Blizzard has posted a new Artcraft blog entry on its official site, this time examining the newly remodeled female night elves that will be making an appearance in upcoming expansion World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor.
”As with all of the updated character models,” writes lead character artist Tyson Murphy, ”our goal is to keep everything the original model accomplished intact, while using the additional fidelity to realize characteristics that we weren’t able to fully represent with the lower polygon counts and texture resolutions.”
”We wanted to visually communicate that she is a fully capable warrior huntress,” Murphy continues, “and small details like muscle definition help highlight that. We also put additional focus on her hands and fingernails, giving a very slight point to her nails to provide just a hint of a more feral nature.”
Also, expect much improved ear physics. ”Last but not least, the all-important Night Elf ears. In the original model, these were quite literally separate pieces of geometry effectively tacked onto the head of the Night Elf. In the new models, we’ve taken care to fully integrate the ears into the geometry, which leads to a far more natural and high-quality look.” And thank God for that.
Warlords of Draenor launches sometime this fall, and will bring improved models to all the game’s races. Check out the fancy new Tauren here.
