- Joined
- Sep 19, 2011
- Messages
- 829
The cinematic takes place in a fictional present time with a dominant old world western style and culture. Although you should expect some sort of country music the soundtrack is set mainly on Rock and Roll - Nightwish albums that match the overall look of the snowy town in the map.
Visually the map deviates from any general warcraft 3 cinematic to a more realistic environment look with a touch of cartoon style and a progressive visual upgrade in every episode. So why change everything and use the same old wc3 models for the characters? Simply because I still want to maintain a classical wc3 look at least for the characters not to mention they are a lot easier to animate.
Category: Action, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Sf
Episodes: 3
I'm no more, no less than a terrainer here. I have little to poor knowledge of jazz and storytelling or writing, its not even my specialty, heck, I'm not even good at telling jokes. Aside from terraining I'm studying a lot of modeling lately especially in programs like 3ds max, etc. I'll be expecting harsh criticism from cinematic makers and it's more than welcome.
Characters
In development - but there's one thing you should know. There are certain items - fragments originated from space that are treated like characters themselves, example Star. There's not much information from the first episode but it's going slowly build up from the next.
Credits
Although I've been working solo there are some people who should be mentioned here. I'll have to check the list before I post.
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Over the Hills Episode 1
There's not much to say about this episode, it's introductory, a pilot that just took off.
Contains:
Galery Showcase
BUGS
Of course not all things are perfect. Since this was my first cinematic the bug problem couldn't be avoided. Another cause being that I wanted to upload the episode a lot quicker and I was getting nowhere with solving the bugs.
Here is a list of bugs you might experience:
* I recommend you watch on 1024 x 768 x 32 screen resolution!!!*"
Download
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Over the Hills Episode 2 - The escape
This is where it gets real, a more action packed episode, longer and more complex than the first in every way possible.
Although I haven't really put too much effort in the actual story and I'll be leaving plot holes, hopefully I'll get to explain everything in the last episode. I just want to take you on a ride with this one!
Contains:
Like the previous episode including "Global Illumination and lighting with shadow\light maps, bump (currently in development), Havok physics, pre made animations and a nice dose of fighting action with a tone of blood spill".
Run time: Over 20 min
Updates Preview
Galery Showcase
Release date
Visually the map deviates from any general warcraft 3 cinematic to a more realistic environment look with a touch of cartoon style and a progressive visual upgrade in every episode. So why change everything and use the same old wc3 models for the characters? Simply because I still want to maintain a classical wc3 look at least for the characters not to mention they are a lot easier to animate.
Category: Action, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Sf
Episodes: 3
- Over the Hills
- Over the Hills - The escape
- Over the Hills - The dark eye _ Final Conclusion
I'm no more, no less than a terrainer here. I have little to poor knowledge of jazz and storytelling or writing, its not even my specialty, heck, I'm not even good at telling jokes. Aside from terraining I'm studying a lot of modeling lately especially in programs like 3ds max, etc. I'll be expecting harsh criticism from cinematic makers and it's more than welcome.
Characters
In development - but there's one thing you should know. There are certain items - fragments originated from space that are treated like characters themselves, example Star. There's not much information from the first episode but it's going slowly build up from the next.
Credits
Although I've been working solo there are some people who should be mentioned here. I'll have to check the list before I post.
- tobyfat50 - Author and Director
- Talavaj - Technology and design: "Faux Parallax", help on bump mapping
and other useful information thanks to which nothing where possible- Garfield1337 - Some help on Filter units
- Gekigengar - Useful help and support on coding and other features
Over the Hills Episode 1
There's not much to say about this episode, it's introductory, a pilot that just took off.
Contains:
- HQ models and textures, some made by me for example: some doodads, rocks, terrains (mountains, etc), efex, scene montages, backgrounds, houses and other objects made in 3ds MAX5; wow or wc3 models with enhanced textures; modified or enhanced wow textures, textures made entirely by me or textures form free texture sites (you can finde this textures on any free texture site out ther) and also some free model trees. The skins for the main character (villager model), the bad guy (villager model), the female (villager mode - red dressl) are all my personal creation.
- Simple warcraft 3 triggers.
- Simple native cameras.
Galery Showcase
Graphics and Technology
Additive material for extra lighting
Visual techniques that never made it in the first episode
Scripted Image based Tiles over 1024px resolution
Dynamic bloom effect
This was basically just a blurred version of the unit on a plane scripted to respond to certain environments. It had no use but maybe I'll find one for episode 3.
A first experiment in bump materials
Although not even close to bump and barely scratching the surface this was my actual first bump map used from which true bump mapping that works in warcraft 3 emerged. Technique used in episode 2.
Global Illumination and lighting with shadow\light maps
My first successful model with shadow maps applied, this technique is used alot in episode 2.
Examples of shadow maps with bump and specular - The way they are used in ep 2
*Note that all this models are experimental, no attention for quality was given!*
Multi omni lights in one model
This could have solved my problem with regular wc3 lights which was if there were too many lights in the games, the lights disappeared. Unfortunately it has a problem of its own which was how would I place the light model to match the scene?! No use for this technique so far!
Development Gallery
Train station scene in development
Terrain screenshots -This is a must!
Of course not all things are perfect. Since this was my first cinematic the bug problem couldn't be avoided. Another cause being that I wanted to upload the episode a lot quicker and I was getting nowhere with solving the bugs.
Here is a list of bugs you might experience:
- Buggy scene transmissions. "(this is caused because of wc3`s slow response)
- Trees appear in the background (sky). "(No excuse here!)"
- Buggy sky.
- Characters do what they want. "(Units might wake up from the dead or go to random positions. Believe it or not this is caused
- by the - "wait - action", can't do anything about it!)
- The most problematic bug
- The camera sways differently on a different resolution. "(I did not realize the camera sway is not fixe on a point is not fixed on a point but behaves differently at different resolutions.
Download
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over the Hills Episode 2 - The escape
This is where it gets real, a more action packed episode, longer and more complex than the first in every way possible.
Although I haven't really put too much effort in the actual story and I'll be leaving plot holes, hopefully I'll get to explain everything in the last episode. I just want to take you on a ride with this one!
Contains:
Like the previous episode including "Global Illumination and lighting with shadow\light maps, bump (currently in development), Havok physics, pre made animations and a nice dose of fighting action with a tone of blood spill".
Run time: Over 20 min
Updates Preview
Galery Showcase
Graphics and Technology
-
Development Gallery
Ongoing model\scenes updating
New look - Updated Prison Room
Room after the escape
Shadow Map
Bump mapping usage
How bump enhanced texture detail
How a working bump map looks like
In wc3 it's basically used as an alpha mask
Scene before and after bump v2 (v1 sucks)
Bump v3 - latest version
Bump definitely gave a more solid look, the room emits a more sealed feeling, it also became much darker which enhances it.
*(In image - Bump v2)
Pin-up old terrains
The usage of advanced fade filters
Lake...
Is this a picture of modern art?
No, it's the baked reflection of a lake which you'll see working only in the cinematic.
Landscape creation with Bryce 3d
Mountains models created and generated with Brice
Pretty lazy to make really elaborate models so I just simple generated models with this program and went with it.
Because I started with 512px resolution it seems like it wasn't enough to look decent, they were looking really blurry, close up and at a distance so I had to turn to 1024px resolution which looks about right at close up as well. No matter what you believe 1024px doesn't work in warcraft, it does read it but it's rescaled back to 512px if nobody actually noticed this before. I would suggest you guys who were using 1024px textures to look closer! The only solution was to split the texture in pieces, over 2000px would be ideal for such terrains but there would be too many pieces to actually try it.
Landscape model pieces
Secret material layer recipe
I really had a problem with this model at first because I had to make a extreme close up on the character which is a dot small compared to the mountain so not even 1024px textures weren't enough. As a solution I had to tile some hq textures and overlap the shadow and snow layer over them. This was not easy since there are a lot of layers which I don't even remember to be honest. If you look closely the snow is a lower resolution compared to the rock. This is the best that I could do before going crazy!
The recipe would be something like: HQ Rock texture under - Show with double blend layer under - shadow map under - under specular layer with - 20 alfa. I think!
Secret because I don't really remember, lol and I really don't want to!
Textures generate with Brice - from Ice to lava
Police meeting room
Unfortunately just a minute scene. So much work to waste!
A picture of the police commander
There's a picture of him on the wall to the right, see if you can spot it? Yes he's the character from ep 1!
Models and skins
Police car
Animations
Others\ scenes
Terrain screenshots -This is a must!
-
Influence map
Unchanged!
Last edited:
Anyway it looks incredible.
leave da' cats alone, bite toby instead
