How long did the new models REALLY take?

[Annarion]

I'm not sure if you accounted for this in your calculations, but you have to remember about customization too. There are I think between 8-12 different faces, which really is only the skinning, I'd say perhaps 10 or so hairstyles that would need to be rigged, although since they use the hairstyles across races lots of them just need tweaking, rather than completely redone, and then there are the features. It's one thing for certain races to have features like hair colour, earrings, or even facial tattoos/colouring. But look at troll tusks and tauren horns, draenei tentacles, dwarven beards, etc.

So it could be a bit longer than you've mentioned, or you could be considering those factors when you gave those estimations. I think the important thing to take away is that Blizzard hadn't been actively working on the models, because they were a low-priority project. When they decided to do them instead of race/class for WoD, they got prioritized and are proceeding much faster. That's why they said they were "25% done" after three years a few months back, but are now clearly in the final iterative state for male gnomes, dwarves and orcs, and maybe 1-2 iterations on male tauren, female gnomes and female dwarves. Based on the teaser trailer, I'd say they're quite close on female draenei as well. Hilariously humans are probably fairly far back, even though they skin all the armor onto human males first, and then adapt it for the other races afterwards.

I think they've given themselves leeway by saying they might release the models after launch, but I wouldn't be surprised if only a few races, or even none at all were not finished for launch. Plus I think they funneled some of the normal boss art budget into Orcs, since Garrosh was a final boss and people would've cried if he was the generic orc model he had before. Nobody wants to fight low-poly bosses in this day and age. That's why the orc male is already ready to go.

As an aside they are also rigging cloaks now, which is friggin' amazing and one of my major graphics complaints about WoW over the years. And they're working on the clipping of hair and armor apparently as well.

[Musty]

With the quality Blizz is giving, I'd say a couple of months at a push. You could so easily outsource the new models that its not even funny, give it to a few animation companies or even just 1, and you'll have your models by the time you've finished planning.

Yea and you get nothing what you expected back, blizzard will never trust another company with these and they are right not to do so.

I think people need to stop assuming they know how all this works and let them do their job, Sure that orc model could literally take 1 day to do but, take it to the art director and he wwould not approve it and then you have to go back and do it again, changing may end up taking weeks before it looks exactly like what you wanted..

[Vladimeir]

They said what, between 5,000 and 7,000 polygons per model?

Try building a 5000 piece puzzle.

Then do it 20 times.

Then get half of it rejected so you have to fine tune it all again.

Then script all the movement. For every emote in game for every model.

Then implement it.

[yjmark]

Don't forget all the political red tape/processes/approvals/testing that they have to go through for stuff. Just because the technical part takes a certain amount of time, that does not mean it's the only source of time consumption. With the size of WoW, and the impact of these changes, I would bet that the "red tape" took just as long (if not longer) as the technical parts. So double any estimate you have.....at a minimum.

[Deleted]

Considering these models are probably going to be the ones we'll have for the next decade or so, or maybe even the entire future span of the game, I don't mind however long it takes. Better to get it right.

[Deleted]

If they don't have a modular rigging system in place, what would be the time requirement to get one up and running?

Probably a week for one rig, with a good rigger. Along with another week for troubleshooting with the animators.

A lot of good points made. Regarding different face types and accessories etc: Even though they are simple tweaks to the current model and texture (in most cases... the undead would take a lot more work) there would still need to be a lot of back and forth for approvals. With that being said, it would be easy enough to keep the modellers working on the new face designs along side the animation. The facial rig won't change for the most part and the animations will be transferable. So it could still be done in the same time, just keeping the modellers and texture artists on the project for longer.

- - - Updated - - -

They said what, between 5,000 and 7,000 polygons per model?

Try building a 5000 piece puzzle.

Then do it 20 times.

Then get half of it rejected so you have to fine tune it all again.

Then script all the movement. For every emote in game for every model.

Then implement it.

I could probably make a 5000 poly model quicker than you could do a 5000 piece puzzle...

[xXzCoDProxXz]

The said part is, a team of somewhat decent modders can get the same thing done....in about a week. Keep in mind they don't have the tech Blizz has at their disposal

this just shows how lazy lots of team members are >.<

[Priya-tan]

making textures really takes this long? it looks the easiest.

It's actually pretty difficult. I'm only an amateur 3D artist, but in my experience there is a LOT of going back and forth between Photoshop (or whatever they use) and looking at the model. Painting the actual texture (not even including unwrapping the UVs and creating a solid UV map) takes quite a bit of time, especially given how much detail they've already included on the new ones.

[Deleted]

The said part is, a team of somewhat decent modders can get the same thing done....in about a week. Keep in mind they don't have the tech Blizz has at their disposal

this just shows how lazy lots of team members are >.<

this is a ludicrous sweeping statement.
modders do not have other 25.000 tasks, quality control, approval pipelines to care about, and especially they do not have the weight on their shoulders that their decisions on how to make their stuff are gonna impact millions of players cause they can always go "lulz who cares if dun't like itz thiz made in my freez timez"

people really forget to note that things changes DRASTICALLY when they go from "hobby" to "job" even if you enjoy them