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Goblin Trade Prince Mech Hero

This bundle is marked as lacking. It fails to meet the standard requirements and may only have minor use.
Well, boys and girls. Here's the work that I've went off and on for a couple years now. It's a hefty filesize. Because well, lot of animations. Polies are probably through the roof.

It's a noble deathbringer on mechanical wheels, piloted by the Trade Prince and his female pilot. Animations featured in this baby is Dual Miniguns, Cannons, Flame Throwers, Punching, Building and Flying. Because I can. There's probably some bugs that I need to work out. I always miss something. If I did not. Whoop.

As per Proxy's request; I will mention officially that I used the WoW Sky Golem Animations as a base. I did put a shitload of work into the animations though. To clarify. The end result is about 90% my animations and 10% The WoW Sky Golem Animations. Besides the animations I animated entirely myself, I edited everything to oblivion over something like two years? Yeah, two years. It's strange that it's 2018. I'm not used to it, still.

Edit:
Well, I went into the editor and made a little tweak. I'm not really sure why I took so long to upload this. But I suppose my novel writing consumed a lot of my time. On the other hand, I have uploaded chapter 20 now. So that's neat as well. Anyhow. It has been updated. Enjoy.
Contents

Goblin Trade Prince Mech Hero (Model)

Goblin Trade Prince Mech Hero - Portrait (Model)

Reviews
General Frank
The model misses ALL major and minor attachment points. Please add all attachment points that you see fit and those that a normal wc3 hero/unit has.
Level 14
Joined
Mar 11, 2017
Messages
587
I advance the hypothesis that it tries to rescale to 100% (or whatever was set in frame 0) in the frames that lie outside of sequences, and that this causes what we see in the viewer for some reason unknown to me.
 
Level 14
Joined
Mar 11, 2017
Messages
587
I'd add that in the description. I know it's kinda unnesscary but people might blame you of claiming someone elses work (in this case blizz, but still - they are wow anims and not originally from wc3). As the animations are top notch (obviously) it really should be mentioned IMO.
Really? That seems so excessive!
 

Kyrbi0

Arena Moderator
Level 44
Joined
Jul 29, 2008
Messages
9,484
Really? That seems so excessive!
Not really... Because while there's nothing wrong with using in-game (or even WoW) animations (heck, that's the basis of geomerging/in-game-texturing as well), it could be seen as sort of 'disingenuous', if someone were presenting that work as solely their own, completely from scratch (which is kind of the assumption unless one says otherwise).

I'm not saying what was done here was wrong, per se, nor that it doesn't look good, and not even that MiniMage didn't do some kind of editing to it to make it fit (we all know that Blizzard's stuff doesn't always work right ported around; gotta be tweaked). But, as an example, I was getting ready to heap praise for the scratch-animating job... However, this is evidence it is probably *not* animated by hand. Would be some seriously misplaced praise, IMHO.
 
Level 29
Joined
Jul 29, 2007
Messages
5,174
@Kyrbi0 It doesn't happen in version 4 ("beta"), so it's a non-issue.

As far as the model goes, are you crazy? Do you not realize there is such a concept called interpolation, and you don't need literally thousands of keyframes for some simple robotic movement? That is in addition to the fact you have thousands of keyframes not even used by the model.
It actually made me think my code failed to load the model, because it froze the sanity test for like 15 seconds due to all of the warnings generated...

Not only does this take ridiculous amounts of memory, as can clearly be seen by the model size, it also makes it a lot harder to actually edit animations, I won't be surprised if every change in an animation is a pain, considering you have 600 other keyframes you need to change...
 
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Level 51
Joined
Dec 8, 2008
Messages
4,357
@Kyrbi0 It doesn't happen in version 4 ("beta"), so it's a non-issue.

As far as the model goes, are you crazy? Do you not realize there is such a concept called interpolation, and you don't need literally thousands of keyframes for some simple robotic movement? That is in addition to the fact you have thousands of keyframes not even used by the model.
It actually made me think my code failed to load the model, because it froze the sanity test for like 15 seconds due to all of the warnings generated...

Not only does this take ridiculous amounts of memory, as can clearly be seen by the model size, it also makes it a lot harder to actually edit animations, I won't be surprised if every change in an animation is a pain, considering you have 600 other keyframes you need to change...

That's because of the wow animations, they are of course more filesize heavy.
 
Level 29
Joined
Jul 29, 2007
Messages
5,174
The animations are not heavy because they have amazing detail, they are heavy because they are baked.
And to add salt to injury, you were too lazy to delete about 3k unused keyframes.
As far as I remember, one of the model submission rules is that if WoW (or any external) models are used, they must be adapted to WC3 for saner files sizes.
It's odd to me that I need to even say this though, you are the modelers/animators...
 
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Level 26
Joined
Jun 5, 2008
Messages
1,767
I generally keep most keyframes since it has a habit of breaking if you clean too well. I don't remember hearing about a limit on filesize and I moderated a shitload of models back when I was a resource moderator.

I could probably go over it and reduce filesize later. Just getting it to this stage was a lot of work. But if this is not up to hive standards, I'll just take it down. I have neither the energy nor the patience to go through hive drama just because I choose to share a model. This is one of the reasons I stopped uploading models regularly in the first place.
 
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Level 26
Joined
Jun 5, 2008
Messages
1,767
Optimizing the model reduces maybe 30kb and makes it dangerously unstable. Also, the point wasn't to make a simple model. The point was to make a so ridiculously armed model that it makes you grin. Technically speaking, I could remove the spell alternate model, because it adds a lot of filesize. But when I asked other members, they suggested that I keep it, so I did.

As far as size goes, with the current limit of 128mb for maps, not many care about filesize anymore. Granted, one shouldn't go overboard. As for numerous keyframes. More keyframes add more fluidity to the animations. Might not be minimized and optimized, but it looks good. I went for something that was around 1mb, which I agree is a hefty size. So to use this model, you balance pros and cons. I imagine this would be a boss hero. It is on my map.

I still try to circle around 8mb for my maps despite the now broader filesize available. Granted, the model will fuck up the model viewer on this site. But I've never deemed that tool that reliable. It's useful if you want a gist of how it looks, but to properly look at it, you need to download it and view it in magos, mdlvis and then finally ingame.
 
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Level 3
Joined
Dec 20, 2017
Messages
13
Hi! Great looking model. I'm using it for a custom map and want to use the "Alternate Attack" animation (Flying and attacking is really cool). I have 2 questions.

1: I figured out how to run certain animations but is there a way to stop him from landing at the start of the attack? So that he stay in the air constantly while attacking. If you give him a high attackspeed (0.3) he barerly lifts of the ground (which is sad, because the "Attack One - 1" animation is so fitting with high attack speed") and with a low attack speed he jumps up and down instead of staying in the air.

2. When using this trigger to add "Attack Alternate", "Stand Alternate" and "Walk Alternate" gives the same result. How come? Should I use another method to add/change the animations in game? (I want to change when he uses certain spells)

  • Animation - Add the (Entered chat string) animation tag to Goblin Tinker 0043 <gen>
 
Level 5
Joined
Jan 25, 2012
Messages
109
Holy carp, this is amazing! it must have been hard to do :O

Downloading... this goes straight to my collection.
 
Level 5
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Jan 25, 2012
Messages
109
I've just realized that with a few changes, this could become Dr. Boom from The Boomsday Project! ;)
 
Level 1
Joined
Nov 30, 2018
Messages
4
So model is really cool, but what kind of spells or custom spells do you make/give him so that his animations would work? What spells to customise or use? Looking for recommendations, suggestions or guidance
 
Level 26
Joined
Jun 5, 2008
Messages
1,767
All the textures kind of got nuked with the reforged update. I've been getting into blender as of late, which is a treat. Far better than MDLVIS and Magos that I stuck to so religiously. If animation isn't too wonky, I might make more models again, as well as fixing the ones that broke. But I'm not making any promises considering how much time this would take to do.
 
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