Armorsmith & WINE

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Coreforge

Coreforge

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Armorsmith can be very useful when it comes to scaling, but like pepakura, it's only available for Windows, and not everyone uses Windows.

But you can just use WINE to run it, right? Well, yesn't. It works, but it's a bit more complicated than pepakura.

I've rewritten the guide here for newer versions of Armorsmith to take out all of the things that were only needed for the older (1.3.3.5 and older) versions.
It might also work for the old versions, but I haven't tried that, so I'm leaving the old guide here for those.


So first, what do you need to get armorsmith up and running on a non-Windows system?
  • Armorsmith (kinda obvious)
  • WINE (everything above 5.0 should work, I haven't tried anything below.)
  • Windows (unfortunately you do need Windows, but it should only be necessary once) Not needed anymore!
  • (lutris. This isn't a requirement, but it can help organize things a bit better)
So, assuming you've bought armorsmith, the first step is to install it. The installer will try to install DirectX 9, but you can just cancel that, as the installation will fail anyways, and this way, you won't accidentally install the bing bar. You will need to do this both on Windows and whatever system you actually want to use (Ubuntu in my case, but it should be the same on pretty much any linux distro, and not much different for mac). You'll need it on windows first though, as our other install won't be very useful before that.
EDIT:
Installing on Windows first is not needed anymore, activation now works on wine too.
Once Armorsmith is installed on Windows (a VM is probably enough, but I just used my native Windows installation), log in with your email and serial number. After that, you can close Armorsmith again and shut Windows down, it's not needed anymore.

The next step is the actual install on WINE. I had more issues with regular system WINE, so I use lutris to manage the WINE prefix and launch Armorsmith, but regular system wine should work too. Since there need to be some specific settings in the prefix for Armorsmith to work though, I recommend at least using a separate WINE prefix. (If you're wondering what this prefix is, the FAQ describes it a bit more. You can kinda think of it as a Windows installation, but it's not one).
Using DXVK to translate the DirectX calls to Vulkan isn't required, but I'd recommend it (lutris has it enabled by default).
For versions after 1.3.3.5, both DXVK and D3D Extras are required. See this post for more information.
You can install Armorsmith right after you created the prefix or do it later, it doesn't really matter. It won't fully work until everything is set up though. So next are some important settings.
The most important setting though is the Windows version. Open winecfg (using winetricks, just running winecfg in the terminal or opening it using whatever prefix organizer you use) and set the Windows version to Windows 7. With Windows 10 selected, I had issues with file choosers not responding to any input.

After this is done, navigate to the Documents folder on your Windows installation, and copy the "Armorsmith Designer" folder to your documents folder in the WINE prefix (<prefix>/drive_c/users/<username>/Documents, the exact path may vary).
Once you have copied that folder, you can run Armorsmith on WINE (or install it, if you haven't before. The exact order doesn't really matter.)
You can skip this step if you're able to activate Armorsmith on WINE.

You might get some rendering glitches in the viewport from time to time, but apart from that, it should be fully usable now. I haven't tested every feature though.
 
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I'm not running linux right now, but this is awesome. Commenting for thread updates :)
 
I'm with Schankerz and now I'm starting to wonder if the Canadians don't have a drinking problem. hahaha

In all seriousness though - do we need to have this in a pinned Armorsmith post? Maybe with other Armorsmith tips and tricks? RandomRanger - thoughts?
 
I think it should definitely be accessible for future readers, but the 405th Linux community is so small that pinning it may be an overkill amount of exposure. Perhaps it belongs in the tutorial index?
 
This SHOULD also work for anyone running an Intel-based Mac (not verified) if they don't want to use something like Parallels or Boot Camp. Not entirely sure about it working for those with Apple Silicon/M1 chips, but Parallels should work for them now.
 
The one issue with macs might be that apple removed 32bit support in High Sierra (I think, I don't use MacOS), but apparently codeweavers have at least somewhat worked around that, and since Armorsmith is 64bit, it might not have any 32bit dependencies. M1 should probably also work with Rosetta or qemu-user as well.
 
If you're using Armorsmith on linux, don't install the new update for now.
It immediately crashes upon starting, likely due to things missing in DXVK and WineD3D.

The last version of Armorsmith that I know works so far is 1.3.3.5


With vulkan renderers (both DXVK and WineD3D), there's the message
Code: 
00b8:fixme:vulkan:X11DRV_vkCreateWin32SurfaceKHR Application requires child window rendering, which is not implemented yet!
which may or may not be an issue, OpenGL based WineD3D does not directly complain about anything, but Armorsmith still fails creating a texture.
With all rendering options, there is an unhandled page fault in some texture related code.
 
I got it to work again.

Settings (I did this with lutris, but you can also set it up manually):
  • DXVK enabled
  • D3D Extras enabled (without this is crashes)
  • wine 7.2 (I didn't try too many versions, older versions probably work fine too)
  • Windows version: Windows 7
Setting the windows version to windows 10 leads to the UI becoming unresponsive for multiple seconds every time you select something in the viewport, and I haven't found any upsides to doing so.

Also, activation now works fine, so there's no need anymore to do it on windows and copy over any files. I don't know if that directly has something to do with the update or just with some other things that I've changed, but it works.
 
With all of these developments with learning how to install it without needing to use Windows, I was wondering if you would be willing to re-create the tutorial using just that information, as the original post is a little confusing between it mentioning that it can work without it, but still having instructions pertaining to it being required still included. Additionally, maybe you can also separately post the old version of the tutorial as well for those who are willing to do install it that way, or if it's easier to do in general. Thank you for the time in getting this figured out =D.
 
Instead of editing my original post again, I'll rewrite it here and just link it there.

Keep in mind that not all steps may be required, and I only tested some configurations. Also, while I don't think it should matter too much in this case, I have only tried it with AMD GPUs (with all 3 Vulkan drivers though, they all seem to work just as well).


For newer Armorsmith versions (above 1.3.3.5)
These versions are significantly easier to install, so unless you need the older versions for some reason, I'd recommend to just go with the latest one (I assume that hasn't broken anything again, I currently have 1.4.0.8 installed).

So what do you need?
  • Armorsmith
  • WINE (I'd just use something above 7.0, currently I'm running GE 8.6)
  • Lutris to make things a bit easier, though this isn't strictly needed
  • Also, you need a GPU and drivers that support Vulkan
The setup is quite easy. You just install Armorsmith into the wine prefix you want to use (I still recommend using a separate one and not the system default, lutris makes this very easy). If the installer tries to install anything else like DirectX, just quit those installers and only install Armorsmith.
You also need DXVK and D3Dextras. In lutris, you can just enable these in the configuration under the runner tab.
You should now be able to enter your Email address and License key and start using Armorsmith.

I found it's not necessary anymore to set the Windows version to Windows 7, but if you encounter any issues with the UI, I'd try that first to see if it fixes it.

The only issues I've found so far is some occasional flicker in the 3D Viewport, but it doesn't happen too often, so it's not a big deal for me.

One last tip: Since you likely won't be storing all of your data inside the wine prefix (I recommend against doing that), the filesystem root ("/") is likely the Z: drive under "My Computer". It's the easiest way to find stuff, since wine seems to assign a lot of drive letters, even multiple ones to the same partition for some reason.
 
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