and experimentation to master it.
If your model has many .skin files, PyModelEditor won't manage the texture animations so well. The best tool for those cases is 010editor. I recommend you to start with small models first.
This tutorial was requested many times. Hope you find it useful.

Basically, multitexturing combines the alpha channel of two different textures, creating more variety in the particles and making it more realistic. It was introduced in Cataclysm but widely used since WoD for fire effects.



Usually, the textures used for particles in WoD are:
World\Expansion05\Doodads\IronHorde\FIRE_2X2_SHARP_MOD4X.BLP
World\Expansion05\Doodads\IronHorde\Fire_Bright_Mod2x_A.BLP

I tried to emulate this multitexturing effect in WotLK by combining both textures with Photoshop and increasing the rows and columns to give it more variety (since we can't animate the particle texture in Wotlk, each block has a different texture position). The result is quite decent. I would say it's 80% accurate because some features, like combining blend and additive blendingtypes on the same particle are not available in WotLK.
I made two texture versions: one with 16 blocks and another with 64 (more realistic). There is also a test model included.

This mount was added in build 18164 but totally removed from the game files a few builds later.
This model was supposed to be an iconic mob of Draenor, but for unknown reasons it was scrapped. You can still find its skull in the Legion login screen and all around Draenor, specially Gorgrond.

It was requested many times, so here it goes.

DOWNLOAD

It's in WoD file format, to use it in Wotlk you must retro-port it.

Note: there is no "model releases" forum, so I will post it here.

In this tutorial we will learn how the so called wotLK procedural water works, and how to activate it.
This water was added to the game files in patch 3.0 for internal testing only, so keep in mind that it's not perfect. It's called procedural but actually isn't, because nothing is created algorithmically, it's just a group of textures that interact with each other and give a nice visual effect.
There are some patches available online with this water activated, but most of them have errors or look bad (based on my own judgment). We will also learn how to improve it and customize it.

Tools

-MPQ Editor (or any other MPQ reader)
-Any DBC to CSV converter, such as Wow Parser
-Notepad
-Any BLP converter
-Photoshop (or any other image editor)

Step One - Editing the DBCs

Open MPQ editor and extract the file "DBFilesClientLiquidtype.dbc".
Convert this file to CSV (you can't edit it directly with a DBC editor for some reason) and open it with notepad.
Each line corresponds to a liquid type. The one with ID 100 is the procedural water. We will do a line swap.
You have to delete these entries: 1 (Water), 2 (Ocean), 5 (Slow Water), 6 (Slow Ocean), 9 (Fast Water), 10 (Fast Ocean).
Now copy the line with the procedural water and give it the same name and ID of the entries you deleted.


http://i.imgur.com/cC87I59.jpg

You will notice that there are 2 kinds of water: simple water and ocean water.
If the entry has "Water" in its name, replace the "1" in the 4th column with "0". It should look like this:

http://i.imgur.com/a484Hvl.jpg

Also, if the entry has "Water" in its name, go to column 20 and replace "proceduralOceanDepthTex" with "proceduralRiverDepthTex". The game uses a special illumination for the ocean, so this step is important or your water could look weird.



Technically we are done, but there is one last thing we can do:
Go to the column 21 (it's the last texture in the line) and replace "XTextures\ocean\ocean_h.%d.blp" with this transparent texture: "World\GENERIC\PASSIVEDOODADS\ParticleEmitters\DemonGlow04.blp".



Doing so will remove this pointless reflection:


It's quite annoying and unnatural because it goes against the position of the sun. It's better to remove it, but totally optional.

Now you can save your CSV and convert it back to DBC.

Note: you can also swap the wintergrasp and hyjal water if you want. Just check the spell id in column 6.

Step Two - Extracting the missing textures

As you may already noticed, the procedural water uses a few textures that don't exist in-game.
Blizzard tested this new water internally, that's why they never added the textures to the WotLK client, but they are present in updated client versions.
You can download the missing textures HERE.

If you want to extract them by hand, just open an updated wow client (4.x or beyond) and extract the following textures:
XTexturesoceanbasicReflectionMap.blp
XTexturesoceanbasicWaterHeightTex_X.blp ("X" is a number between 1 and 32, you must extract them all)

Rename the folder called "ocean" to "procWater" and it's done. You should have 33 textures, something like this:
XTexturesprocWaterbasicReflectionMap.blp
XTexturesprocWaterbasicWaterHeightTex_1.blp
XTexturesprocWaterbasicWaterHeightTex_2.blp
XTexturesprocWaterbasicWaterHeightTex_3.blp
etc.

Note: the reflection texture has a unique compression and most blp converters can't read it. If you are having trouble trying to convert this image, install BLPView, preview the texture in the Windows preview pane, take a screenthot and paste it in a new document (768x128).

Step Three - Tweaking the Textures

Reflecting Texture

Now you can test the water in-game. If you did everything right, it should be working correctly. BUT it can look much better.
Before starting, it's important that you understand how the reflection texture works. The game only reads the texture if it's 768x128 (width x height). Bigger or smaller images won't work.
The texture is divided into 3 sections:


The 1st section is a panoramic photo, the reflection itself. The texture bends to form a ring around your character (from another point of view, it wraps around a cylinder). Then, the 2nd section of the texture fills the gap at the center of the ring.
The 3rd section overlays all layers. The farther from the center, the more it becomes distorted. Also, it creates some small waves.



Now that we know how it works, let's analyze this image:



This is how the procedural water looks with the default texture. Yes, it looks like radioactive waste. We have a reflective texture with a lot of green, and the 3rd section of the texture overlays even more green, messing the original color of the water (it should be blue, not yellow).

-The first thing we must do is opening the texture with photoshop and removing the sun, because the water is always reflecting the sun, even at night, and it doesn't look good.
-Then, we must desaturate it. If the image is in black and white it doesn't mess the original color of the water (if the water is blue and your reflective texture is red, you will get purple water). You should avoid using color.
We can also darken it a little bit and give some yellow to the third section of the texture. This will give us subtle golden reflections.



Now it looks much better.
In case you want to remove the 3rd section because you don't like the overlay reflection or waves, just open the texture in photoshop and fill the 3rd section with black (or replace the texture in column 16 with a transparent texture).
You can even make a lot of new water ids, each one for a different zone, with a different reflective texture (you just need to change the texture name in the DBC), or you can make new liquids, as this "mana water":

The "wave effect"

You will notice that after some time the water starts doing some kind of fractal movement, creating a weird wave effect. It can look good in the ocean, but a little out of place in ponds or lakes.
This is caused by texture tiling. In order to repeat the reflective texture, the game tiles it. Since the texture has different contrast levels, it makes an optical illusion similar to a succession of waves:


This effect is hardcoded into the shader (even filling all collumns with 0 in Liquidtype.dbc won't change it), however you can make it less noticeable by using a dark texture with homogeneous contrast, like THIS ONE. You will see less reflections, but the "wave effect" is almost gone:


You can use the default texture for the ocean and the one with less reflections for small bodies of water, but it's a matter of taste.

Ripples

The ripples are created by the sequence of 32 textures named "BASICWATERHEIGHTTEX". They distort the reflection texture. Each one of them is a frame. Basically these textures are normal maps simulating movement and depth.



You can also try to apply other textures, but I won't get deeper into that, because I think it looks good with the default sequence, and it's quite difficult to make a new animated normal map.

Player wakes and splashes

If you want to update the old wake and splash textures, you have to replace the following files:
XTEXTURES\Splash\splash.blp
XTEXTURES\Splash\wake.blp

Here are some textures I made that match procedural water way better than the default ones:

(You can download them HERE)

Water brightness

Procedural water is brighter than classical water. This is more noticeable at night (specially in places like Theramore or Booty Bay).
This happens because the texture is not affected by the diffuse and ambient lighting (the same occurs with the default water, but since it has transparency and the material beneath is indeed affected by lighting, you don't notice this effect).
There are a few things you can do to counter this issue:
-Darken the reflection texture.
-Decreasing the water color lightness by half in the DBCs (LightIntband.dbc, last 4 IDs, more information HERE).

Conclusion

That's all the basic information you need to know about this "procedural" water. You can also download a few custom textures I made HERE, so you can see how different the water looks with different environments. Feel free to make your own textures and explore this topic even further.
Also, remember that this water is some kind of alpha testing phase for the liquid system released with Cataclysm, so you can find some artifacts like random lines in the ocean.
My goal with this tutorial is to stop people from asking for procedural water mods, it's fairly simple to do it yourself.
If you have more information to contribute, please send me a private message and I will add it to the tutorial.

Thank you. Have fun!

I made this script to convert multiple models from Legion to Wrath of the Lich King or Warlords of Draenor. Requires 010 editor.
The first script removes the unnecessary information before the M2 header and changes its version from 274 to 272 to make it work in WoD. The second one does the same but also runs Philip's converter on the M2 files to make them work in Wotlk.

How it works:
-Put the models you want to covert inside the folder called "Models".
-Run "Legion M2 to WoD/Wotlk.bat" and wait

This script can also read all the subfolders inside "models" and convert every M2 inside of them.

DOWNLOAD:
Legion to Wotlk
Legion to WoD

To make this script work there must be an entry for 010 editor in environment variables (this allows windows to launch 010 editor through the cmd window, otherwise it won't work):
-Right click on My computer -> properties -> advanced system settings -> environment variables -> Path
-Click edit
-Add your 010 editor directory to the list separated from the rest of the entries by a ";" (Example: ;C:Program Files (x86)10 Editor)
()

I made some Photoshop actions that automatically resize, move and crop the WoD/Legion/BfA character textures to make them work correctly in WOTLK. You can run them in a batch to convert multiple textures with just 1 click.
With this method you can retro-port almost every hd character model in a few minutes (you still need to modify the UV but that's the easiest part).



-The "Body texture" action automatically copies the face region, resizes and moves it to the lower left corner of the body texture. Then saves and closes the file.
-The "Face Texture" (upper and lower) action simply resizes and cuts the face files. You must duplicate each wod face texture and apply the upper action to to one of them and the lower action to the other (Wod only has 1 face texture file but wotlk has two, one for the upper half and other for the lower half).
-The facial hair action is similar to the face action. Also works for scalps. It cuts and resizes the texture but preserves transparency for facial hair textures (like beards or eyebrows).
-Tauren, Pandaren, Draenei and undead have some extra stuff (like tails, hooves, bones) where the head is supposed to be, so i made an action that cuts that region and saves it, so you can use it as an extra texture.

For batch conversion go to "file-> automate-> Batch...", choose the action and the folder you want and hit "OK".

Tested in Photoshop CS6. It should work in older versions, but i am not 100% sure.

DOWNLOAD:
MEDIAFIRE

Enjoy!

TIP: Character textures in lich king MUST be in INDEXED format to work. Remember to index them with blpconverter (command: BLPConverter.exe /FBLP_PAL_A8 "file").