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Night Elf Sentinel with triple-bladed glaives

This bundle is marked as lacking. It fails to meet the standard requirements and may only have minor use.
My envisionment of a lightly armored melee sentinel, along with the typical glaives. Originally thought for cinematics and campaign screens, here I tried to animate it as a unit.

The model uses mostly in-game textures but also requires a custom texture made by me to represent silvery armor decorations.
All animation sequences are free-hand except the Death animation, which was imported and adapted from the Lasher made by Tarrasque .
The portrait is an edited version of the basic Sylvanas's.

Credits to: Tarrasque

Special thanks to the many users who gave me precious feedback and very valuable counsel regarding animation: @Alethos, @Himperion , @FerSZ , @Tauer , and @Direfury in particular.
Thanks to Nightelfbuilder for making an icon!

Updates:
1. changed decorations layer from transparent to blend for better visibility. Thanks to Alethos!
2. due to the duplicated bundling of the custom texture for both unit and portrait models, which uselessly inflated the filesize, the portrait has been incorporated into the unit model. Moreover, the small clipping issue during Walk has been solved. In addition, the TC variant added in a post below among other comments has been updated (https://www.hiveworkshop.com/attachments/sentinellltc-mdx.292155/) (the TC version still needs the custom texture, that can be found in the main bundle, to be imported without "war3mapImported\" to work properly). Finally, optimization allowed for texture filesize reduction, but for those interested in the higher-filesize, older texture, it can be found in the comments below (https://www.hiveworkshop.com/attachments/decorationsa512x512-blp.291827/)
3. solved clipping issue in Stand - 1. Lightly tweaked Attack - 1. Updates extended to the TC version. Thanks @Pr0nogo !
4. reverting to the old, larger filesize texture for now.
5. february, 2019 - thanks to XGM user 8gabriel8 (Пользователь 8gabriel8 - XGM: eXtreme Gamedev & Modmaking) this model can now use a newly optimized decorations texture that spares over 75% of the filesize. Updating the model to use that texture.
Contents

Icons (Icon)

New Sentinel scaled to 150% (Model)

Reviews
PROXY
Review: A very fine model with animations that would benefit from smoothing them out and generally improving them (although they are okay as they are - I suggest especially comparing the speed and timing with other models and to use that as guidance)...
General Frank
Please find a way to add PROPER team colouring. Beside that, the model would be ready for approval.
Level 13
Joined
Apr 13, 2016
Messages
376
The mesh is perfect, but the animations could use some work...
The end of Somersault in stand 2 is clumsy
The attack anims should be faster.
the running cycle, needs some tweeking.

Other than that a good model to use beside the other HQ models, but wouldn't quite fit in original wc3.

4/5
 
Level 14
Joined
Mar 11, 2017
Messages
587
1) I ended up uploading the custom texture twice, as its upload was required by both unit and portrait models. I need some help setting it right so that it doesn't have to be uploaded twice. Really need help with this issue. Filesize is inflated for no reason.

2) As I'm completely inexperienced with custom textures, I beg anyone with some degree of experience to help me optimize the size of mine

Edit: custom texture uploaded separately and removed from the individual model bundles. Hopefully this is the intended method.
Edit 2: seems like nope.
 
Last edited:
Level 14
Joined
Mar 11, 2017
Messages
587
Adding a TC version below for general usefulness, though its looks aren't as good:
UPDATE: this model has received the same fix that the main, TC-less model has. Additionally, the TC pattern has been extended and its looks has been improved.
 

Attachments

  • SentinelllTC.mdx
    153.8 KB · Views: 411
Last edited:
Level 14
Joined
Mar 11, 2017
Messages
587
the two glaives now pertain to the same geoset, but they can be easily split to allow for selective disappearance via 0 transparency.
In addition, each glaive has its own bone so each can be made invisible at any time by scaling it to 0;0;0
 
I'd have to say that the Death animation is the best, and the smoothest of the bunch. You should try and give the rest of her animation set the same level of quality. Especially the attacks and walk animation.

As I said before, aswell, the stand animations are still too jerky. Stand -1 and Stand Ready have a little bit too much motion. People don't stand around like that unless they go out of their way to do so.

Good work, though. I hope to see those changes.
 
Level 14
Joined
Mar 11, 2017
Messages
587
It's a nice bug :)

Seriously now. It's an issue due to overlapping mesh planes in an area of conjunction between two areas controlled by different bones.
To fix it, I would suggest deleting the plane that lies below, and then snapping the remaining vertices together. There won't be overlapping planes at that point. vertices snapped together should be assigned to the same control bone(s).

EDIT: didn't even need to do that. The small clipping issue during walk noticed by atashajg is solved.

EDIT2: at the expense of some non-relevant quality, the size of the custom texture has been nearly halved by optimization (thanks to @PurgeandFire for much needed related informations). For those who might be interested in the higher quality, heavier texture, it will be attached to the current post.
 

Attachments

  • DecorationsA512x512.blp
    202.3 KB · Views: 432
Last edited:
Level 8
Joined
Nov 10, 2017
Messages
101
It's a nice bug :)

Seriously now. It's an issue due to overlapping mesh planes in an area of conjunction between two areas controlled by different bones.
To fix it, I would suggest deleting the plane that lies below, and then snapping the remaining vertices together. There won't be overlapping planes at that point. vertices snapped together should be assigned to the same control bone(s).

EDIT: didn't even need to do that. The small clipping issue during walk noticed by atashajg is solved.

EDIT2: at the expense of some non-relevant quality, the size of the custom texture has been nearly halved by optimization (thanks to @PurgeandFire for much needed related informations). For those who might be interested in the higher quality, heavier texture, it will be attached to the current post.
Now its look lovely Cuore .
 
Level 51
Joined
Dec 8, 2008
Messages
4,357
Review: A very fine model with animations that would benefit from smoothing them out and generally improving them (although they are okay as they are - I suggest especially comparing the speed and timing with other models and to use that as guidance). One small issue though: the model is really small. Use Matrix Eater to scale it to at least 1.5 of it's original size. It makes it very weird to scale in the editor. Do that and it's approved.
 
Level 14
Joined
Mar 11, 2017
Messages
587
Review: A very fine model with animations that would benefit from smoothing them out and generally improving them (although they are okay as they are - I suggest especially comparing the speed and timing with other models and to use that as guidance). One small issue though: the model is really small. Use Matrix Eater to scale it to at least 1.5 of it's original size. It makes it very weird to scale in the editor. Do that and it's approved.
Thanks for the review. Agreed on all fronts. Animations really could use less clunkiness -this model represents an attempt at learning animations rather than a purposefully complete piece- but unfortunately right now I don't really see myself being able to find the time to smooth them out.
On the other hand scaling the model to a more reasonable size is very easy and it's been done with the latest update after the review - thank you for the suggestion :) .
 
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