Luclin PC Models

[Dregor Thule]

Now seems like a pretty good time to be having a serious discussion about this subject. It's no secret that a lot of people weren't too impressed with the makeover PC models got with Luclin. I personally like the new models, for the most part, but the animations are a very sore spot. Being an animator, knowing what goes into the thought process for animating something, be it 2d or 3d, I'm left wondering what the person(s) was thinking.

It'd be nice to think that with LoY, you guys may also go back and perhaps reanimate the other PC models. The small sampling of animations for frogloks you have up on www.legacyofykesha.com is promising, showing some nice movement going on. Would be great to see this same level of animation applied to the others.

But it's not just the movement for the models that are left wanting, but also the lack of movement. Idle animations, standing poses; troll models have the potential to be a lot better than they are honestly, with repositioning of the way they stand, perhaps in more of a hunched, slouching position instead of the very un-trollish straight stand they have now, it would be a lot better I think.

A few other points on sort-of PC models. The wolf model. Movement is set too slow. In the Luclin beta, all PC animations were really slow, and they were all upped in speed by like half. It looks to me that the wolf never got that upping.

Bears and gators. These are the last 2 remaining "PC models" that use the old model really. They both look extremely out of place in some cases. The bear model is simple and ugly honestly. Plane of Storms has a nice new bear model, and the basilisk model in Plane of Earth would make a great gator model starting point, removing the horns and retexturing the model to look like an aligator.

Ugh, ok, enough of this. Been meaning to put out these thoughts for awhile now. I'd love to see these changed, even tho I know I'm probably holding my breath for nothing.

Dre

[arax_luminarium]

hate to burst your bubble. but those
baboo animators at verrant will not be fixing anything.
We all know thay are crap.
nuff said.

[Hephalump]

For the love of god, fix the gay ass 2hb poking animation. It's insanely stupid.

[Drolvarg]

Not sure on this, but don't more (or more complex) animations take up more memory. Thought they were already pushing the limits (without asking us to upgrade again) on memory usage.

[Seij]

i agree... i liked all of the model designs, with the exception of the male human, but the animations were absolutely ludicrous.

what in god's name were they thinking? not a single animation looks even ok with the luclin models. it's like they paid some 12 year old kid to move the models' limbs around because they were rushed to release the expansion or something.

even the elementals animate like fucktards, and the horses look like they're having convulsions when they turn.

this is the one and only reason why i'd always play with luclin models off.

[Mojig]

Have to agree, the animations suck. And the 2 hand blunt animation should be the same as 2hs. But yeah a lot of others could be changed.

[Dr. Funkenstein]

Not sure on this, but don't more (or more complex) animations take up more memory. Thought they were already pushing the limits (without asking us to upgrade again) on memory usage.

Don't have to make them more complex to make them better. Complexity != good-looking. Simplicity != ugly. The animations look unnatural and often hurriedly done.

I like my Barbarian model (except while running /wretch) and the Vah Shir...the rest are more complex downgrades from the old animations.

[Merauk]

Originally posted by Dregor Thule
I personally like the new models

Less forehead please.

[Nanaki Ikanan]

My only real gripe with the new models besides the fact that the animations just sucked was that they are lacking different armor textures. Can't tell the difference between Velious and Old-world armor, cant tell the difference between velious custom helms and old plate helms, etc. etc. Very annoying that all the armor looks the same.

[Ashwynd]

forget the animations, look at how lame wood elves look We looked great in velious and then they ruin it all with the gymnast look.

[Jovec]

Most of the new models aren't too bad. The half-elf looks a little too much like the wood-elf, and the erudites are a little too broad in the shoulder, but for the most part they are ok.

As with most everyone else, I think the animations suck. Verant could earn some good karma among the playerbase by spending some time improving them. What they could also do is have the playerbase submit new animations. Put out the required legalese, put the files up for download along with the necessary tech specs, set a deadline, and then have someone evaluate the submissions. Yes, there will be a lot of crap animations, but I can't believe one of their 400,000+ players can't put forth something very nice. Pay the winners something like $500 or $1000 and put their name in the credits. It's possible that one person would have the best animations for all races, but there will probably be at least a couple different winners, which would also add some variety to the animations between the races.

Not sure on this, but don't more (or more complex) animations take up more memory. Thought they were already pushing the limits (without asking us to upgrade again) on memory usage.

Don't have to make them more complex to make them better. Complexity != good-looking. Simplicity != ugly. The animations look unnatural and often hurriedly done.

I agree with the response, but don't forget that they could have 2 sets of animatations - the current (or improved) Luclin "low memory" animations, and a higher quality set that you can enable in the options for those of us with the computing horsepower to do so.

-Jovec

[45th Parallel]

You guys are way too forgiving. The models are just as shitty as the animations. People are always impressed the with the detail of the new models but never look at the artistry. The proportionality of the models is very poor (man hands, limbs to narrow, chest too broad, arms to short, head to large, improper spacing of eye-nose-mouth giving the faces an elongated look, etc etc). They all stand like they have fucking scoliosis and their center of gravity isn’t over their area of support (making them look like they’re tipping all the time).

Now, the new froggy model is very encouraging. It may look like a battletoad, but at least the artistry and animation are vastly superior to the luclin models. It’s hard to judge proportionality on a non-human model, but the use of drawn on texture shading gives the model great depth. The luclin models have very flat shading that depends on the environment lighting almost exclusively. In any case, I’m very encouraged by the froggie models, and would love to see that artist(s) redo the luclin models/animations.

[Qalar-Drinal]

I'd like to see the specter models updated as well.

[Xen]

Good post Dregor!

I couldn't agree more.

We invest so much time with our characters; it'd be nice to have models and animations that are aesthetic and pleasing to look at.

The 2hb animations are complete shit. I don't know how they ever went live. Also, just the animations themselves look incomplete. It's almost like the designers removed some of the frames, in fact I'm sure they did. The movements are very jerky and unnatural looking.

Additionally, the design of the humans and Iksar are "puffy" they don't look natural.

I would love to see a revamp of the current animations and character models. The Frogloks look very nice, and I believe it's possible for the SOE designers to update/fix the remaining models.

[Tweedius]

Originally posted by Hephalump
For the love of god, fix the gay ass 2hb poking animation. It's insanely stupid.

No shit! Ur fuckin right on. I get this bad ass big hammer and I poke with it? WTF is that shit. There's all these animations on the character select screen that'd be perfect for that. The two hands over the head swinging down like a mother fookin carnival hammer w/ the strength test thingy. Now THATS how u should be hitting with a 2hb. Not poking it like ur some fairy.

Fix that shiz lol

And good job fixing the links *thumbs up*

-Tweed