• 🏆 Texturing Contest #33 is OPEN! Contestants must re-texture a SD unit model found in-game (Warcraft 3 Classic), recreating the unit into a peaceful NPC version. 🔗Click here to enter!
  • It's time for the first HD Modeling Contest of 2024. Join the theme discussion for Hive's HD Modeling Contest #6! Click here to post your idea!

Dothraki Rider with Arakh

This bundle is marked as lacking. It fails to meet the standard requirements and may only have minor use.
Well, after a long time off the Hive due to real life duties i decided to make something once again. During watching the newest of the Game of Thrones (GoT), i started asking myself whether there are already GoT-ressources on the Hive. Since i couldn't rly find many, i decided to make some of my favourites, the Dothraki.


Dothraki:
The Dothraki are nomadic, horse-riding people from Essos, the Eastern continent from Game of Thrones. They inhabit the plains of Essos, called Dothraki Sea. They live in larger clans, named khalasars, each khalasar being led by a khal (warlord-like ruler). Those khalasars are often on the move. Compared to all other GoT-people, the Dothraki are completely different. Unlike most humans they wear only furs, leather and clothes as armor for maintaining their mobility. Their weapon of choice is usually their (in)famous arakh, a curved blade of unusual design, like this model here. But they also are known for their archery skills, like firing arrows accurately while riding on a horse. Other frequently used weapons are spears, daggers and possible whips and javelins as well. Quite often they plunder all other people from Essos, and they're known by reputation to be ruthless, fearsome and powerful warriors. Another unique feature is their braid, which is a sign of power of the individual warrior. The longer the braid, the stronger the warrior, since the braid is only cut when defeated. Dothraki always fight from horseback and usually lack of having an infantry at all. Their attacks are fast, effective and come by surprise most often.


About the model:
This is a Dothraki warrior wielding the classic arakh, the standard version of their soldiers. The rider's chest, the weapon and partly the haircut are scratch-made by me. It took me a while to make this model, since i corrected and fixed issues a dozen of times before giving it the finishing polish. Today i was finally happy with the result! I also deleted the Attack, spell and Stand channel anims, but i added a new Attack -1 (made out of the original attack anim), Attack - 2 (made with slight modifications from the spell anim) and Walk - Channel (made of Attack - 2 and Walk anims, specially rigged for attacking while riding through the enemy lines)! ;) Those animation changes were made in MDLVIS by copying and pasting certain sequences. I also modified a bit the Stand - Victory anim so that the weapon doesn't clip through the horse's neck, also edited a bit stand 3 for the same reason and added one more partly animated bone so that his braid doesn't clip through the shoulder during Stand -1. Originally the model had a scratch-made mount (made by me) which used a skin from World of Warcraft (unedited). It wasn't/isn't rly clear to say whether this would be allowed, since the skin wasn't edited (conflict with the skin submission rules) but rips from other Blizzard Games are allowed to a certain degree. So i decided to make it use an ingame skin


I hope you like the model! Have fun with it and feel free to use it in any imaginable way! If you use the skin, don't forget to give proper credits (to Blizzard Entertainment, World of Warcraft)!

Update 1: my thanks to SonOfSami for pointing the issue with the arms out! I replaced the arms with new ones and also fixed an assignment issue at the right arm.

Update 2: i made the entire model 10% larger and additionally made the rider a bit smaller, to fit the proportions better. My thanks to Gluma and Fingolfin for pointing it out! Also edited a bit his blade (larger size, slightly thicker and bigger pommel).
Previews
Contents

DothrakiRiderArakh (Model)

DothrakiRiderArakhIcons (Icon)

DothrakiRiderArakh_Portrait (Model)

Reviews
General Frank
Bunch of issues with the model. Please check it with this tool: Sanity Test | HIVE
the upper parts, the problem is not the skin, its with the mesh
oh! Ok, will try to make a few minor changes. Thx for pointing it out! :)

That's about fitting in the Warcraft 3 art style rather than staying faithful to the movie. I mean, that's how I would do that anyway
ok. In this case i'll stick to the movie rather than the art style, since it's a movie-based model ;)
 
Nice model, though i have to say that i kinda agree with Gluma about the Arakh - your horse has Wc3 proportions and style, while your rider does not. I think it would look better if the blade was not uniform width, but slightly thicker towards the center (so that the outer part of the crecent has a steeper arc, so to say). You could also make the pommel a bit thicker. The length of the weapon is fine, it's just that it looks a bit too delicate and slim for Wc3 style.
 
Nice model, though i have to say that i kinda agree with Gluma about the Arakh - your horse has Wc3 proportions and style, while your rider does not. I think it would look better if the blade was not uniform width, but slightly thicker towards the center (so that the outer part of the crecent has a steeper arc, so to say). You could also make the pommel a bit thicker. The length of the weapon is fine, it's just that it looks a bit too delicate and slim for Wc3 style.
Kk, will change the blade then on my next update. Changed the arms yesterday, it performs better now. Will see if i manage to change the proportions of the rider as well. Now that you mentioned it he rly looks a bit oversized compared to the mount. I won't make the pommel that much thicker since it wasn't rly thick in the movies either
 
i still kinda don't like the elbow and the shoulders : ( but at least its a bit better, more polygons (or vertices, whatever) to make it rounder will be very nice though
The problem is that the skeletons of most warcraft rider models are made for armoured or (like in this case) cloth-wearing units. Will see if i can maybe improve it further. Though due the aforementioned problem, more vertices only improve the model up to a certain point
 
Top