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Owl Moon Priestess Reforged

While brainstorming a possible entry to the current Reforged Don't Refund Techtree Contest that is going on right now, I thought it would be fun to create a model for one of my possible ideas of making a Reforged version of the Night Elf Moon Priestess riding on an owl.

The legend goes that in 2001 when Blizzard was originally developing the Night Elves, they had planned for the Priestess of the Moon hero (then called Moon Priestess) to be riding on an owl. There were even leaked photos of the owl rider model, but Blizzard never released it outside their 2001-2002 offices.

So, this is a custom Reforged model made with inspiration from that.
Here's a video of me flying a hero around with this model (sorry the music is quiet):


Edit: I removed a part of the harness that was clipping the rider's body.

Update: Thanks to the user @Altruistic Anduin who sent me an updated version of this model, which he says was fixed and optimized by Z1003. In his words:
The changes made to actual model are: the FaceFX has now a mouth animation and can lip-sync any vanilla sound set, the model's stitched death sound is changed from Snowy Owl to the Hippogryph Rider's death sound, and in order to match the FaceFX bones, the height and rotation has been adjusted slightly. This is why the Movement - Height is 200.000 instead of the standard 240.000, or at least how the rest of the flying units in-game have.
They also supplied a good example set of in-game Object Editor attributes for a custom hero to match this model file:

  • Art - Elevation - Sample Radius: 100.000
  • Art - Icon - Game Interface: Snowy Owl
  • Art - Model File: OwlMoonPriestess.mdl
  • Art - Projectile Launch - X: 40.000
  • Art - Selection Circle - Height: 230.000
  • Art - Selection Scale: 1.500
  • Art - Shadow Image (Unit): Flyer
  • Combat - Attack 1 - Projectile Homing Enabled: False
  • Combat - Death Type: Can't raise. Does not decay
  • Combat - Targeted as: Air
  • Movement - Group Separation - Enabled: True
  • Movement - Height: 200.000
  • Movement - Height Minimum: 90.000
  • Movement - Type: Fly
  • Pathing - Collision Size: 8.000
  • Sound - Unit Sound Set: Shandris
  • Text - Name: Moon Priestess
  • Text - Tooltip - Awaken: Revive Moon Priestess
  • Text - Tooltip - Basic: Summon Moon Priestess
  • Text - Tooltip - Revive: Revive Moon Priestess
Along with this, @Altruistic Anduin also suggested:
I would make the Combat - Targeted as to Ground for balance purposes, like in DotA where everyone can attack seemingly flying hero units.
Thanks guys!
Previews
Contents

Owl Moon Priestess Reforged (Model)

Owl Moon Priestess with fixes by Z1003 (Model)

Reviews
General Frank
A wonderful recreation of a wc3beta model into reforged. Works in-game and performs well. Good job.
Level 23
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Jul 26, 2008
Messages
1,305
This is fantastic! A priestess riding an owl, ha-ha. These kinds of models are exactly what is needed to give Reforged map-making a chance.

Edit: Should the portrait really have that much a focus on the rider, as posed to the Owl itself? It is not an issue, just that the owl is getting sidelined despite playing the main role of the model. Classic Wc3 Priestess of the moon placed more emphasis on the tiger than the rider, which was nice since the tiger was the main attraction of that model.
 
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A portrait focused on the owl as well could be nice. I might rework it a bit and update sometime soon. As the night got late, I wanted to post my work to share with anybody who might find it as fun as I did, but I did not spend a significantly long time on the portrait.
 
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Level 5
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Wow! Awesome!!! So it's possible to copy one model to another and it will save all animations and bones?
 
Level 3
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This is absoluty brilliant ! Your moddel will be used in my remastered Warcraft 3 reign of chaos campaign!
 
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This is an amazing model for the Moon Priestess! Very majestic. It's unfortunate that there's only one portrait which limits the use of sound sets on the unit. Other than that, it's a really good reimagined version of the beta NE hero. Keep it up!
 
I really love this model, and the idea they had back in beta Warcraft III. The Snowy Owl's icon could prove suiting for this model's icon. The owl is a bit large, yeah, but it's great overall. :grin:

Is there no sound set for this unit? Shandris' sound set would've perfect for this model, since the vanilla Priestess of the Moon has her tiger sharing the mic with when they were recording her dialogues, and every Pissed voice file references the Priestess' tiger and tiger-related puns. :eek:2
 
There are 4 or 5 audio files in the 2001-2002 War3Beta on Hallfiry's unofficial archive that have the same voice actess as the tiger rider, but with flapping in the background instead of tiger roars. It's not the hero soundset, however. It looks like by the time it was published the hero soundset was overwritten with new audio for the tiger rider. The reason the old ones were still there is that they were voice shoutouts for when hero spells were cast, which were probably discontinued by the time the tiger rider was created.
 
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There are 4 or 5 audio files in the 2001-2002 War3Beta on Hallfiry's unofficial archive that have the same voice actess as the tiger rider, but with flapping in the background instead of tiger roars. It's not the hero soundset, however. It looks like by the time it was published the hero soundset was overwritten with new audio for the tiger rider. The reason the old ones were still there is that they were voice shoutouts for when hero spells were cast, which were probably discontinued by the time the tiger rider was created.
Could you link those files and any other old soundset files here? Or, better yet, upload them to the Hive's sound section? :thumbs_up:
I'm interested in hearing them, but not enough to trudge through old MPQs...
 
Level 21
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Would be really handy for a sky-high battle in which they are facing off against evil forces and what not, or even helping their comrades too out a situation...
 
Level 1
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A Warcraft 3 beta model for Reforged.
This brings back memories of when I was playing a custom map with a similar model for Warcraft 3.
In one word: "Once a classic, always a classic." Beautiful model, Retera.
 
Level 4
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I saw this work in a Chinese community, they used a program that re-textured the .DDS files based entirely on the Reforged graphical appearance. I even downloaded Arthas and Footman... And in fact, they were perfect!
arthas HD em classic2.png

Do not fool yourself... the image is not Reforged and the resolution of the main texture only loses quality if you open it in War3 Classic, due to the arcaic graphics engine not exceeding resolutions of 512x512! But there are meshes that use smaller textures, like the Pauldron example, that the texture resolution .BLP is sharp even with the maximum zoom.
Those who didn't migrate to Reforged and use the classic to this day, it's a great alternative if you're a fan of the new models or have a very weak computer. But of course, this does not replace the quality of the new reforged engine and despite being a model in SD format, using a large amount of these models on your map, you will still have graphics overload if you do not have an adequate video card, because the model is still high complexity of polygons.
In spite of all, the new Reforged engine will always be better at handling graphic overloads and other highlights required by complex models.
 

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Level 5
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I saw this work in a Chinese community, they used a program that re-textured the .DDS files based entirely on the Reforged graphical appearance. I even downloaded Arthas and Footman... And in fact, they were perfect!
View attachment 392317
Do not fool yourself... the image is not Reforged and the resolution of the main texture only loses quality if you open it in War3 Classic, due to the arcaic graphics engine not exceeding resolutions of 512x512! But there are meshes that use smaller textures, like the Pauldron example, that the texture resolution .BLP is sharp even with the maximum zoom.
Those who didn't migrate to Reforged and use the classic to this day, it's a great alternative if you're a fan of the new models or have a very weak computer. But of course, this does not replace the quality of the new reforged engine and despite being a model in SD format, using a large amount of these models on your map, you will still have graphics overload if you do not have an adequate video card, because the model is still high complexity of polygons.
In spite of all, the new Reforged engine will always be better at handling graphic overloads and other highlights required by complex models.
123.jpg

Is that you?
 
Level 4
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May 19, 2020
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what Chinese community? I'm curious about that; I only know about the hispanic group called "Warcraft Resources Reforged" that also has the same goal
It's not a FcBk group, it's a Chinese site that usually redirects downloads to Baidu. Check this one, if I remember correctly:
Look in the models section, but it's been almost a year since I used to visit this site, I don't remember the user who shared it...
Note: To view most templates and access downloads, you will need to subscribe. It also charges digital coins, according to the request of each model author, there are some that you have free access.
EDIT:
Is that you?
Ah... then you would be the user! Lol
Yes, exactly. It was the two of us in the post. rs
 
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Ardenaso

HD Model Reviewer
Level 32
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Jun 22, 2013
Messages
1,804
It's not a FcBk group, it's a Chinese site that usually redirects downloads to Baidu. Check this one, if I remember correctly:
Look in the models section, but it's been almost a year since I used to visit this site, I don't remember the user who shared it...
Note: To view most templates and access downloads, you will need to subscribe. It also charges digital coins, according to the request of each model author, there are some that you have free access.
EDIT:

Ah... then you would be the user! Lol
Yes, exactly. It was the two of us in the post. rs
hmm intriguing, @vindorei I can't translate stuff here 😅
 
Level 5
Joined
Dec 17, 2021
Messages
15
It's not a FcBk group, it's a Chinese site that usually redirects downloads to Baidu. Check this one, if I remember correctly:
Look in the models section, but it's been almost a year since I used to visit this site, I don't remember the user who shared it...
Note: To view most templates and access downloads, you will need to subscribe. It also charges digital coins, according to the request of each model author, there are some that you have free access.
EDIT:

Ah... then you would be the user! Lol
Yes, exactly. It was the two of us in the post. rs
like-minded
 
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