[intense_lead ]Craig Robinson, Senior Art Director at World of Warcraft, has now presented on the WoW website the exact plans on how the often very old player character models are to be renewed.[/intense_lead]
In recent years, it has increasingly become a problem that old models with relatively few polygons looked more and more like foreign bodies in an increasingly stylish environment.
Dwarven beards as fluffy as Pandaren fur!
The goal of the facelift is now to bring the traditional models up to par with the Pandaren, boss mobs, or certain new NPC models like Vol’jin, the leader of the Trolls.
Robinson also provided an insight into how extensive such a seemingly simple task ultimately turns out to be. The number of polygons is significantly increased (sometimes quadrupling), the texture is enhanced, and significantly more bones are used. This is intended to enable updated facial expressions. With 180 animations per character and 10 races with a female and male variant, nearly 3600 animations were needed.
Same Troll, old price – now with 40% more soul!
Robinson emphasized several times how important it is for Blizzard to preserve the soul of the beloved models. A player should definitely feel that they are still playing the same character, just that someone has finally focused the lens.
Some time ago, there was almost a shitstorm when a designer changed the position of the ears on a model during a standard patch and millions of players worldwide no longer recognized their avatar. Blizzard seems to have learned its lessons from that experience.
The first images of human females (feels weird to write that) already look very promising and we are excited to see how the changes ultimately play out in the game and whether we will really recognize our avatars again! It would be strange if there was some other troll in our armor!
