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Warcraft Classic HD

Retera said:
I tend to believe that the problem here is Activision Blizzard and that we should not blame the third party art studio.

My reasoning:
- I recall hearing it was the same LemonSky studio that did Starcraft 1 remaster art who then proceeded to make the 1.31 extended UI art and also the Reforged art. In this context, the problem isn't the artists -- it's the top level leadership who told them to make things Reforged and go off script instead of just making a remaster
- I recall that after the release of Reforged, some representative of LemonSky appeared in our social circles for a few days who was deeply bothered by the damage to LemonSky's reputation as a result of the release of Reforged and they were trying to gather feedback from the users. They claimed that Activision never allowed them to playtest their models in any version of the game, and as such they had never played the Reforged prior to its public release. This is deeply comically stupid not to playtest if the new art fits in the game, and is Activision's fault. I think it really shows, that people who sit around in Retera Model Studio gooning at the high polygon counts end up liking Reforged graphics, but people who play the actual freaking War3 game switch back to classic graphics.
- In all versions of Reforged to this day, if you level up Tauren Chieftain to 6 and kill him and then zoom way way in to the little grave stone shown during resurrection and screenshot it, it says F**K YOU in daedric runes from Skyrim. It is a message left from passionate gamer artists written to the people paying them in a language they didn't even understand that could therefore slip through past all checks and reviews in the Activision slop machine. Imagine if we discovered that Hive had so influenced @LongbowMan that these models he was making said F**K YOU hidden inside them. Our whole perspective on his work would change. Perhaps Reforged deserved to be treated similarly.

So, no, I don't blame the art studio. I blame the freakin' greed demons running the show at Activision Microsoft; and I think when they play us for fools and try to blame a third party studio, I don't want to have it.

You know, it's basically impossible to find videos of Pete Stilwell announcing Reforged on the 2018 stage at Blizzcon now. That positive spin he gave things -- the glowing review of how Warcraft III changed him as a person and would be this bright new future -- is something we're all just supposed to forget ever happened. So, yeah if you want to be racist, you can blame the Mayasians. But until someone comes up with really solid evidence that Malaysians actually have anything wrong with them, I'm going to continue living my life cracking jokes about Bobby Kotick as the butt of the joke even when he no longer works there.

Edit:
Some day Stilwell is going to walk into a bar and a drunken man will say, "My name is Inigo Montoya, and you Reforged my Warcraft. Now you will die!" and start swinging a sword at him. It's sad because this should've been focused at Bobby Kotick instead.
Click to expand...
The problem was always Brian Sousa and whoever that could have controlled him, letting him loose on Warcraft III, when he was forced to do a more faithful job on SCR shown by him complaining about it on 2018 GDC panel on Game remastering. All problems and dangers from him being appointed on the position are all laid bare there. Add the behaviour of his at 2018 Blizzcon where he mocks and laughs at original Wc3 Art. His persistence about doing his realistic vision of the game for 30 years onwards and complete lack of humbleness and respect to the original work even SC1 itself and you have a catastrophe that has befallen us.

Villagerino said:
A grrrreat question, sir. And, moreover, they had a lot of content in a similar style with similar detalization in HotS which is 100% compartible with Warcraft after importing.

On presentation they said: we want to get away from this cartoon style and bring something new, bring something realistic to the game, to stand out more in the gaming industry against the numerous games with similar visuals. And their manager (the one that has a focus on marketing) was gladly smiling, like if he approved the right concept. Go ahead, then, but they chose a studio that (I can even see from the icon designs and background work) didn't contain enough high quality force.

I believe that everybody knows, even completely empty-headed understand, that Warcraft became popular not only due to its mechanics and plot, but also due to its cartoonish visual style, which created an original atmosphere that players loved so much and kept their fans for so many years. Everything that Samwise achieved, that he gave them, they threw into a woodcutter.

I finally spoke out and now I feel much better 🙂


You spin me right round, baby, right round ☠️
Click to expand...
Thats another thing too... They even done that. War3HD assets are considerably more tasteful and well made despite few other minor flaws and inaccuracies(mainly faces being all different and worse especially on Orc heroes loosing all variety and uniqueness and in some aspects texturing, which was mainly meant to fit SC2 engine). It was done on far smaller budget and is close to what it should be... imagine i there was just a hint of direction and help from Samwise or anyone else doing art for WoW and focus on keeping things matte without forcing PBR into a game that shouldnt really use it much. At best it could have specular on water and maybe ice assets if anything kind of how WoW itself uses it sparcely.

Brian Sousa only shown how inept and clueless he is, he didnt even understand what sort of stylization Wc3 is. He shows comic cartoon network style designs when wc3 is mainly based on 90s comic books inspired art that both Samwise and Metzen made enmasse for the games and mix with fantasy illustrations of the time and Disney animations as vague inspirations and Wc2 to some degree aswell.

Ingame art was never meant to be realistic or to mimic Cinematics, same way WoW still has hyper realistic cgi cinematics but ingame style is still far away from it and there are prerendered high detail ingame style cinematics. If anything it should derive from that.

If that man thought mix of 90s comics books, fantasy sketches with disney art with mild bit of comedy thrown in is something that looks like 2000s cartoon network then he really has no right to be an art lead. Especially with wealth of Samwise Didier art to go off AND War3HD from Starcraft 2 being 70% of the way there with few models as it is, just few tweaks to make Texturing fully inline with Samwise's colouring and shading/og Wc3 texture style and minor design tweaks and done.... just repeat for all assets...
9h3w8v5vtrf41.png

Some ofcourse are to some degree off be it proportions, texturing or specific design choices(usually faces), but animations are on point and overall appearence too. Instead we got Raid Hemmoroid Legends Warcraft update... wasting LemonSky's efforts...

Like a record baby right round, right round...


P.S. Nort3DCraft is also very close, he does great job with the faces, but is to varrying degrees off on some models(his Grunt model isnt quite it for me and also he strays away with texturing and often clothing and proportions by going a bit to extreme by making each details from the og textures chunky messing up sillouttes of units. Not sure about his way of navigating curious edge cases like Peasant and Peon models being different between portrait and ingame. Ingame unit model is closer to the icon, while portrait is that more goofy face. I think i would just keep this inconsitency...to ironicly stay consistent with Wc3. Same with Peon and especially Footman. I think Footman is one of most challenging models to tackle due to how old and somewhat in consistent with rest of Wc3 models it is, as its one of the models made back in 1999 if not earlier. Melee units in general should be as close as possible, Campaign ones could be given more elaborate overhauls.
 
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Kacpa2 said:
The problem was always Brian Sousa and whoever that could have controlled him, letting him loose on Warcraft III, when he was forced to do a more faithful job on SCR shown by him complaining about it on 2018 GDC panel on Game remastering. All problems and dangers from him being appointed on the position are all laid bare there. Add the behaviour of his at 2018 Blizzcon where he mocks and laughs at original Wc3 Art. His persistence about doing his realistic vision of the game for 30 years onwards and complete lack of humbleness and respect to the original work even SC1 itself and you have a catastrophe that has befallen us.


Thats another thing too... They even done that. War3HD assets are considerably more tasteful and well made despite few other minor flaws and inaccuracies(mainly faces being all different and worse especially on Orc heroes loosing all variety and uniqueness and in some aspects texturing, which was mainly meant to fit SC2 engine). It was done on far smaller budget and is close to what it should be... imagine i there was just a hint of direction and help from Samwise or anyone else doing art for WoW and focus on keeping things matte without forcing PBR into a game that shouldnt really use it much. At best it could have specular on water and maybe ice assets if anything kind of how WoW itself uses it sparcely.

Brian Sousa only shown how inept and clueless he is, he didnt even understand what sort of stylization Wc3 is. He shows comic cartoon network style designs when wc3 is mainly based on 90s comic books inspired art that both Samwise and Metzen made enmasse for the games and mix with fantasy illustrations of the time and Disney animations as vague inspirations and Wc2 to some degree aswell.

Ingame art was never meant to be realistic or to mimic Cinematics, same way WoW still has hyper realistic cgi cinematics but ingame style is still far away from it and there are prerendered high detail ingame style cinematics. If anything it should derive from that.

If that man thought mix of 90s comics books, fantasy sketches with disney art with mild bit of comedy thrown in is something that looks like 2000s cartoon network then he really has no right to be an art lead. Especially with wealth of Samwise Didier art to go off AND War3HD from Starcraft 2 being 70% of the way there with few models as it is, just few tweaks to make Texturing fully inline with Samwise's colouring and shading/og Wc3 texture style and minor design tweaks and done.... just repeat for all assets...
View attachment 573193
Some ofcourse are to some degree off be it proportions, texturing or specific design choices(usually faces), but animations are on point and overall appearence too. Instead we got Raid Hemmoroid Legends Warcraft update... wasting LemonSky's efforts...

Like a record baby right round, right round...


P.S. Nort3DCraft is also very close, he does great job with the faces, but is to varrying degrees off on some models(his Grunt model isnt quite it for me and also he strays away with texturing and often clothing and proportions by going a bit to extreme by making each details from the og textures chunky messing up sillouttes of units. Not sure about his way of navigating curious edge cases like Peasant and Peon models being different between portrait and ingame. Ingame unit model is closer to the icon, while portrait is that more goofy face. I think i would just keep this inconsitency...to ironicly stay consistent with Wc3. Same with Peon and especially Footman. I think Footman is one of most challenging models to tackle due to how old and somewhat in consistent with rest of Wc3 models it is, as its one of the models made back in 1999 if not earlier. Melee units in general should be as close as possible, Campaign ones could be given more elaborate overhauls.
Click to expand...
Yea, for me WC3 is like a miniature of WoW with all ingrained ideas and visual simplifications in order to make it work like a strategy game.
 
LongbowMan said:
Alright, I figured this out. For the team member to get this banner, they need to be either Editor or Admin. So, congrats @Villagerino, you have been promoted to Editor :grin:
I still think all team members should have it on display though
Click to expand...
Promoterino. 🫡 "I wish only to serve"

That's a cool thing that there's a system within the project like on forums.

Altruistic Anduin said:
Maybe it's just me, but why is the banner icon blank? It's there, but just a black square next to the banner.
Click to expand...
Ye, it's just an alpha version, we'll replace that eventually 👍
 
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Villagerino said:
Hot! It's like a whole real castle now where I can see units walk on the walls 🔥


Strength to you, brother! 🫡
Click to expand...
A bit like it is in WoW but with design accurate to Wc3 :)
EDIT: For comparison sake i think og screenshots should be here too so i guess i can provide them 'xD
HumanBarracksWc31.png

HumanBarracksWc32.png

HumanBarracksWc33.png

HumanBarracksWc34.png

As for my feedback, well the usual preserving as much of the highlight and keeping colourscheme for the wood and texture in general 1 to 1 as much as possible. Not just for accuracy but just contrast as it looks quite low contrast on yours. As for other elements, given the way the wood is shown i think the midspan wooden bracing is meant to have a bit more diagonal edge where we have the highlight as oppose to horizontal face taht is not so visible from the side view as on the picture above, so instead of |¯ is would be like so /. This way it will keep the look from the og texture work more as highlighted part will face the camera most angles without having it to be just flat like original.
Beside that its just dropdead gorgeous. Once my apartment is ready i hope i can catch and help with from the unit's side 😅
 
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Kacpa2 said:
A bit like it is in WoW but with design accurate to Wc3 :)
EDIT: For comparison sake i think og screenshots should be here too so i guess i can provide them 'xD
View attachment 576801
View attachment 576802
View attachment 576803
View attachment 576804
As for my feedback, well the usual preserving as much of the highlight and keeping colourscheme for the wood and texture in general 1 to 1 as much as possible. Not just for accuracy but just contrast as it looks quite low contrast on yours. As for other elements, given the way the wood is shown i think the midspan wooden bracing is meant to have a bit more diagonal edge where we have the highlight as oppose to horizontal face taht is not so visible from the side view as on the picture above, so instead of |¯ is would be like so /. This way it will keep the look from the og texture work more as highlighted part will face the camera most angles without having it to be just flat like original.
Beside that its just dropdead gorgeous. Once my apartment is ready i hope i can catch and help with from the unit's side 😅
Click to expand...
The caveat with those wooden brackets is that in the og they are drawn on flat surface, and the bright yellow parts are there to compensate the lack of volume. Since I added geometry, I toned down those highlights to prevent color burn when lit with ingame lighting. For the same reason, I don't think bracket caps need to be diagonal on top - like with the windows, I just don't need to compensate lack of volume.
 
LongbowMan said:
The caveat with those wooden brackets is that in the og they are drawn on flat surface, and the bright yellow parts are there to compensate the lack of volume. Since I added geometry, I toned down those highlights to prevent color burn when lit with ingame lighting. For the same reason, I don't think bracket caps need to be diagonal on top - like with the windows, I just don't need to compensate lack of volume.
Click to expand...
While i agree it was for compensating for the lack of volume it still strays away from the illustration style colouring that Samwise set for textures in the game. Wood on your buildings is still far too dark and reddish most of the time and i dont see why it has to be that way. For sake of showing what i mean i done a quick touchup in Gimp on how it could look if it is closer to original.
HDbarracksrecolourV2.png

Here are both unedited screen you uploaded and og Barracks for direct comparison sake
HumanBarracksWc31.png
1771432812711.png

All i did is bump up the brighteness and contrast equal parts plus some recolouring on the wood.(and having said that flag poles look really plain compared to og texture.
 

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Kacpa2 said:
While i agree it was for compensating for the lack of volume it still strays away from the illustration style colouring that Samwise set for textures in the game. Wood on your buildings is still far too dark and reddish most of the time and i dont see why it has to be that way. For sake of showing what i mean i done a quick touchup in Gimp on how it could look if it is closer to original.
Click to expand...
When you compare images like this, they have to be taken from the same source. In your case, the difference is in lighting, not in the texture. Here's a screenshot of OG and Classic HD battacks opened in RMS side by side. As you can see, Classic HD actually has even wider range of highlights and shadows.
1772391929157.png



Comparing ingame, especially using game camera (let's not forget it was made for a top-down view), would show an even more relevant picture.
1772392684813.png


It's not identical, of course, but it's pretty close. I'd say Lordaeron crests need to be brighter though.
 
I always find it odd that they used wood for the platform or walkway across the Barracks' towers and not stone. Then again, the building itself has always looked run down for me, and that they had to make use of what resources they have to build it with, realistically. And the inconsistent stones or rocks wrapped around the corner of the tower walls, I though they were hinges but that's just my poor eyes even as a kid.
 
Ok, the good news is - I was working on Rifleman and I'm more or less content with how the mesh turned out, it follows the original very closely and the polycount is very modest. The bad news - I have no idea how you people rig models in RMS, it was absolute nightmare for me, and it left both my Rifleman and me completely broken :ugly:

I think I better switch back to buildings, I'm way better equpped to do those.

1775056856568.png
 
LongbowMan said:
Ok, the good news is - I was working on Rifleman and I'm more or less content with how the mesh turned out, it follows the original very closely and the polycount is very modest. The bad news - I have no idea how you people rig models in RMS, it was absolute nightmare for me, and it left both my Rifleman and me completely broken :ugly:

I think I better switch back to buildings, I'm way better equpped to do those.

View attachment 582857
Click to expand...

Mdlvis is alot easier to rig. But yes going on with buildings would be great
 
LongbowMan said:
Ok, the good news is - I was working on Rifleman and I'm more or less content with how the mesh turned out, it follows the original very closely and the polycount is very modest. The bad news - I have no idea how you people rig models in RMS, it was absolute nightmare for me, and it left both my Rifleman and me completely broken :ugly:

I think I better switch back to buildings, I'm way better equpped to do those.

View attachment 582857
Click to expand...
Have you watched Retera's youtube videos using RMS to rig and animate models?
 
Footman16 said:
Have you watched Retera's youtube videos using RMS to rig and animate models?
Click to expand...
It's not that I don't know how to do it, it's that the way vertices and bones are selected in RMS is rather frustrating after Maya. What's even more frustrating though, is the mess in Blizzard models' bone structure, with random bone names and unnesessary helpers.

Anyhow, I'm back on track with this Arcane Sanctum now:
1775144053984.png
 
Sometimes I intentionally go for a more angular lowpoly look instead of making everything round and smooth because it has more character this way. I first noticed this when working on Granary and Windmill structures, and even more so on the Slaughterhouse, it justed started to look bland when I smoothed everything out. I guess that's just one of those things that made the original Warcraft style what it was.
1775324588495.png
 
LongbowMan said:
Ok, the good news is - I was working on Rifleman and I'm more or less content with how the mesh turned out, it follows the original very closely and the polycount is very modest. The bad news - I have no idea how you people rig models in RMS, it was absolute nightmare for me, and it left both my Rifleman and me completely broken :ugly:

I think I better switch back to buildings, I'm way better equpped to do those.

View attachment 582857
Click to expand...
Excellent~ I like how you preserve the oddball blunderbuss. Other people just slap in concept art one or WoW ones.

LongbowMan said:
Sometimes I intentionally go for a more angular lowpoly look instead of making everything round and smooth because it has more character this way. I first noticed this when working on Granary and Windmill structures, and even more so on the Slaughterhouse, it justed started to look bland when I smoothed everything out. I guess that's just one of those things that made the original Warcraft style what it was.View attachment 583293
Click to expand...
I like that apoproach too. It doesnt have to be rounded off. I think keeping silloutte's instact is far more important. Specially when other elements like those pillars are angular. Would make sense that building is angular too. You make the balls 3d instead of 2D too? Its also obvious when stuff is meant to be round on og models vs angular. its not as limited in that regard. For example Orcish Fortress has a dome, so do Dalaran buildings and so on. Granted Arcane sanctum is a more an edge case where it kind of can go both ways, but rounding it off will just take away from original look. Plus as i said it seems like its purposefully more blocky. Given how much rounder they made other bits of it. Yes WoW Sanctums are rounded off but WoW also gets other things on Wc3 structures wrong and shouldnt really be taken as much of a reference for that.

Having said that have you tried that inbetween design that was made from smaller chunks? Or mixing it with the chunkier base but top with the runes/TC is rounder? and botom of the building and walls are more angular?
 
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Kacpa2 said:
Having said that have you tried that inbetween design that was made from smaller chunks? Or mixing it with the chunkier base but top with the runes/TC is rounder? and botom of the building and walls are more angular?
Click to expand...
Hmm, I should definitely try it out, it makes sense. And thank you by the way - I really appreciate that you do such a thorough review every time!
Kacpa2 said:
You make the balls 3d instead of 2D too?
Click to expand...
I was, at first. But then I decided to make them 2.5D. They will always face the camera like the original ones so I can paint surface glare on them, but they will also retain the spherical topology to catch shadows in real time.

1775350474873.png
 
LongbowMan said:
Hmm, I should definitely try it out, it makes sense. And thank you by the way - I really appreciate that you do such a thorough review every time!

I was, at first. But then I decided to make them 2.5D. They will always face the camera like the original ones so I can paint surface glare on them, but they will also retain the spherical topology to catch shadows in real time.

View attachment 583309
Click to expand...

I honestly think 2.5D is not a good idea. Takes away too much from the HD aspect of it. There are all kinds of cinematics custom maps etc that you can face the 2d side of it
 
YourArthas said:
I honestly think 2.5D is not a good idea. Takes away too much from the HD aspect of it. There are all kinds of cinematics custom maps etc that you can face the 2d side of it
Click to expand...
There's no way you can see the other side, it's called a billboard - no matter how many users look at it and from which side, it will allways face the viewer. To see how it works, you can inspect the original Arcane Sanctum more closely.
 
LongbowMan said:
There's no way you can see the other side, it's called a billboard - no matter how many users look at it and from which side, it will allways face the viewer. To see how it works, you can inspect the original Arcane Sanctum more closely.
Click to expand...
I just noticed that, and it low-key broke immersion for me. lol
Especially when you zoom in on the details of the Classic Arcane Sanctum model, and see how badly the circle was cut out or aligned.
Perhaps you can show a test animation that shows how it would look, even rotate it to different angles in one video?
 
What if you have a 2.5D layer billboarded like you're talking about, but where the 2.5D layer billboarded is a half sphere shape with an Additive white circle texture -- then layer the 2.5D additive thing onto an actual non-billboard sphere. Would that work so that as the camera spins, the shine spins, but the sphere itself is totally 3D and has 3D shading?

Or maybe the billboard could be a plane but where the billboard node is not the center of mass of the plane, so that at all camera angles it is in front of the actual sphere?

Edit: maybe like this:




In case not clear what is happening in the above image, we can see that Retera Model Studio kind of confusingly uses the "Perspective" view to decide where to put the geometry during animations, including Billboarding:




This kind of style is not new the to the game, and is used in stuff like Gold Coins although in a slightly different way:



 

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Altruistic Anduin said:
Perhaps you can show a test animation that shows how it would look, even rotate it to different angles in one video?
Click to expand...
I probably should, just need to allocate some time for that :peasant-thinking:
Kacpa2 said:
Having said that have you tried that inbetween design that was made from smaller chunks? Or mixing it with the chunkier base but top with the runes/TC is rounder? and botom of the building and walls are more angular?
Click to expand...
Here's a follow-up to your idea. I think it looks pretty neat, with a round "hat" and angular walls that match with the obelisks.
1775411924896.png
1775411983303.png


Retera said:
What if you have a 2.5D layer billboarded like you're talking about, but where the 2.5D layer billboarded is a half sphere shape with an Additive white circle texture -- then layer the 2.5D additive thing onto an actual non-billboard sphere. Would that work so that as the camera spins, the shine spins, but the sphere itself is totally 3D and has 3D shading?

Or maybe the billboard could be a plane but where the billboard node is not the center of mass of the plane, so that at all camera angles it is in front of the actual sphere?
Click to expand...
I get the idea. A billboarded glare may be a nice touch indeed, making the surface appear more shiny - but duplicating the whole sphere is a bit of an overkill and makes those spheres unnecessary hefty with polygons.
 
Altruistic Anduin said:
I just noticed that, and it low-key broke immersion for me. lol
Especially when you zoom in on the details of the Classic Arcane Sanctum model, and see how badly the circle was cut out or aligned.
Perhaps you can show a test animation that shows how it would look, even rotate it to different angles in one video?
Click to expand...
Here you go:
 
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