I probably should, just need to allocate some time for that
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Ah, I was thinking you do that when you have the new HD texture squared away, so we can see your version with the billboard text, perhaps you can make a better cut than in the original Classic model.
It does look great. I am still curious how the chunkier intermediate would look but this is just working more since there is one sphere groung around the runed tc part. Tho in theory wouldnt 2.5D spheres pose a problem if dynamic shadows are enabled? I know i would be pretty much fine in original wc3 given it has no dynamic shadows.
Well, that's just a quick test, and I'm heading on a 2-week vacation tomorrow, so I thought I better share it now. Otherwise, I always get to animations after I finish meshes and textures.
I'm not sure how dynamic lights work with billboarded geometry but I don't think anything ugly happens - after all, they are still hemispheres, not sprites. If it doesn't look great, it won't be a huge problem to transform them into full spheres for correct lighting.
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Everything looks polygonal so up close, not just the spheres - they're just in line with the overall level of detail. These things are pretty small ingame, so they will look smooth, unless you zoom in quite a lot.
I see you went with my idea to go with round top and angular walls :v
Heh, glad to hear that. I think, it's one of the more iconic buildings from Warcraft 3, in a way, because it's so unique in its design.
I'm not sure if I understood. Those orbs are tricky and went through several iterations, so doing "some brush work" won't nessessarily produce a better result
Was one of the options but I decided to go with what @Kacpa2 and some other people suggested. I think it just works better with rings and incantations, though both versions are viable. Anyway, it's too late now, I'm about to post it and move towards the next building.
Yes, it was about general colourscheme. OG game has no particular readability issues. As far as inconsistencies go i would keep them or mildly adjust them in case of outliers vs majority of buildings in this case. (I also wouldnt make peasant have the same face on portrait and icon, and just keep the ingame model resembling more the icon and portrait being a bit different. ITs been the case for Starcraft 2 for most part.)Now that you guys pointed it out, it glowing in the nighttime--the team color--doesn't feel immersive. I always thought, they would paint it on their structures as an in-lore or in-universe explanation to color schemes. But that's just me. Warcraft 3 will always be an RTS whether I want it or not. And players, who have been vocal against Reforged graphics, have always complained about "readability" of a unit, and they weren't even just talking about the TC of a unit either, or at the very least.
Ohhh my gaddd! Thank you for doing it! We're all gonna wait for this!
Thanks for taking part in the discussion! Personally I don't think that this is entritely intentional. If we look at the lastest newest buildings from the TFT add-on we can find Arcane Vault and Tomb of Relics with fresh new textures and they, especially the Tomb's, have bright pieces of teamcolor. But the Ancient of Wonders doesn't have it, so where's Blizzard's logic? And how about glowing TC like on the Haunterd Gold Mine, Ziggurat and glowing wisps inside of the Entangled Gold Mine?
What if you see a mix of buildings from several teams at one base of the same race, especially in various custom maps, and you only need to kill one building to get rid of an opponent or find a weaker one who you can destroy faster with your limited resources? What is preferable for the player in this case: to search with your eyes and move the mouse cursor around the base at night in search of buildings, or to immediately see the desired color?
Thank for sharing your thoughts! This makes me guess that for Blizzard, in the case of buildings, the teamcolor aspect is not... that crucial, because there are already large pieces, OR once upon a time, a thorough decision was not made in this regard in a hurry, OR the designers simply put this gutter on the eye, OR somewhere they even forgot to uncheck the 'unshaded' checkbox when applying the UV-map. I happens to me and other architecture-type modelers, by the way. Anyways, there's too much guessing.
Thanks for your opinion! I agree with both cases. Anduin always feels the atmosphere of Warc... I mean, Azeroth.Now that you guys pointed it out, it glowing in the nighttime--the team color--doesn't feel immersive. I always thought, they would paint it on their structures as an in-lore or in-universe explanation to color schemes. But that's just me. Warcraft 3 will always be an RTS whether I want it or not. And players, who have been vocal against Reforged graphics, have always complained about "readability" of a unit, and they weren't even just talking about the TC of a unit either, or at the very least.
Glad to hear!
Well Glowing TC on haunted mine and wisps is mena to glow, as for other cases i am pretty sure its down to minimal amount of tc on certain building. I agree readability at further diatance is important, but we also shouldnt make buildings that are overtly obvious in their TC(Towhall and other builidngs with fully TC roofs) to turn into glowsticks. The slightly reduced unshaded falue across the viard say 10-25% sounds more sensible.Thanks for taking part in the discussion! Personally I don't think that this is entritely intentional. If we look at the lastest newest buildings from the TFT add-on we can find Arcane Vault and Tomb of Relics with fresh new textures and they, especially the Tomb's, have bright pieces of teamcolor. But the Ancient of Wonders doesn't have it, so where's Blizzard's logic? And how about glowing TC like on the Haunterd Gold Mine, Ziggurat and glowing wisps inside of the Entangled Gold Mine?
What if you see a mix of buildings from several teams at one base of the same race, especially in various custom maps, and you only need to kill one building to get rid of an opponent or find a weaker one who you can destroy faster with your limited resources? What is preferable for the player in this case: to search with your eyes and move the mouse cursor around the base at night in search of buildings, or to immediately see the desired color?
Thank for sharing your thoughts! This makes me guess that for Blizzard, in the case of buildings, the teamcolor aspect is not... that crucial, because there are already large pieces, OR once upon a time, a thorough decision was not made in this regard in a hurry, OR the designers simply put this gutter on the eye, OR somewhere they even forgot to uncheck the 'unshaded' checkbox when applying the UV-map. I happens to me and other architecture-type modelers, by the way. Anyways, there's too much guessing.
Thanks for your opinion! I agree with both cases. Anduin always feels the atmosphere of Warc... I mean, Azeroth.
Glad to hear!
We appreciate your participation, guys, and thanks for the feedback, for helping us make the right and informed decision!
I suppose that I can say the following based of what I think and see in our discussion:
We can make up different situations and still get NO answers. But one thing that stands above all is obvious in this regard: Warcraft 3 is an RTS game with an additional opportunity to increase the camera distance that have maps with tonns of units and structures, especially custom maps where structures can be of a size of a unit, and thus players must clearly see what belongs to whom, as this is a global concept of a strategy game. Therefore, it is worth making a holistic compromise solution that will have a global and positive impact on the gameplay and at the same time satisfy the players with improved immersion and clarity. Experimenting with transparency levels to make TC readable, pleasing to the eye, and not cause epilepsy with its huge unshaded parts is a nice and useful thing (imagine if we just unshade Orc mains or shade everything).
Look at the difference now:
View attachment 590921View attachment 590920
Clean, clear and doesn't hurt the eye, does it? Now we're talking!
P.S. By the way, what is @bakr's approach towards was said above?
Very concise and beautiful silhouette at the same time
Can say the same about this. I specially like these small pieces of roof places on its ribs, they seem very pleasing aesthetically wise to me
Which reminds me. You should probably create a changelog here that tracks what you have made changes to already uploaded models for the project. Considering you don't have or want to ping users on Hive of every updates you make with, say, the Necropolis model, a comprehensive but brief logs of edits, patches, and fixes should be good, too.
I think it makes more sense to keep the changenotes concerning each individual model in the corresponding bundle. When I post an archive, I will make a separated changelist for it.
Agreed. Good looking cannon tower :v though i wonder if it would look better if the more angular walls were kept like the vertices below the windows were closer to a flat(not entirely so like original. Like we went with arcane cantum Arcane sanctum.
I actually did the same thing as with Arcane Sanctum, only inverted - the top part is more angular this time. I think the walls are initially round by concept - the windows are very often, the segments are tall and narrow. Even the original lowpoly version looks pretty rounded to me, especially from the game camera.
I don't like the Arcane Tower, because I don't think Reveal should be some unlimited-use spell that humans get, especially since they already have Flare, which for some reason was also eventually made unlimited. Everyone thinks about Shades and Far Sight (which people shit on for some reason despite the buffs), but imo HU lowkey has the best (and too much) map vision. You can't stop them from using Reveal, but you CAN passively deny Shades w/just a couple human towers smh. Imo Reveal should just be removed altogether.
I was only talking about the design, not their function, as I'm no competitive RTS player; I prefer single-player and campaigns.
I know. I was just taking the opportunity to vent my opinion/making conversation. There's nothing to be confused about.I was only talking about the design, not their function, as I'm no competitive RTS player; I prefer single-player and campaigns.
Aye! I'm switching to parttime job this summer, so I have somewhat more chances to finish them on time.
RoC demo you mean :v
As someone who has experimented with making tilesets, making the tiling smooth across all tiles is honestly a massive headache so if you can just take the OGs and edit them and maintain their borders between each tile it makes it so much easier.
It's not that bad, but it sure is tedious, that's why I'm looking for ways to go without actually painting it all by hand...
Ah, I meant custom campaign for the TFT, because that's where I played it. I referred to the Orc campaign as the demo, not TFT itself, because it felt short and incomplete, not realizing it should be a continuation of the prologue campaign for ROC, and it takes place before the official ROC Orc campaign.
