Hogger's new model: What the FUCK?!?!

[Magistrate]

Actually prolly a chinese guy blizzard outsources alot of their artwork now. That said doesn't matter blizzard absolutely hires by race and other crap over anything else. They have forced diversity. But its fine there is a reason California is one of worst places to live unless you go where humans haven't destroyed it.

No furries don't design better stuff they have fetishized animals because they can't interact with humans(Animals love anything that feeds them) so the blend them together in some kinda disgusting mindset.
It's an illness and its sad. To be fair though I can't blame them because people are terrible and they prolly didn't deserve how they were treated.

Art is one of the things they consistently onboard new talent for. That's why it's frequently commented that one of the few things carrying the franchise is music and artists.

[Malcho]

Please.

I see no reason to believe that the people who think calling things "furry" as an insult wouldn't be doing the same exact crap if this showed up in WoW:


Case in point. See below.

All they have to do is give Marshal Dughan an ongoing rivalry (and secret crush) on Hogger in DF and we're gravy.

Bam! New inclusive romance.

[Orby]

I said "handful" not "literally every model".

For example, check out the Quilbeast Warcraft 3 model:

The WoW model by comparison:


Besides the spikes, you could almost believe they just ported the model to WoW.
Which shouldn't be a huge surprise considering WoW was already very much in production when TFT came out (2003)

Disregarding that if you look at other, more detailed models used in the Warcraft 3 engine (such as the ones used for the campaign screen) they're damn close to WoW models given that they were developed a few years earlier.

That basically looks like a Beta version of an Orc guard and is done in the Warcraft 3 engine.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/wo...20170416184512

(Link for bigger res)

Yup, as I also said some stuff did carry over. I did also think of the quilboar conveniently enough. But even the orc in the campaign page underwent alot of changes from that model from beta to live, just as much as the 2004 model changed a going into WoD when they updated the models again.

Now if you look from Warcraft 3 to now, the changes are may be drastic, but if you look at the updated models over time, there isn't much changes. They still keep to Warcrafts blocky format, at least for the most part, I don't think every model update has been as good, but you are going to get that. I know a lot of people bring up the hyena model as a terrible update, but I'll be honest that old hyena model looked terribly out of place to begin with, I don't think I even liked the model even back then.



I felt the same away about the Dark hounds from WoW, they looked awful too



Even the ones in WotLk looked awful, I used to think they were wearing Uggs or snow boots lol




I mean look at that those things. To me it never looked like it even belonged in the same game. Especially when the bears and boars at the time felt vastly different in style and tone graphically. At least to me, maybe others never felt that way.

Now I do miss some older models, like the bears. I loved their more derpy open mouth idle animations more than the current ones, but that's just personal opinion. some may love the new bear models. But I think on a whole the new models are fine, they keep roughly to the same style.

[Aedruid]

The failures of California to adequately care for its homeless populations and deal with droughts are due to not enough government involvement in solving those problems, not "too much." The notion that "make things bad enough for homeless people and they'll finally get it together and stop being homeless" well, surprise surprise, doesn't work.

uhmmm whaaa? Do you really think the government cares / it's wise to allow the government to get more involved when they don't? The sole reason why there's so many homeless is because contractors can't build enough homes due to regulations made by the government. The cost of land, labor, and building regulations = too much government involvement

[Kralljin]

Now if you look from Warcraft 3 to now, the changes are may be drastic, but if you look at the updated models over time, there isn't much changes.

You can't always make a 1:1 comparison between RTS models and WoW models, because an RTS need to place their focus on top down readability and at a time where systems where much more limited, cutting down on any remotely performance eating details was crucial, especially when they barely mattered in an RTS game.

Of course not every model looks identical but the general style still fits and i repeat, especially when you look at models that aren't used ingame but still in the Warcraft 3 engine, those are damn close to the ones we've gotten in WoW, where the artists actually had more freedom where they weren't restrained by performance issues or readability.
So that original argument of yours "People used to say WoW looks like disney compared to WC3" really just feels like an asspull, because you have models in Warcraft 3 that are effectively beta versions of the WoW models.

I know a lot of people bring up the hyena model as a terrible update, but I'll be honest that old hyena model looked terribly out of place to begin with, I don't think I even liked the model even back then.

You not liking the Hyena model does not automatically mean that the updated version is actually coherent to the Warcraft artstyle.

You're free to enjoy the new artstyle, i don't really like it however because Warcraft generally leaned into a cartoonish but savage artstyle (at least where "savage" made sense) whereas stuff like the new hyena or Gnoll models may be cartoonish but they very much fall short on the savage aspect.

[Orby]

You not liking the Hyena model does not automatically mean that the updated version is actually coherent to the Warcraft artstyle.

You're free to enjoy the new artstyle, i don't really like it however because Warcraft generally leaned into a cartoonish but savage artstyle (at least where "savage" made sense) whereas stuff like the new hyena or Gnoll models may be cartoonish but they very much fall short on the savage aspect.

Fear not I don't like the new one either. Maybe I just don't like hyenas :P

[FelPlague]

The model isn’t even finished in this build though, it has no animations tied to it.

Like 2 weeks is by no means slow I’m just saying I still wouldn’t consider something a single artist probably worked on over the course of a day to be surprisingly fast.

I’m glad they made the change though, it looks better.

"it has no animations tied to it"
It does, just they are not currently enabled, it uses the exact same animations as the regular gnoll.

"Something a single artist probably worked on over the course of a day"
Again, little to no understanding of how this actually works.

[FelPlague]

Actually prolly a chinese guy blizzard outsources alot of their artwork now.

Lol what?
Where in the hell did you get this idea?

[Ielenia]

Lol what?
Where in the hell did you get this idea?

Blizzard having outsourced the in-game graphic assets of Warcraft III: Reforged likely means to them that Blizzard outsources everything. >_>

[Zoreyai]

This is what happens when you hire a bunch of people with no skill but based on race and other stuff.l that isn't relevant to good design.

You get this lame cookie cutter Disney trash, this looks like some furry trash

I mean eah its clearly some furry shit

[Hobbidaggy]

I know people don't care about Hogger. All they care about is throwing tantrums over absolutely nothing.

God yes. All of these people would never even look at the model and would t even know it changed if nobody had actually pointed it out. The feigned outrage is pathetic

[MrLachyG]

uhmmm whaaa? Do you really think the government cares / it's wise to allow the government to get more involved when they don't? The sole reason why there's so many homeless is because contractors can't build enough homes due to regulations made by the government. The cost of land, labor, and building regulations = too much government involvement

What in the absolute fuck does this have to do with Hogger? Those people discussing whatever that is go make a topic in general off topic and leave

[Mecheon]

I said "handful" not "literally every model".

For example, check out the Quilbeast Warcraft 3 model:

The WoW model by comparison:


Besides the spikes, you could almost believe they just ported the model to WoW.
Which shouldn't be a huge surprise considering WoW was already very much in production when TFT came out (2003)

Surprisingly, it was the other way around with this one. The Quillbeast, Dragonspawn, Hydra and Lost One/early Draenei models are all ports from early WoW, to the TFT engine. Their animations all have odd names to them compared to how WC3 animations are normally named, which is due to their source. Mind, all four models were edited a bit for WC3

Biggest smoking gun to the WoW versions being developed first is that the Dragonspawn's textures actually have the fins on the back of the WoW versions that are missing from the WC3 versions. You can extract the WoW model and put on the WC3 textures, and they work perfectly

[Aedruid]

What in the absolute fuck does this have to do with Hogger? Those people discussing whatever that is go make a topic in general off topic and leave

Didn't you know? Hogger is homeless because Stormwind jacked up the cost of living.

[Ticj]

"it has no animations tied to it"
It does, just they are not currently enabled, it uses the exact same animations as the regular gnoll.

"Something a single artist probably worked on over the course of a day"
Again, little to no understanding of how this actually works.

Do you really think it takes more than a day to make a model? And I understand that it's a reskin, which is my point. I mentioned it has no animations tied to it to show just how rushed they were to put this out. The animations exist, they just haven't even gotten around to finishing this specific model yet.

[Triceron]

Do you really think it takes more than a day to make a model? And I understand that it's a reskin, which is my point. I mentioned it has no animations tied to it to show just how rushed they were to put this out. The animations exist, they just haven't even gotten around to finishing this specific model yet.

Yes it does take more than a day because these models tend to go through high-poly modelling, then go through iterations for the approval process by the seniors/leads, then once approved, retopoed/optimized back into the appropriate game models. Rarely anything merely takes a day of work unless we're literally talking about a palette swap, which this is far from being. This is actually not a simply reskin, it is a new model that has visual differences from the standard Gnoll model. It might look like not a lot of time and effort was spent on this, but I can look at this right now and tell you that this isn't a day worth of work, knowing the process it takes to model and texture this.

If it were really a day-or-less worth of work, there'd be no reason why they used a placeholder for Hogger at all. They would have already put it in with the rest of the Gnolls.

[Ticj]

Yes it does take more than a day because these models tend to go through high-poly modelling, then go through iterations for the approval process by the seniors/leads, then once approved, retopoed/optimized back into the appropriate game models. Rarely anything merely takes a day of work unless we're literally talking about a palette swap, which this is far from being. This is actually not a simply reskin, it is a new model that has visual differences from the standard Gnoll model. It might look like not a lot of time and effort was spent on this, but I can look at this right now and tell you that this isn't a day worth of work, knowing the process it takes to model and texture this.

If it were really a day-or-less worth of work, there'd be no reason why they used a placeholder for Hogger at all. They would have already put it in with the rest of the Gnolls.

Or...they didn't use a placeholder for hogger? It's pretty clear that hogger only got a unique model because of the whining.

Model work is a lot of work, but it can definitely be done within a day. The dude in this video remade the mechanostrider model within 6-8 hours IIRC and it was his first time using WoW's engine. The hogger model is just an edited version of the gnoll models already created, so I doubt it really took them that much time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtty...ab_channel=Tom

[Kumorii]

Or...they didn't use a placeholder for hogger? It's pretty clear that hogger only got a unique model because of the whining.

Model work is a lot of work, but it can definitely be done within a day. The dude in this video remade the mechanostrider model within 6-8 hours IIRC and it was his first time using WoW's engine. The hogger model is just an edited version of the gnoll models already created, so I doubt it really took them that much time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtty...ab_channel=Tom

you don't use the WoW engine to make models.
He was using Blender, a popular free 3d modeling program and substance painter from Adobe. Importing them to the wow engine has little to do with the modelling process.

It took him 33h to do 2 models and 6 textures. But the main issue isn't the work. It's the approval process and iterations that has to be made during a production such as Blizzards. It being a remodel doesn't change much. It do cut down the time but you still have to go through.
He mention in the description it took him 2 full work weeks of free-time over a couple of months. Not that I think it took that long for blizzard, but that shows it takes time if other things soak up time, like it often do in production because of hierarchy(working with some US companies it seems like hierarchy is a big issue) and things need to be approved etc etc.

Concept art (yes, you need to concept the new look)
Iteration
Modelling
Iteration
Retopo
Iteration
Texturing
Iteration

Not sure if they worked on animations, but I assume they have since the model isn't 1 to 1 to previous model afaik.
Iteration

He probably did iterations as well, but it's faster for him since he's the one giving himself feedback, waiting for feedback from another person kills a lot of time.
Then when in a production you also have to work with the riggers and animators and sometimes they have feedback as well on the model about what can work or has to be changed for animations to work etc etc. Lots more cogs in the wheel than someone making a fan-remake on their own.

The process probably took a week or maybe 2.
So it could definitely be a result of the whining, but Blizzard don't listen to feedback, so it probably was the plan all along. And making the base gnoll first, which is why hogger got the base gnoll at first is a process that makes it easier to make new version of gnolls.

A blizzard artist on themselves could probably bang it out in a day. I don't think anyone in any creative business likes the process that management requires, but we all have to deal with it.

[Ticj]

you don't use the WoW engine to make models.
He was using Blender, a popular free 3d modeling program and substance painter from Adobe. Importing them to the wow engine has little to do with the modelling process.

It took him 33h to do 2 models and 6 textures. But the main issue isn't the work. It's the approval process and iterations that has to be made during a production such as Blizzards. It being a remodel doesn't change much. It do cut down the time but you still have to go through.

Concept art (yes, you need to concept the new look)
Iteration
Modelling
Iteration
Retopo
Iteration
Texturing
Iteration

Not sure if they worked on animations, but I assume they have since the model isn't 1 to 1 to previous model afaik.
Iteration

He probably did iterations as well, but it's faster for him since he's the one giving himself feedback, waiting for feedback from another person kills a lot of time.
Then when in a production you also have to work with the riggers and animators and sometimes they have feedback as well on the model about what can work or has to be changed for animations to work etc etc. Lots more cogs in the wheel than someone making a fan-remake on their own.

The process probably took a week or maybe 2.
So it could definitely be a result of the whining, but Blizzard don't listen to feedback, so it probably was the plan all along. And making the base gnoll first, which is why hogger got the base gnoll at first is a process that makes it easier to make new version of gnolls.

A blizzard artist on themselves could probably bang it out in a day. I don't think anyone in any creative business likes the process that management requires, but we all have to deal with it.

Ah okay, I was a little off on the time it took the guy in the video. It's been a couple weeks since I've watched it. But yeah, you pretty much nailed what I was trying to say in my original post. A single artist can probably knock the model out in a day, but the management pipeline being what it is delays it a bit. 2 weeks after the initial shitstorm is about what I'd expect for the development. It could be much slower but I still wouldn't consider it 'surprisingly fast' as some others had been saying.

[Kaleredar]

Model work is a lot of work, but it can definitely be done within a day.

Uhhh... No.

For onezies, keep in mind a work day is 8 hours, not 24. Just so that's clear.

Someone absolutely flooring it through something with no oversight working through lunch might be able to bang out something in eight hours. But probably not a fully textured model. And, as Kumorii noted, oversight is absolutely a thing that goes on at Blizzard. And even if they repurposed the other gnoll model, which I'm sure they did to some degree, there's a lot of large-scale and fine-scale detail that's different.


Also, those mechanostriders, which are basically a bunch of inerpenatrating polygonal shapes are waaay easier to make, relatively speaking, than an organic creature model like Hogger. And that's not to disparage the guy's work; from a brief look at the video he did a mighty fine job. But that's just a statement of fact.



Source: I'm an actual 3D artist, working in the industry. I don't make stylized things like WoW for my work, but I know what the modeling and texturing process involves.