PSA: All Allied Races use One Skeleton.

[Steampunkette]

All Player Character Races use one skeleton. Allied Races included.

The Zandalari and Nightborn do not use "The Nelf Skeleton" and the Dark Iron Dwarves don't use "The Dwarf Skeleton".

They all use the exact same single skeleton as Worgen and Goblins.

Yeah. I know. CRAZY. But lemme show you how it works!

Back in Cataclysm the Developers started working with an Adaptive Animation Model. That is, a rig or skeleton which can animate different parts independently of one another, and which can be stretched or altered in shape while still retaining functionality. This Skeleton was shared between Goblins and Worgen, though you wouldn't know it by looking at them.

When MoP came along, the Developers had to create monk-specific class animations for every race, which was -super- time consuming and kind of highlighted how damned hard it is to make new classes while adding new races to the game every other expansion. The Worgen and Goblin were excluded from the animation-batching because of how much time it would take to put all of those animations on yet another skeleton.

When WoD came out, however, with it's newly remodeled races, it wasn't just some random decision to make PCs look better: The Developers and Producers had decided to shrink their overall animation workload going forward by moving all races to the new Unified Player Skeleton. It took -boatloads- of work but it had to be done because you couldn't just slap the old models onto the new skeleton and have it work correctly, you needed to make models that specifically anchored to the appropriate points on the new skeleton.

This is also why Goblins and Worgen didn't get model updates: They didn't -need- them. They could use them, sure, since they look kinda bad compared to the rest of the races, but their re-design wasn't needed to move forward with the Unified Player Skeleton since they were already on it.

Then, with Legion's "Class Fantasy" focus, the Developers -further- lowered the need to design every new race's specific combat animations for the different class attacks and spells. Using the single skeleton and adaptive animation design, they created one "Charge" animation that all warriors share, regardless of race. One "Mongoose Bite". One everything. The amount of animation workload required to add even a single new race is now -massively- lower.

This is why when you have a Worgen in the WoWhead model viewer you can view the Monk animations. This is why when you're playing a Demon Hunter in Court of Stars and get transformed into a Nightborn (Which did use the old Nelf Skeleton) the model got stuck whenever you used Blade Dance even though the "New" nelf can use Blade Dance.

This is also why Nightborn had to be remodeled for Players to use. Because they're using the new Unified Player Skeleton. And yeah, they're currently using the Nelf Animations. But they don't -have- to.

Check out this Sethrak from Battle for Azeroth.



Notice anything about their weapon attacks? Those are Pandaren Male attacks, but that is clearly not the Pandaren Male "Skeleton".

Notice anything about their walk animation? That's the Worgen Female walk, but that is clearly not the Worgen Female "Skeleton".

It even uses the Pandaren Male Generic Casting animations! (Which will soon be depreciated outside of things like casting your Hearthstone or other non-class-specific spells)

This is because all three models (Pandaren Male, Worgen Female, Sethrak) use the same Unified Skeleton.

Blizzard now has the ability to mix and match animations pretty much at will. In any direction or order they like. They can make new races without having to spend weeks re-animating the class-attacks and class-spells. Even the new Caster Pose Animations are meant to offset the issue. Go load up a Void Elf Female in WoWhead's modelviewer and do the Shaman and Druid casting animations (she looks kinda great doing them!).

This stuff could be the basis of a massive explosion of new potential player races because the effort required to put them into the game as NPCs can be directly turned around and made into the effort required to make them into playable races without having to go back to the drawing board for a redesign. It's also the best chance we have at a Dance Studio option, since they can now make a single new dance emote and allow any race to use it.

And if that's not the coolest shit coming out of WoW, lately, I dunno what is.

[Deleted]

This is also probably why we've seen the terrifying bug where a nightborne monk turns into a tauren/nightborne monster from alpha footage. The animation is trying to fit the nigthborne vertices to the quite distorting animation of a tauren stand.

[Eggroll]

I don't think it's cool at all. I am not a fan of the "new" casting animations. They are not new at all, they are just copy pasted from different classes or races.

Like the spell animation on many classes that was originally the casting animation from that ele shaman talent casting form. I watched in horror when I saw a nelf druid rezzing someone with a worgen rezz animation.

I am not a fan of streamlining things that determines the character and flavor of a class/race. Especially in art. If everything is the same, there's no more character/flavor
to the class or the race. But these are the building blocks of the world - among other things. The distinct characteristics of classes and races.

If they all look the same now, what is the point?

And btw, if they are bragging with being lazy, they can at least lower the price of the next xpac by 10 Euro or something.

[zlygork]

Very informative OP, thanks for your time.

...But damn do I want a Sethrak now :|

[zlygork]

I don't think it's cool at all. I am not a fan of the "new" casting animations. They are not new at all, they are just copy pasted from different classes or races.

Like the spell animation on many classes that was originally the casting animation from that ele shaman talent casting form. I watched in horror when I saw a nelf druid rezzing someone with a worgen rezz animation.

I am not a fan of streamlining things that determines the character and flavor of a class/race. Especially in art. If everything is the same, there's no more character/flavor
to the class or the race. But these are the building blocks of the world - among other things. The distinct characteristics of classes and races.

If they all look the same now, what is the point?

And btw, if they are bragging with being lazy, they can at least lower the price of the next xpac by 10 Euro or something.

Honestly, it never made sense when a worgen and an orc mage had to make such incredibly different hand gestures in order to cast arcane magic, when it is all about very careful and calculated mathematics. I get where you are coming from but these should not be mutually exclusive features and there is nothing lazy in not wasting thousands of hours of work (because yes, animating takes that long) on unnecessary uniqueness for the sake of uniqueness when something else can blend in nicely and that time can be unlazily spent somewhere else. It's not like no work was put into the Sethrak above.

[Eggroll]

They aren't being lazy they are producing multiple times the amount of races with the same amount of work...

Yeah, but since they just copy paste everything THEY ARE being lazy. What do I need new races for if they all look and move the same anyways.
What a waste of time.

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Honestly, it never made sense when a worgen and an orc mage had to make such incredibly different hand gestures in order to cast arcane magic, when it is all about very careful and calculated mathematics. I get where you are coming from but these should not be mutually exclusive features and there is nothing lazy in not wasting thousands of hours of work (because yes, animating takes that long) on unnecessary uniqueness for the sake of uniqueness when something else can blend in nicely and that time can be unlazily spent somewhere else. It's not like no work was put into the Sethrak above.

Because it's a VIDEO game. And to some of us, art and flavor and character matters. If you are not one of them, that's fine, if you think art is redundant and it's all 0 and 1 to you - fine.

[A Chozo]

Oh, cool then. Time to ask for more races if it's so easy now!

[zlygork]

Yeah, but since they just copy paste everything THEY ARE being lazy. What do I need new races for if they all look and move the same anyways.
What a waste of time.

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Because it's a VIDEO game. And to some of us, art and flavor and character matters. If you are not one of them, that's fine, if you think art is redundant and it's all 0 and 1 to you - fine.

Nice assumption you got there, I value art and the work that goes into art unlike you.
2 Persons can play that game. I'll repeat, you cannot claim no work went into the sethrek and they just copy pasted the animations and that was it, ex: look at their tails. You can only make humanoids move in so many unique ways until it becomes a redundant waste of effort or utterly ridiculous.

[Steampunkette]

Yeah, but since they just copy paste everything THEY ARE being lazy. What do I need new races for if they all look and move the same anyways.
What a waste of time.

You could argue it's "Lazy" but that overlooks the reams of work they did to set this system up and the reams of content they'll get out of it by using the same amount of effort later.

Instead of 2 races we're getting 6 (That we know of). And in the future when they add a new character class, they'll only have to do the animation design -once- before allowing it to propagate to every race they want to play that race. New Machinist class? One animation pass and Dwarves, Gnomes, Goblins, Orcs, Humans, Draenei, and Trolls can all be that class without needing to redo the animations for 7 different skeletons.

Which means we can also have more classes, since the time spent animating the same shit for all 7 skeletons can instead be spent on making a second class. Or new variations of Classes that already exist (maybe new specs for every class?)

[madokbro]

So, this means it's actually reasonably easy for Void Elves to have a different idle pose to distinguish them from Blood Elves?

If so, they need to do it. It looks incredibly cheap as it stands.

[Soulwind]

So, this means it's actually reasonably easy for Void Elves to have a different idle pose to distinguish them from Blood Elves?

If so, they need to do it. It looks incredibly cheap as it stands.

Hell, they should make several poses for each race and gender and let you pick at creation/barbershop.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Yeah, but since they just copy paste everything THEY ARE being lazy. What do I need new races for if they all look and move the same anyways.
What a waste of time.

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Because it's a VIDEO game. And to some of us, art and flavor and character matters. If you are not one of them, that's fine, if you think art is redundant and it's all 0 and 1 to you - fine.

You're outraged despite not understanding the topic at hand.

Nice way of fitting into the Nerd Outrage-stereotype.

- - - Updated - - -

You could argue it's "Lazy" but that overlooks the reams of work they did to set this system up and the reams of content they'll get out of it by using the same amount of effort later.

Instead of 2 races we're getting 6 (That we know of). And in the future when they add a new character class, they'll only have to do the animation design -once- before allowing it to propagate to every race they want to play that race. New Machinist class? One animation pass and Dwarves, Gnomes, Goblins, Orcs, Humans, Draenei, and Trolls can all be that class without needing to redo the animations for 7 different skeletons.

Which means we can also have more classes, since the time spent animating the same shit for all 7 skeletons can instead be spent on making a second class. Or new variations of Classes that already exist (maybe new specs for every class?)

It really does explain why they seem far less limited in the amount of different mobs they churn out, and giving unique animations to quest mobs.

[Utigarde]

That's really amazing, thank you for showing this. Can't wait to see what else they do with this, or how much of this has already influenced the live game.

[Schattenlied]

Then, with Legion's "Class Fantasy" focus, the Developers -further- lowered the need to design every new race's specific combat animations for the different class attacks and spells. Using the single skeleton and adaptive animation design, they created one "Charge" animation that all warriors share, regardless of race. One "Mongoose Bite". One everything. The amount of animation workload required to add even a single new race is now -massively- lower.

Which should have never happened... Races need their unique combat animations back... Some of them still have theirs on a filler spell here and there, but others don't and it really sucks... Male and Female Humans for example both no longer have their race specific 2H special attack animations, they now share a generic animation with like 9 other race/gender combos, which I really, really hate because MHuman's 2H Special attack animation was the entire reason I picked them for my Warrior and Paladin.

What I don't understand is why they would remove unique animations from only some races... Why screw them out of their unique animations but let everyone else keep theirs?

This is an RPG, they shouldn't be changing something about a player's character without their consent or without providing an option to change it back.

[shanthi]

Because it's a VIDEO game. And to some of us, art and flavor and character matters. If you are not one of them, that's fine, if you think art is redundant and it's all 0 and 1 to you - fine.

It's not a question of whether you value "art" or not. It's a question of where you think Blizzard's limited art design resources should go. If you feel that the priority is hand gestures when casting spells, that's fine, but there's plenty of room for other people to disagree on whether that should be the priority and whether, in fact, the priority should be on skins for completely new races and mob types, even if they all have somewhat similar hand gestures.

[Steampunkette]

So, this means it's actually reasonably easy for Void Elves to have a different idle pose to distinguish them from Blood Elves?

If so, they need to do it. It looks incredibly cheap as it stands.

I do not know for sure whether they intend to or not, but I -think- we're looking at a placeholder animation bundle for the moment. That once they get put into the game for real, they'll have their own walk/run/jump/flirt/fall/die/etc. Though it might also be a situation where they get some stolen animation mix-n-match. Nightborn could get the Belf walk animation while having the Nelf stand animation and the Forsaken Dance Animations, for example. They're all open to possibility.

I, personally, still hold out hope Velves will hover at all times as part of their racial animation package. It would explain why the Priest Hover was changed to allow for hovering characters to jump while hovering just before Nighthold. Since that spell is the basis of all hover effects in the game, mechanically speaking.

[StationaryHawk]

Yeah, but since they just copy paste everything THEY ARE being lazy. What do I need new races for if they all look and move the same anyways.
What a waste of time.

They will move similarly. They won't look the same.

Fortunately, they didn't do this just for you anyways. You don't have to like it. It's a smart move on their part in a game where new races are frequently requested.

[Yarathir]

Looks like animation retargeting, yes. Funny enough, it's what they needed to make the dance studio happen. Of course that's never gonna happen again, but it's still intriguing to think about.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

Hell, they should make several poses for each race and gender and let you pick at creation/barbershop.

Given that they are allowing Orc to stand up straight, this might be a possibility someday.

[Schattenlied]

Looks like animation retargeting, yes. Funny enough, it's what they needed to make the dance studio happen. Of course that's never gonna happen again, but it's still intriguing to think about.

They need to make an animation studio. Let us customize lots of things, attack animations, dance animations, run/walk animations, casting animations. Make a toggle in the options menu that stops you seeing other people's customization on your client so it won't hamper anyone else's ability to recognize important things if that player deems it necessary in PvP.