While dinking around with my characters for WoW, gear lists, talent builds and whatnot I came across the WoWModelviewer utility. Basically allows you to view all the assets stored in the game files. Now don’t get too excited, these things are at very low rez to play inside WoW (around 1300 tris per character) but it is cool to see what all is available.
So my project here is to recreate a toon in high rez using LightWave and ZBrush.
Here goes.
This is what you get from WoWModelViwer. Load any asset, any armor set and play any animation available in the game.
So this is my 70 Troll Shaman. The armor you see is what she is currently wearing so I’m going to try and recreate it. Another cool feature in WMV is the ability to strip away all the armor, clothing, hair etc. and have a blank char perfect for a reference. One of my main goals with this project is practicing in LW and ZB so I’m trying to not get bogged down in the concept stages.
BAM, with the stop pose the toon is frozen in the perfect position for reference. So here are the ortho views I used to model off of in LW.
Working out so far.
Progress so far. My thinking is basic mesh in LW, add the details in ZB. We’ll see how that goes. Other than that I make no excuses, let me have it.
Tomorrow should finish the head, which BTW is the only difference between Female trolls and Night elves :D.
Take it easy
Lookin good so far 
Here are the things I notice that could be improved: The breasts look like seperate objects that were pressed on afterwards. Try and make them connect to the chest smoother…
Also the ribs seem to be sticking out a bit too much… the arms don’t seem to smoothly connect to the chest like you would expect.
I would cross reference this with some actual human anatomy books to get a feel for how everything connects (arms/chest/breasts/etc)
Thanks for the suggestions allaei. I fixed it as well as possible at this mesh density.
Finished the base model, now for Z-Brush.
Ok so I’m not even sure that what you’re doing is legal
“…You also agree that you will not alter, disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer or otherwise modify the Downloaded Content…” - From the Blizzard site you can find it here
http://www.blizzard.com/legalfaq.shtml
I could be wrong but I believe a model mesh would qualify as downloaded content
I personally would be pretty pissed off if I worked on a model for a game then had someone rip off my model mesh as a base for a zbrush paint over then call it their own
I personally would be pretty pissed off if I worked on a model for a game then had someone rip off my model mesh as a base for a zbrush paint over then call it their own
he did not do that.
He just used screenshots of the model as a guideline to create his own model(which he could have done ingame too).
“…You also agree that you will not alter, disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer or otherwise modify the Downloaded Content…” - From the Blizzard site you can find it here
i’m not quite sure if using that tool is illegal. It does not alter and downloaded content but it does decompile the archives in which blizzard packs all their media.
back to topic:
I agree with allaei, the breasts should connect smoother to the body. Also the headshape in the front view looks a little odd.
regards,
m4gnus
This is Blizzard’s World of Warcraft EULA, http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/eula.html, current as of the last patch.
It mainly states that all content is owned by Blizzard (section 3a.), you won’t make copies of the game or source code to create derivitive works etc. (section 4a.) except your 1 archive copy, sell the game unless authorized (section 4b.i), exploit the game (section 4b.ii), set up services using information derived from WoW communications (section 4b.iii), develope tools or interfaces that connect with the live service in any way (section 4b.iv).
Most of the EULA is designed to protect the live gaming environment from cheaters, farmers etc. However I’m not foolish enough to think that stealing their content is okay. I didn’t use the base mesh at all, I did use screenshots of the base mesh for reference in making a hi-rez model. I don’t believe this will be a “simple paint-over” in z-brush and at no time will I pretend these are my ideas.
Like I said I simply want to skip the concept phase and jump right to modeling. This was mostly to save time not to rip off Blizz. I am a tremendous fan of Blizzard’s and love the work that their CG department puts out.
I don’t think they get that concerned about it anyway. If you check out http://www.youtube.com/contest/AzerothExposed this is a contest sponsored by Blizzard and Intel to make machinima videos about Warcraft. If you check those videos some of the content is definately not from the game but derived externally. Blizzard’s attitude is usually supportive of such things.
This is third SD level in ZBrush, around 41000 polys. Since the shaman class is an armored melee class I’m going to buff her out a bit. Nothing much done to the hands, face and feet yet as the level is too low at this point, I’ll work on those later.
I did make the arms and hands much bigger as thats a common feature for the trolls.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Long time since I worked on this but now that I’ve gotten some other things out of the way I plan to pick it up again.
Full body shots with slight updates.
Quick upload into ZBrush 3 when the update first came out so that was quite a few months ago. I may stay with the hand design, it came out pretty good. The head is the basic idea, provides a possible explanation for the “Malefactor’s eyepatch” head piece. I probably will redo this but its getting there. The torso was just messing around, I don’t plan on leaving her with this skin condition :D.
I’ve put this character off for long enough I think. After quite a few stabs at the Hardcore Modeling Challenges and a whole lot of training and practice I’m feeling pretty comfortable in ZBrush finally. Not only that but I managed to get a vote in an HMC 
and that was going up against Kris Costa and Alex Oliveria. I am so impressed with what they were able to accomplish during HMC #16.
So with that in mind and with almost a year passing on this project I see many places that could be better especially in the low levels of the model. I may use what I’ve already got or I may start it again from scratch. We shall see.
Blizzard doesn’t actually hit you for using the models for something not profit. infact they have even made contest for machinema that is made for it.
examples:
Contest shout out
wow: blind
and people have also recreated the model from scratch. this is a model maker i found.
I think the original concern was that I was going to take the WoW model do a one pass in ZBrush and claim it was my own. Me posting an instruction guide for how to do it probably didn’t help either. This of course is a bigger concern on CGSociety where everyone expects a higher standard so I made sure to clarify as much as possible.
Thank you for your concern Minnerva. 
Hey, happy 2010 !
Nice to see your progress all around here, looking forward for your updates.
Cheers,
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