New Model: Nightmare Dragon

Well,

I didn't want to show the design before it's completion but we've got two animation questions and I felt that including what's been done so far will ensure that these questions are answered...faster heh.

This model is a joint effort between myself, and a friend of mine. She's experienced in modeling where as I'm anything but. This is, however, her first low poly model to my understanding.

-The concept as well as the head was done by me.
-The rest of the body as well as the skin work was done by her.

The questions we have are as follows:

1: How do you do a skin animation?
2: How do we add animations to the model for incorporation into WCIII?

Thank you for your time and feel free to comment on the model/skin work if you so wish.

-Tenebrae

This goes in the animation section.

Moved.

I might answer your questions later when I get the time.

Sorry for misplacing the thread. Tis 8am and I've yet to sleep so I'm not thinking properly.

Thanks

This model is very impressive indeed, thus I felicitate you and your friend

Thank ya very much,

If you like it now...wait till we get the skin animation done
Got something extra special for that. If...we find out the answer as to how to go about doing it of course

Also plan on making Mushroom people

Holy cow!!! That model is so awesome! You and your friend are a blessing for WC3 community. Please release this model when it's done, I might need it.

Do you have any other models you have done?

Thank you very much,

We fully intend to release the model upon completion. As for others, currently this is the first, but we intend to make more. She and I both get very bored...heh. Working on a horrid looking little mushroom man after this.

After that...depends upon whatever twisted thoughts I come up with .

Cool. And that mushroom man sounds like a great idea, just don't make it a mario toad. lol

*Snickers*

Not in the least...it'll be extremely dark and twisted in nature. It's going to be used for a McGee's "Alice" like area upon my RP map... I was imspired to make a twisted wonderland of my own. The Mushroom men will be a part of that.

Okay, I'll look forward to anything you will do. And welcome to Hive Workshop, you might want to introduce yourself to the others here.

Thank ya much, and done.

How many polygons is this? it looks way too detailed for proper use in the wc3 engine.

As such, i would strongly advice you to not animate it specifically for wc3. Animate it with some nice quality IK animations and such, anb then you can always bake those and reduce the detail and quality for wc3 use. As it is now it will stand out way too much in wc3 maps or projects, that pretty much always use wc3 models in conjunction with custom ones.

One more thing, the structure of the thing is a little odd. Is it stationary or will it move? the way it looks like its "growing'" from the ground would imply that it would be stationary, but then why the wings?

It looks like a pretty artpiece, and that it does well. But it is impractical in more then one field, and just doesnt look all that suited for use in games in general.

Hmm...

It has about 2000 polygons, unless I'm horribly mistaken. If you think it too detailed now, wait till we get the textural animations done, heh, got something special in mind for that... Anyway, it's meant to stand out seeing as how it's going to be a side boss in the map I'm currently working on. It's a unit meant to be a boss type of some sort...hence the detail of it...and we just like detail.

As for the way it's structured, think of rotting semi-solid flesh... The base is only like that because the flesh of the creature isn't completely solid, though stable enough to retain form. We've toyed with it's means of locomotion and I would adore for it to fly while moving...and then settle upon the ground when stationary. If we choose, and can do, that mode of locomotion we'll most likely be adding another mouth to the base that, when upon the ground, is hidden yet exposed during flight.

If I could...I'd even have the flesh tear at the base when it took flight, showing that when it lands it's lower half becomes a bit heavy and clings to the earth...but THAT would be too much detail heh.

If we can't pull off that means of locomotion, for whatever the reason, we've thought of having it fade out of existence when in transit...and then reappear upon reaching it's prey. This concept is based off the fact that it's, in a manner of speaking, an apparition. It's simply a nightmare, made manifest into a physical form, in which case we wouldn't have to add any more model work and simply perform a smooth and interesting fading effect that compensated for the fact that it simply glided across the ground invisibly till it caught up with you.

The first of the two would most likely look more visually appealing whereas the second of the two would give the players the shock value...if they suddenly stopped only to have it instantly appear right on their ass. I, in a way, like both.

As for the animation advice, I'll be sure to tell her that...she'll prolly do that regardless. Anymore questions feel free to ask, and if I was wrong on the polies I'll be sure to let you know, though I'm 99% sure I'm not...

Thought it was about that much... Regulairly models in wc3 never go over 1000, some mounted heros and buildings aside. Not only is the engine not build to handle such models, they simply stand out too much.

I would strongly suggest that if you use this in a map, you downgrade the detail and polygon count. On the other hand the model is quite good, so i would also say save the 2000ply version, normal map it, and use it in SC2 when it comes out, or another up-to-date game engine.

What you could, (and should ) do to blend this guy in with the envoiroment more, is create an ubersplat at its base with some black goop. I think ubersplats can have birth and death animations (buildings use then to tie em in with the envoiroment as well) so it should look reather good.

When i see this guy, i would say he dissapears into the ground, or "the shadows" sorta speak, and appear elsewhere. That could make for an interesting boss fight setup, if you have it only possubly appear in certain areas of shadow, and then having to illuminate each shadowy spot in order to be able to vanquish the beast.

As for its way of moving, one of the most important things here is going to be the wing motion right. Its default position doesnt really show all its detail from a top down vieuw, so make sure the wings tilt/rotate as well as flap, or whatever this thing does.

Oh and just to make this clear, i think it looks absolutely awesome. Just horrubly unfit for wc3.

Jesus Man!
That... Is.... Wicked
As for the polys, I agree it's high compared to usual wc3 models. But it looks really good. Hope the animations turn out nicely
I said I was a fan of your work before. Well, now I worship it! (lol)
I really like the skull, it's pretty cool, and has a nice texture
Also, I just noticed the membrane on the wings.
As for de-rooting itself from the ground like that, I'm not sure you could do that without having to have a morph animation, other wise every cycle of walking it'd go back in the ground and go up, while still constantly moving
As for making it fade out, that'd be a little odd. You could, instead, while it moves make it flicker from visible to invisible and back and forth randomly (I'm doing that for my next robot i've dubbed "wraith")
But it's your model, so do what you want

erwtenpeller said:

Thought it was about that much... Regulairly models in wc3 never go over 1000, some mounted heros and buildings aside. Not only is the engine not build to handle such models, they simply stand out too much.


I would strongly suggest that if you use this in a map, you downgrade the detail and polygon count. On the other hand the model is quite good, so i would also say save the 2000ply version, normal map it, and use it in SC2 when it comes out, or another up-to-date game engine.


What you could, (and should ) do to blend this guy in with the envoiroment more, is create an ubersplat at its base with some black goop. I think ubersplats can have birth and death animations (buildings use then to tie em in with the envoiroment as well) so it should look reather good.


When i see this guy, i would say he dissapears into the ground, or "the shadows" sorta speak, and appear elsewhere. That could make for an interesting boss fight setup, if you have it only possubly appear in certain areas of shadow, and then having to illuminate each shadowy spot in order to be able to vanquish the beast.


As for its way of moving, one of the most important things here is going to be the wing motion right. Its default position doesnt really show all its detail from a top down vieuw, so make sure the wings tilt/rotate as well as flap, or whatever this thing does.


Oh and just to make this clear, i think it looks absolutely awesome. Just horrubly unfit for wc3.

Click to expand...

Hmm...

See, we based the polly count off the model used by the "Hell Dragon" so we assumed it a high, but working, count. She is, however, working on reducing the amount of pollies and also redesigning the wings due to the fact that they were taken from the same model and didn't present the effect we wanted with the tattered membrane...so she's going to just remake them entirly.

As for the manner in which he moves, yea, I agree that a fade into shadows would look beautiful with the design...and spare my poor partner the task of further complications hehe. I'll see what we can come up with for a good "Fade to shadow" effect. The wings will be designed so that you can see the membrane easily enough, not to worry, we already had that intended.

Anyway thanks for the compliment and advice, will definitely all be taken to mind.

SuPa- said:

Jesus Man!
That... Is.... Wicked
As for the polys, I agree it's high compared to usual wc3 models. But it looks really good. Hope the animations turn out nicely
I said I was a fan of your work before. Well, now I worship it! (lol)
I really like the skull, it's pretty cool, and has a nice texture
Also, I just noticed the membrane on the wings.

As for de-rooting itself from the ground like that, I'm not sure you could do that without having to have a morph animation, other wise every cycle of walking it'd go back in the ground and go up, while still constantly moving

As for making it fade out, that'd be a little odd. You could, instead, while it moves make it flicker from visible to invisible and back and forth randomly (I'm doing that for my next robot i've dubbed "wraith")
But it's your model, so do what you want

Click to expand...

Thank ya much for the compliments, you'll be able to see the membrane better soon.
As for the manner of movement...I'm sure we'll come up with something good

Looks great!
It reminds me of Venom from Spiderman somewhat

I didn't like spiderman 3 as much as I thought I would for some reason. It seemed a little cheesey with the whole "meteor falling from the sky" And the whole sand man being a goody-goody and yet having unlimited power and barely using it... pretty cheap. Hell, if I had that kinda pwnage I'd dig some sand into some people's ears and make their brains explode (reserved for only those I'd dislike, of course) hehe, lol
Anyway, I never really thought it looked like Venom. Probably because Venom had about no white on him (i think) but yet was supposed to. And the symbiote thing had a lot of strands too it, like black muscle fiber or something
BTW, Tenebrae, have a look at this, it could be useful -> http://hiveworkshop.com/forums/showthread.php?p=280633#post280633
[Offtopic]
Is your name based off the word tenebrous?

The hell dragon is based off a WoW model, thus it doesnt account to wc3 terms.

SuPa- said:

it could be useful -> http://hiveworkshop.com/forums/showthread.php?p=280633#post280633
[Offtopic]
Is your name based off the word tenebrous?

Click to expand...

now why would they stick to conventional methods? when you create a model from scratch, you can name animations whatever you like. With custom scripts, you can trigger them whenever you like. Why the hell go through the trouble of using blizzards (horrible) metamorphoses, while you can just scipt it to trigger a "Walk start" animation when a move command is given, then just use a walk animation for moving, and then a "walk stop" or whatver for stopping again. It'd take some tweaking and timing, but still be a bazillion times better then using any kind of ability.

Hey, I'm the (mostly) silent partner. Thanks for the help and kind words

As Tene mentioned, the model is getting reworked a bit and the poly count will come down. Most likely, it will end up between 1000 and 1500, lower if possible. The teeth are *actually* pointy and 2 sided (yeah, that was silly of me), that will be swapped out for an alpha trans on a single sided plane. The wings from the WoW dragon are just too dense for what they need to do and the construction on them is a bit... odd, so they're getting replaced. I'm also not entirely happy with the topology through the body, at present, and that really needs sorted for animation purposes. So, yeah, there's some refining to do.

Just as an aside, when the lovely Tenebrae modeled that head, that was the first time he'd ever used Max (or any modeling program I believe) and didn't he do a good job? Everyone all together: awwwww, yay Tene! You dun gud! We're so proud hehehe (I told you I'd get you back for the card thing, punk)

erwtenpeller said:

Why the hell go through the trouble of using blizzards (horrible) metamorphoses

Click to expand...

Well, and this purely for the sake of discussion (really *whistles*): If one were to, say, make a unit that had a planted ground form with ground based attack, stand, death, fandango, etc animation sequences but could *not* move (because it's rooted and probably gets some HP regen bonuses for being so) and then one wanted to take that unit and give it a flight ability so it could 'up-root' to become mobile and then have a whole new set of stand, attack, death, tango of doom, etc sequences... Wouldn't that be the only/easiest/best way to accomplish that?

Purely for a walk sequence, I agree. Triggers would be less cumbersome. However, I'm thinking the pauses to play animations at the start and end of every movement command would cause some degree of irritation were one to actually play the unit. It also seems like it would be a bit silly for something to move about that way in general. Ripping itself out of the ground, flapping over a few paces and then re-rooting itself to the ground at each stop. At each and every momentary pause. Seems a bit daffy for it to land unnecessarily like that. It makes more sense to me to put the flight form to an ability so one could choose when to take off or land. It also makes me giggle far more than it should to think at some point it could cause someone to say "I can't move!! I ran out of mana!"

We shall see, much tinkering still needs to be done

really, if you wanted it to uproot like that, you wouldn't even need triggers
just look at blizz models like the druid of the talon
It has 2 sets of animations
examples:
stand
stand alternate
attack
attack alternate
morph
morph alternate

SuPa- said:

really, if you wanted it to uproot like that, you wouldn't even need triggers
just look at blizz models like the druid of the talon
It has 2 sets of animations
examples:
stand
stand alternate
attack
attack alternate
morph
morph alternate

Click to expand...

Not to mention the Night Elf Ancients, which do the exact type of animation...which she realized after posting...

hehe.

aaaawwww! *pinches Tenebrae's cheek* he did his first part of a model, yes he did! lol
and yes, I was thinking of that too, tenebrae/banana/both

SuPa- said:

aaaawwww! *pinches Tenebrae's cheek* he did his first part of a model, yes he did! lol
and yes, I was thinking of that too, tenebrae/banana/both

Click to expand...

*Bites*

Have you tried the "Optimize" Function? It rebuilds all objects using the least amount of polygons possible while retaining shape... basicly the opposite of "tesselate" or "smooth"

no need for it, it looks beautifull

Indeed! 8D eyetastic, but apparently he needs a lower polycount.

no it doesn -.- its like you said B2M's doodads should have worse textures. They are meant to be hi res - and that is, same with this model, just this should be hi poly.