Luclin PC Models

[Sentient]

It appears they keyframed the animation for the models. This is part of the reason for the massive memory requirement. Every model stores all its own animation, some of the animations are copied from model to model but they aren't being pulled from a single source. If it was on 1 global system you wouldn't have bugs like skeleton models not 2h piercing.

They need redo all the animation with a skeletal system. They could have plenty of animation at low memory cost. They could have multiple animations per size(big, medium, small) and per skill (2hs, 2hb, etc).

All this would require is 1 resizeable base animation model which all other models would map joints to...

This isn't difficult, games have been doing it for quite some time. They just hired monkies instead of animations for Luclin.

[qxx]

when advertised they said you would get unique animations for different sitations like if you wield a 2hb your kick would look different than if you were dual wielding and shit. but the animations are suck ass and the models are even worse, i feel bad for iksar monks with their snowsuit lookin fungis and their heart attack fds. male barb was the only acceptable model, maybe ogre men.

[Furor Planedefiler]

You know that one little screw that's holding your beat down computer desk together? That's what 2h Blunt animations are in EQ. I think Abashi once stated that fixing 2h Blunt animations would destroy the foundation of EQ, characters would delete themselves, and the Earth's axis would shift.

Remember the test server player wipe? Yep... 2H Blunt animation test fix is to blame. When they attempted to fix it on Test many moons again, all of the female NPCs grew cocks.

The cost is too great... and you think about that the next time you bring your bad attitude to this board, mister.

[Furor Planedefiler]

That's right.... cocks...

[Oriestes]

I support the female half-elf models :P
Nothing wrong with upgraded panty textures, nope!

[ICELL]

Male Half-elf armor textures look like crap, as do the models. Why would tolans, for example, on a human looks like light brown plate but on a half elf looks like some kind of moldy spandex? wtf?

Conclusion: Male half-elf artist should be shot and tossed over the cart.

[Gjin]

I would have rather paid $17.99 for re-worked animations & models instead of a new steriod soaked Froglok playable race.

The 2hb combat animation makes Richard Simmons cry. It neither uses two hands nor looks like combat, gg.

[miir]

The 2hb animation is horrible. Poking with a hammer is just wrong.

On the other hand, the Erudite models and animations are generally pretty good.

[Ming]

Originally posted by ICELL
Male Half-elf armor textures look like crap, as do the models. Why would tolans, for example, on a human looks like light brown plate but on a half elf looks like some kind of moldy spandex? wtf?

Conclusion: Male half-elf artist should be shot and tossed over the cart.

Well said indeed. I started a male half elf paladin just for kicks and all the cool L50+ gear I give him looks silly. If I were a newb to EQ I'd sitting there thinking, "it's ok, someday he'll have cool looking armor he just isn't there yet." Not true. The day I can create a froglok pally I'll be transferring all the gear over and deleting that character. If I'm going to spend hour upon hour dressing up my computer dollies they better be fucking pretty!

[Belefuu]

I agree with 47th, while not as atrocious as the animations, the models themselves still range from marginally acceptable to utter rediculousness. The proportions are 10x worse than the originals, the armor looks 10x worse than the originals, etc etc.

In an ideal world, here's what i would have liked to see happen with the Luclin models. Just take the original models, and copy them as close as possible, adding in curves and more polygons/details, etc, along with some decent looking 3d armor. Save the 3d armor only for stuff it would look good on though, such as plate. Adding 3d to cloth and leather just makes you look like your wearing a gay vest.

In reality, i think a fix of some of the animations is about as much as we can hope for, if that. If they want the most simple fix imo, just try to imitate the original animation as close as possible (if you couldn't tell i really liked the old models=p)

[Tancred]

My guess would be that they can't improve the animations atm without reducing the poly count of the models. Unless, that is, they increase the all ready stupidly large animation data file (175Mb if you load up the optional stuff?)

This is because I think the animations are done by vertex interpolation key-frames. This is a fast but very memory hungry way of doing things because you need to store a 3d coordinate for every vertex (3 per polygon more or less) on each keyframe. The current anims suck because they use way too few keyframes.
Quick and dirty calculation as an example:
2000 polys per model = 4500 verts (3 per poly but some shared)
4500 verts x 12 bytes per coordinate = 54000 bytes (52.7k) per keyframe.
Multiply this up by keys per anim, then anims per model and you soon get to that 175Meg figure even if you compress the data.


They could switch to a bone/envelope system and reduce the memory footprint of the animation data drastically as you need only store one matrix per bone per keyframe and you would only need approx 20 bones for anything in EQ. Downside is that it eats a lot of processing time and any raid situation would kill the performance of even the most ninja of PCs stone dead.
Quick and dirty memory calc for this lot:
20 bones x 64 bytes per matrix = 1280bytes per keyframe (1.25k)
about 1/50th of the size of the above data. Unfortunately as per all computer applications if you save memory you incur greater processing costs on the calculations.

In a couple more years PCs may get enough grunt to run the pretty luclin models on a skin/bone system but until then SoE have rather shot themselves in the foot.

IMHO of course

[Vikki]

Female Half-Elves need the yellow-tint taken out of the plate armor... Our base steel armor is gold, and not the regular silver like everyone else, so every piece of armor we get doesn't look anything like it does on others because it's a tint thrown over gold/yellow, not white. :\

[Morb]

The reason you look like a dipshit when you "swing" a 2hb is because there is no such thing as a 2hb animation and never has been. 2hb has always shared the 2h-piercing animation, and ironically, 2h-piercing weapons were not added until Velious.

The problem is, it is labelled as the 2hp animation, and the animators designed it as such. They were probably unaware that 2hb shared it, else they probably would have added the "overhand prep swing" that the low-res models have.

Either way, yeah the models could use a little work...

[Metranon]

who the fuck plays eq for the graphics?

[Seij]

everyone? go back to UO you stupid fuck.