PSA: All Allied Races use One Skeleton.

[Deleted]

Sethrak need to become an Allied race! Look at them! They look so cool!!!

[Yarathir]

I've known about animation retargeting for a bit now. For instance, Unreal Engine 4 has it, and it's really a great thing.


Of course, Blizzard has their own engine for WoW (modified wc3 one still, I figure. Heavily modified) so of course it means that they had to develop that on their own. I'm not sure when they obtained the ability, but they made sure to mention it a few times at this Blizzcon. It'll definitely give them a lot of freedom to easily create new allied races.

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.

It would be really cool. There's some animations I like a lot, but I'm not sure if they would do that. Allied races sharing most of the animations with similar playable races aside.

[zlygork]

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.

I'd fucking love that, but I highly doubt blizzard's current team would be interested at this moment, with the emphasis they put on their faction/class/race fantasy. Maybe someday down the road we can have such a feature, it'd be awesome for sure.

[Pull My Finger]

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.

Comments like this are something that the world doesn't need. Obviously without having the slightest clue about modeling and animation, you're not hesitant to spew your nonsense about the developers being "lazy".

This is the problem with the internet. Every yokel has the opportunity to voice their opinion, no matter how ignorant, unqualified or mistaken it is.

[ls-]

On the one hand, as a SE, I like this approach because it means less time wasted on reinventing the wheel every single time, on the other hand, as a player, I hate it because there's no race combat flavour anymore. Well, it's not the approach that caused it, but it started when it's introduced >_>

On a side note, there's an issue w/ new mage's casting animations, there's no proper transition from combat idle > cast > combat idle stances, so feet are just sliding, at least they could've kept feet in the same place or added a step-in/out or something >_>

[Steampunkette]

I put this thread together, by the way, 'cause I was tired of re-writing it over and over in multiple threads to try and explain it to everyone. Now I can just put it into my Signature or ask the mods to sticky it as an information post.

[Hugnomo]

I put this thread together, by the way, 'cause I was tired of re-writing it over and over in multiple threads to try and explain it to everyone. Now I can just put it into my Signature or ask the mods to sticky it as an information post.

Yes! I think we're all very appreciative, I know I am! It seems like every other day there is someone complaining about reskins or animation rigs without understanding a single thing about it. If I had a nickel for every time I saw someone confusing models/animations/textures I'd be rich. And they're usually arrogant and overly critical about it to boot. Now I can just link them this thread, at least when it comes to animation.

[Scrysis]

Does the OP have PROOF or veracity of what they're asserting? Because from where I sit, there nothing stopping them from re-creating animations on a new skeleton. And my animating experience tells me that you STILL have to create a new skeleton for a new models that are very different from each other and then bind the model to that skeleton.

Just to use the example stated, you CAN'T share skeletons between Sethrak and worgen females, and it should be dead obvious why. Worgen females DO NOT have that long neck or that super long tail. Both the long neck AND the tail are animated during the walk/run sequence. You can't animate what isn't there. So that means that the Sethrak use their own skeleton, not the female worgen one.

It's been known for a long time now that you can share skeletons among similar types. One would expect to use the dwarf skeleton for the black iron dwarves, for instance. I would consider it perfectly reasonable for the high mountain tauren to share a skeleton with the tauren, and the nightborne and void elves to share a skeleton with blood elves and night elves. But you're going to have to show me proof that you can do wild, cross-character skeleton sharing between wildly separate types before I believe it. And not with unreal engine either. I believe that Blizzard uses Maya for their animation purposes, so that might work.

Until proof is presented, I'm taking this with a large grain of salt.

[glowpipe]

and this matters how ? they look different even tho they got the same skeletonl. This affects you nada nilch

[Linkedblade]

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.

- - - Updated - - -



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.

They can still make unique racial animations. But can save time by using a common animation for common abilities

[Dracullus]

Looks like we may expect new races with every single major patch.

[Steampunkette]

Does the OP have PROOF or veracity of what they're asserting? Because from where I sit, there nothing stopping them from re-creating animations on a new skeleton. And my animating experience tells me that you STILL have to create a new skeleton for a new models that are very different from each other and then bind the model to that skeleton.

Just to use the example stated, you CAN'T share skeletons between Sethrak and worgen females, and it should be dead obvious why. Worgen females DO NOT have that long neck or that super long tail. Both the long neck AND the tail are animated during the walk/run sequence. You can't animate what isn't there. So that means that the Sethrak use their own skeleton, not the female worgen one.

It's been known for a long time now that you can share skeletons among similar types. One would expect to use the dwarf skeleton for the black iron dwarves, for instance. I would consider it perfectly reasonable for the high mountain tauren to share a skeleton with the tauren, and the nightborne and void elves to share a skeleton with blood elves and night elves. But you're going to have to show me proof that you can do wild, cross-character skeleton sharing between wildly separate types before I believe it. And not with unreal engine either. I believe that Blizzard uses Maya for their animation purposes, so that might work.

Until proof is presented, I'm taking this with a large grain of salt.

Load up WoWhead's modelviewer and look at a Worgen's Monk Animations that have been in the game since WoD even though Worgen can't be Monks (Goblins, too!). Load up a Dwarf and use the Druid Casting Animations. Load up a Tauren and use the Mage Casting Animations. Load up an Orc and use the Priest Casting animations. Each of these races cannot be a member of the specified classes, so taking the time and money to animate their unique models would be an expensive waste of time.

But if there were a single adaptive skeleton it wouldn't be an issue. Keyword, there, being "Adaptive". Which is why they could give the Sethrak a long tail and a long neck. Yet still they use the same motions as a worgen female and a pandaren male.

The proof exists and I listed it in my OP.

[Deleted]

Thank you, Lord's child, it is a good post. I welcome this explanation.

These snake people look like a very nice, possible addition to the Allied Races.

[inico]

In 7.3 they also added skel files to the game. For example, if you open the lightforged draenei model file you will notice it doesn't have animations. But the lightforged draenei skel file tells the model to copy them from the draenei model. The same happens with the void elf (animations are copied from the blood elf model). This way you can create a new model without animation and configure it to use the animations from an existing model, saving some memory space.

For example:
Currently the night elf male model is 15.8 mb.

In 7.3.5:
The night elf male model is 3.22 mb.
The night elf male skel file is 12.6 mb.
The nightborne male model is 2.11 mb. However it uses the same .skel file as the night elf male model. So, you saved 12.6 mb of memory space and it will also load faster.

[Louz]

Does the OP have PROOF or veracity of what they're asserting? Because from where I sit, there nothing stopping them from re-creating animations on a new skeleton. And my animating experience tells me that you STILL have to create a new skeleton for a new models that are very different from each other and then bind the model to that skeleton.

Just to use the example stated, you CAN'T share skeletons between Sethrak and worgen females, and it should be dead obvious why. Worgen females DO NOT have that long neck or that super long tail. Both the long neck AND the tail are animated during the walk/run sequence. You can't animate what isn't there. So that means that the Sethrak use their own skeleton, not the female worgen one.

It's been known for a long time now that you can share skeletons among similar types. One would expect to use the dwarf skeleton for the black iron dwarves, for instance. I would consider it perfectly reasonable for the high mountain tauren to share a skeleton with the tauren, and the nightborne and void elves to share a skeleton with blood elves and night elves. But you're going to have to show me proof that you can do wild, cross-character skeleton sharing between wildly separate types before I believe it. And not with unreal engine either. I believe that Blizzard uses Maya for their animation purposes, so that might work.

Until proof is presented, I'm taking this with a large grain of salt.

You mean just like Nightborne aren't Tauren? Or are they...

https://webmshare.com/NRYLx

[zlygork]

You mean just like Nightborne aren't Tauren? Or are they...

https://webmshare.com/NRYLx

That was OBVIOUSLY a custom animation implemented on the model by blizzard to represent how magical the nightborne are and NOT a bug caused by races having access to every single playable animation in existence

[Steampunkette]

You mean just like Nightborne aren't Tauren? Or are they...

https://webmshare.com/NRYLx

... Thank you -so- goddamned much! I appreciate you and what you have done, here.

[Deleted]

If this is true then it shits over all the hype of Allied Races. What good are new races when they aren't even new? They're just copy pasted from others? What a load of crap!

[Steampunkette]

That was OBVIOUSLY a custom animation implemented on the model by blizzard to represent how magical the nightborne are and NOT a bug caused by races having access to every single playable animation in existence

Right? I also love how his feet magically morph into hooves, ankles rising up to be the whole "Backwards Knee" thing for digitigrade legs. It's perhaps the most -marvelous- example of all of the animations existing on the same skeleton there is.

- - - Updated - - -

If this is true then it shits over all the hype of Allied Races. What good are new races when they aren't even new? They're just copy pasted from others? What a load of crap!

... no... you... No.

Their models are designed from the ground up to fit the new skeleton. It's not the Nelf model moved over and slightly modified, it's a whole new model with the existing player rig, able to access existing animations but not necessarily being bound to them.

It means we could get Ogres. Or Naga. Or whatever other race we dream of with -vastly- less overhead cost on the part of the developers. Less bottlenecking of animator's time, less time spent on it, in general, means faster turnaround time.

They're not "Copy Pasted".

[zlygork]

If this is true then it shits over all the hype of Allied Races. What good are new races when they aren't even new? They're just copy pasted from others? What a load of crap!

You'd rather void elves just use 100% of blood elf animations? Because the situation presented here shows that quite the opposite is possible.