New Akama

[DeathSamurai187]

I'm currently working on making the WC3 Akama model look more like how he looks in World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade. Since there was the whole retcon about Draenei and their original, the old Draenei of WC3 are known as "Lost Ones", while Akama and some others are known as "Broken" Draenei (Some of you already know this). Being that WC3 Akama's model is a Lost One and the new Akama is a Broken, I'm having a hard time figuring how to do this just right.

I figured I could use a tauren model since BC based the Broken model and anims off of the Tauren, but the differences are too much between WC3 and WoW. A simple re-edit of the Akama model should get the same effects, though. As for the head, I knew I couldn't use the old Akama's neck-less head, so I took it off and used Archimonde's after some editing (Think of it this way. Draenei are Eredar, and Broken are just slightly malformed. A few edits and it looks pretty much similar.) So far I've done that, added teeth, and Medivh's hood. I skinned the head and the hood, though that's a work in progress, too. Most of it is recoloring and touching up based on the color scheme of the new akama, and the runes from the hood are from the BC skin with some editing to make the light work with it.

I even changed his other sword since they're supposed to be 2 sickles in BC. Gonna have to reskin those onc eI get to them as well...

I also want to add more animations to his model, but to do that I'll need to rename a lot of his bones to fit with whatever I want to transfer. The problem is, A lot of it is guess work. I usually have to look at his attachment points to figure out which bone is which because he doesnt have names assigned to them other than "bonejoint_11" and whatnot.

This is how Akama looks in BC. You can already tell I got a lot of work ahead of me with this. If anyone has any tips or tools that'd help, let me know.

 

[Chaos Overlord]

Only tip: Make the tentacles thicker. They are like little... wisps in your pic and in the real one are a lot bigger. And you are missing a pair of tentacles, so maybe just add them on the outside and make them thicker? If you got that of course. Looks good so far.

 

[DeathSamurai187]

I can edit the first two tentacles to be like the smaller ones on his chin, but the larger ones are another thing. In order to do those I need to figure out how to have it so that part of the tentacle stays with the body's bone while the other end moves with the head, so that I dont have his tentacles going through his body.

 

[DeathSamurai187]

Here's an update.

Right now, I did some touching up on the skins, gave him the extra tentacles, fixed his back a bit, beefed his arms a bit (though I need to do it on another axis, too), additional touch ups on the head, and I got one of his feet to look more like his WoW self. I still have to make a better skin for the tentacles, since they dont match with the face enough yet. They seem to be fine, though, so I don't need to animate those tentacles.

Only problem I'm facing now is how the hell I'm gonna put a skirt on this guy. I tried doing it before by taking his front and back flaps from his loincloth-type thing and welding them to parts of his thigh. It's slighty difficult to do it on VertexModify since it's easy to pick the wrong vertex (plus the color scheme leaves it so that I can't see vertices unless I select them.) I can get it to look like somewhat of a skirt, but the mapping gets so messed up from the welding that It'd probably give me an even bigger headache later on when I work on the skin for his body.

If I can get past this part, everything else is just a matter of time, patience, and computer drawing skill. The shoulder, back tentacles, and other accessories won't be hard to add on as long as I find the right bone for it. Only thing left after that would be some more skinning, and (to add the right touches), extra animation and emitters.

If anyone knows the best way to add a skirt to models like these let me know.

 

[THE_END]

Hmm well the tentacles look good now
You will reskin the face to add the necessary details..am I correct?
And as for the skirt..hmm
The only thing I could see is make a plane that covers his entire bottom half, and make it alpha-able. I'm no modeler so I'm not even sure if a plane is the right word

 

[ragingspeedhorn]

That armor stuff on the should looks really odd and out of place, like it is not in contact with the rest of the model.

 

[Dionesiist]

Ehm, maybe it's not changed yet? Reminds me, I still have my Broken Warrior lying around

 

[anetherond]

What broken warrior?

 

[DeathSamurai187]

Yes, I didn't edit the armor first. Once someone can tell me how to add the skirt without messing it up, things should be fine. I could just try fusing the legs together at the right points and getting rid of the skirt entirely, but I'm not sure if it's look right then. Adding the geometry of the skirt would be easy, but unless I can assign individual parts of it to the leg bones, it's going to look like his legs are going through the skirt. I'm not using 3ds max for this, so I have no idea how to do that on VertexModify. Maybe someone here knows what to do with that?

Re-skin the face? That -is- a face re-skin, with the neccessary details. I took off his nose, added those wrinkles, and shadowed the upper part of his face like on the model. You speak as if I did nothing here. >>

Although, the muzzle should be a bit lighter, and I should probably do away with the whole concept of shading the face because it doesnt fit with the hood, nor does it seem to go right on the head. That's part and parcel of my bad mapping skills ><...That, and my Viewer keeps showing those black splotches. I tried putting it on Magnos' Editor, but it keeps telling me the skin doesnt exist, even after I corrected all of the paths.

 

[THE_END]

From what I see, the shading on the face is entirely wrong from the model you are trying to base it on
You made the eyes wayyy too big
And the shading on his face's front is completey off



Since I was finishing up some skinning, I decided to show you what I mean

Edit: Looking at the model and the "concept" model, I would also suggest making your model wider in the chest area

 

[DeathSamurai187]

Edited the face model and skin a bit per the critique. Hope this is satisfying.

I still can't do anything more until I figure out how to assign vertex groups to bones. Does anyone know where I can find a tutorial on that?

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Looks like a nice start.

 

[THE_END]

You also gotta color the tendrils according to the model

 

[DeathSamurai187]

Yes, I'll get to that as well. But I'm sort of stuck at a standstill until I can figure out this part. I don't know how to associate the individual vertex groups to the leg bones, so I can't get the skirt effect.

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Do you have Magos' Editor? I think you can do it in the geoset editor, though I just checked and I think its gonna be hard... something about indices to nodes...

 

[DeathSamurai187]

I have Magos, and I love how I can make and copy bones and such, but I'm a little confused on how to associate the right bones to it. I'm gonna do some testing, though. The only problem is that I can't use any models that have any of my custom textures with Magno's editor. They keep reading up as saying "file does not exist". I can solve that by giving it a temporary skin from the WC files, though, just to test it out. I dunno...maybe its PSP9...

I have two things I can try.

1. Adding a skirt thing using a primitive from VertexModify and attatching it to the model. Then I can make a vertex group in Vertex modify and assign those groups to the proper bone (or duplicate the bones respectively).

or

2. Make a clone of the geometry of the legs in VertexModify and fashioning them into a skirt, placing them just off of Akama's legs and attatching them together.

The problem with the first choice is that Akama's bones are really awkwardly named. The Blademaster's bones are named such that I know which one is which, but with Akama its a lot of guesswork. Magnos's bone tree helps a bit with that, though.

The problem with the second one is, If I can get it to work, It'll take some serious UV mapping and skin work to make it look right, especially if welding is involved.

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Well, the first one is part trial and error... I'd say try that, and make sure you have backup copy.

But if it doesn't work, or looks like crap, there's always the second option.

 

[Kwaliti]

Looks realy nice! Just don't screw it now, ok?

 

[DeathSamurai187]

Being busy with other things has kept me from making many updates so far. When I'm able to I'll try to do more. For now, I'm sort of seeing if anyone knows an easier way to add a skirt. I'd give credit to anyone able to just make a skirted Akama, since I could put the head on it and reskin it.

 

[erwtenpeller]

Or you could get 3d studio max and model like a man...

Judging by the shape of akma in wow, picking the draenei model in wc3 was a terrible move. The eredar would have been a better base, or even better, the orc shaman.

 

[Pyritie]

The magic theif blood elf human unit guy Spellbreaker has a skirt.

If you go to Options | Properties (on Magos) and you check the box that says "view bones" then it's much easier to see which bone is which. Like if one bone has a lot of bones coming off of it, look for a bone in the node manager which has a lot of subbones. Or if there is one part that goes Bone>Bone>Bone>Two bones, then look in the node manager for something like this.

• Bone
  • Bone
    • Bone
      • Bone
      • Bone

Bah, you probably get what I mean anyway.

 

[DeathSamurai187]

@erwtenpeller: Heh...3dsmax, huh? I'd gladly use it if you gave me the 3 grand that it costs . Unless it's cheaper now...

Either way, even if I had a discount on that I wouldn't be able to afford it. Oinkerwinkle's tools are perfectly fine for the job.

However, you make a good point by mentioning the Shaman model. I'll have to look in to that one, since that probably works the best. The Eredar model is good for the face, but the other parts of the body and how it looks just don't cut it. If I use the shaman model, though, I'll need to transfer some animations. I'm gonna look into some other models, though.

@Pyritie: Yeah, I understand what you mean. I think I even figured out which one it is, too...