Wildfire Riders

So, a lot of you probably watched Craft of War: BLIND (and if you haven't, go away and watch it. ;_;). What caught me as interesting on this from anything else is the fact that rather than using ingame footaged or video-edited footage fraps'ed from model viewer, the guy actually exported the models out into 3D modeling software and then, y'know, did things you can't "do" in WoW. So I started messing around with this idea on my own.

The renderings come out super bright because apparently the default blank scene is FIVE FEET FROM THE SUN, but you get the idea. This isn't just the unedited model pulled out from WoW, as THE STUPID BASE MODELS AREN'T STANDING STRAIGHT WITH THEIR FEET TOGETHER QQ. So you literally have to find a good neutral stance, pull it out, DELETE HALF OF IT, mirror the other half, and weld yourself back together after centering everything...



I haven't goofed around with exporting to video yet, so I can show animation, but... well. To put it this way, I wanted to find out really quick if what I was doing was "right" for linking a character model to a simulated skeleton, without worrying if I was doing it "well". Basically a quick test to see if I'd be able to animate. So I grabbed a base animation file and threw her on it.


OMG THATS PRETTY AWKWARD.

Oh man, her knees are fused!

What software are you using, by the by?

3D max studio. The good news is what I'm doing works. I basically just have to do the process correctly, ie go vertice by vertice and make sure its linked to the right bone (the boots overlap, hence the misguided links), and use ridged instead of deformable links so shes not all googly in the right places. The actual annoyances are going to be browsing through the help files to understand how to set up actual scenes with lighting, and how to create cameras/perspectives to record from instead of still shots.

Oh, and I guess I should actually, uh, ATTACH her hair when she moves.