yamcandies

[yamcandies]

Chromatic Dragon

I wanted to revamp something that would be tricky, and where better to start than a chromatic drake. I mean, look at this thing.

They're supposed to be experiments created by mixing the dragonflights together, so I realize they're supposed to be wonky looking, but I think we can smooth out the rough edges. I want to take things from the modern drake model (or highlands drake) and apply it without just ripping it off. Yam, I hear you say, why don't you just take the existing model and update the textures to fit the textures here? To that I say, shut up. I want to make something brand new but close enough to the source.

The feet will likely get the pronounced index claw treatment.

Will try to hew close to the pinecone tail and maybe make it less pinecone.

The waffle-gator back has been removed entirely from the modern drakes and dragons, so I'll try for something unique.

The wings will attach to the body like modern versions, if the weight painting doesn't explode.

Will TRY to keep the overall spirit of this face shape. Keep the nose horn, keep the single file horns, maybe add something extra.

Hoping to get away from the viper face plan.

And to be clear, this is the color palette we're working with:

I think they can be unified gracefully, though it'll require a lot of testing.

[yamcandies]

Warcraft's Dragons

I caught someone's custom environment work for a private Warcraft RP server on my dash. Purely RP, no actual gameplay, so the experience is down to custom environments, with assets arranged in different configurations that stream right to the user. It's an awesome little system. The downside is that there is no asset upload like there would be with Second Life. I found that it's possible to mod things, and then offer up a patch that other people can download so they can see the same things you're seeing (akin to custom skins in Feralheart), but it's such a HURDLE, and it also means they can use whatever you make in whatever way they please. At this point, that's fine. I'll take what I can get. I just want to work on a dragon and if I can get it to use existing animations, even better.

Warcraft dragons received their own glow-up over the years. As of Dragonflight, they look fantastic! In order to compare models, we need to define the different types. From youngest to oldest, there's whelps (hatchlings), drakes (adolescents), dragons (adults), and wyrms (ancient).

Dragons and wyrms appear to use the same model. The important dragons and wyrms have different heads.

When there's mount/riding variations of the wyrms, they're smushed back into the drake model.

Some models had been updated a bit before Dragonflight, such as the whelps in Legion.

Following Dragonflight, the base meshes and many of the important dragons were updated. It looks like they've gone out of the vague A-pose and swapped to T-pose.

The drakes have a really awesome large front claw thing going on, A+, no notes. I haven't gotten too far into the expac yet, but it looks like the new drakes and the dragon flying system (specifically highland drake) use the same models.

They look rad! They've moved away from the elapid snake-like faces entirely, and added additional claws on the front and back legs.

Since these riding dragons are so customizable, the export software I'm using doesn't include textures. There are options like ears, different horns, spiky accents, tails, etc.

Please behold lanky teen Wrathion.

And a version that's even more updated:

Like the whelps and drakes, they pulled him out of A-pose and into T-pose. It's nice that the game still recognizes him as a lil' baby drake.

It makes him look tiny compared to the new dragons:

No T-pose here, looks like it's back to the original poses, probably so they can reuse the old animations. But my god! Beautiful!

Unique faces as well!

Continued in the next post.

[yamcandies]

Become Dragon

To be clear from the start, I'm a CG generalist trained in animation, though these days I mostly sculpt toys. For a long time, I've wanted to give a glow-up to the Warcraft cheetah.

It was nice and blocky, looked nothing like a cheetah, and I thought it would be a fun challenge. I never got around to it, and it looks like they already gave it a glow-up!

It honestly looks great. Still looks nothing like a cheetah, but it's much better. But now I don't have a project.

Last week I went looking around for places where I could RP a dragon. "Where can I become dragon" has kind of been my silly little internal goal ever since I played Everquest. When I learned you could turn into a wolf, it blew my mind. It was such a distant goal, but I was desperate to BECOME WOLF, even if the wolf looked like this:

But in that vein, I used to imagine how fucking cool it would be to stomp around as a dragon, in an MMO. There have been a few games since then that allow you to play as the animal, but not a ton that let you play online with other people. This is probably why I play The Isle a lot.

I also wanted a LOT of customization. The options for this are pretty much nonexistent, outside of virtual worlds. Enter SECOND LIFE. What you mean you could upload whatever you wanted? Your own mesh? Textures? Animation? And SELL IT? And there's a permission system, and no one has to download some sketchy patch to see your stuff? Hell yeah!

I started shoving in everything I could think of. And then my old desire to BECOME DRAGON crept up, so I started working on a dragon.

But everything I was doing was for profit, and preparing fully customized avatars for sale was about 3 months of work, at roughly 40 animations per. Slap on skins, HUD customization, accessories, scripts, considerations for compatibility, systems for allowing a 3rd party market to flourish by making sure the UVs were set up in a way where the user could clearly tell what was a head, what was a body, etc.

It was a lot of work, and at the time, I was thinking about what would sell, so I worked on the feline-centaur avatar up there, after dealing with pushy customers after 5 days of solid work following a release, I decided Second Life was no longer for me.

Every now and then I come back to BECOME DRAGON. This time it has been spurred by Warcraft's Dragonflight expac. Next post I will talk about Warcraft's glorious dragons!