WoW Moviewatch: Wandering Dreamscape
by Eliah Hecht 
Jul 8th 2007 at 12:00PM
This is one truly impressive piece of machinima. I don't watch a lot of WoW movies, but it's the coolest use of the WoW engine I've seen since Return. The video's author, Snoman, does some pretty amazing things with WoW's terrain and models, sometimes changing the game world so much that I look at a scene and think "What game is that? And where can I get it?" Here's Snoman's description:
Wandering Dreamscape showcases 17 model changes. These have been edited together into three separate songs; each with it's own theme and story. I have tried to make it as enjoyable as possible, using some amazing trance tracks and filtering nearly every shot as to make it as surrealistically realistically beautiful as possible.
"Surrealistically realistically beautiful," eh? As confusing as that is, I'd say it's accomplished pretty well in this video. Head over to Warcraft Movies if you want to download it, which the author entreats you to do.
[thanks, BaronSoosdon]
Previously on Moviewatch
Ultimate Escapism 1, 2, and 3, also by Snoman
Filed under: Machinima, Features, WoW Moviewatch
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Arturis Jul 8th 2007 12:03PM
You neglected to mention the most important part: The opening features a quote from WoW Insider's very own Amanda Rivera!
Auriea Jul 8th 2007 12:29PM
I want to go quest in the Shiverpeak Mountains. All of those redone zones looked amazing.
lolwtfstfu Jul 8th 2007 2:25PM
this movie was amazing, Snoman is godly because he puts the OST on warcraft movies heh.
Other than that, wow it was beautiful and i really hope he will work for blizzard
Liquidis Jul 8th 2007 1:56PM
Somebody make the music stop. Blood is spewing from my ears.
Rich Jul 8th 2007 2:26PM
Wow. Awesome. I wish Blizzard would use lighting and particle effects like this guy does. The way he lays out towns is great too, feels much richer than generic inn, town hall, forge, and 2-story house all facing each other in a square like a lot of towns in the game.
FlupKe Jul 8th 2007 3:19PM
And like in almost all videos, it's ruined by an awful, totally out of context music. I stopped it before the end.
BLUBLASTER Jul 8th 2007 3:25PM
OK im sry to say i like the music anyone know what it is. Well done on the video
Michel Jul 8th 2007 3:34PM
I also found the music good and very evocative for a "dream" land.
(and yeah, I love Trance music, techno, electro, pop , rock, jazz, symphonic and so on)
Tekkub Jul 8th 2007 4:14PM
I wish people would stop posting videos to FileFront. Their player sucks, it's either blaring loud or mute... no volume control at all. No full screen mode either.... ugh.
Whitburn Jul 8th 2007 5:06PM
I haven't even finished watching this but I enjoyed it so much I had to post and say how delicious those zones look.
As a total noob though, may I ask what software did Snoman use to make these amazing dreamscapes?
keltian Jul 8th 2007 8:54PM
i loved the video, every bit of it. the changes he made look so beautiful and i also loved the music he chose for it. and to those of you who said the music was awful, too bad. not all of us like heavy metal.
Pzychotix Jul 8th 2007 9:26PM
Once again, yet another boring video by Snoman. Joy. Beautiful? Yes. Movie worth watching? No. Take a picture and be done with it. Many of the camera shots are horrible, and the mini-scenes don't help at all. Certainly there are some gems in there (such as the angel parachute wings and the use of them in the beginning), but he has a long way to go before he can make any decent movies, music videos or whatever he's aiming toward.
Bob Jul 9th 2007 1:01AM
Long HL2 Intro, full of back patting quotes?
Check
Cheesy Euro-Pop?
Check
Constant use of Bloom and long fades?
Check
/Yawn
Sylvina Jul 9th 2007 1:52AM
Note: Anybody who can make a better video and is bashing the guys video, do so now. If not, sit down and shut up. I personally am amazed with how he redid a lot of the areas. Camera angles, etc. Who cares? I think the important thing about the whole thing is that NONE OF THESE AREAS/ZONES EXIST IN WoW! He created them all, and if he has a bad taste in music (I personally enjoyed the music but then again I watch Anime and enjoy Japanese culture), or doesn't have good camera angles, etc. Who cares? The important thing is that he created all these zones from relative scratch (okay he spliced together zones and such but still!) and I was thoroughly impressed.
My personal favorite is pre-plague Plaguelands, that by far was awesome.
Pzychotix Jul 9th 2007 2:38AM
@14. Do book critics have to be award winning writers to know whether a book is bad or not? Do the judges on American Idol sing better than the contestants? No. So sit down and shut it.
A music video like this should be appeasing to the mind, yet it fails at that in many points. I don't need to be rehearsed in the ways of camera bloom or model terrain editing to know that this video isn't up to snuff.
SeanKReynolds Jul 9th 2007 1:09PM
Wow, only a FULL MINUTE of congratulatory quotes and non-WOW audio clips. Preceding a boring video. :/
RogueJedi86 Jul 9th 2007 9:41PM
Wow, that is NICE. I leveled in Loch Modan extensively as a young Dwarf, and I still only recognized 1 or 2 features in Barrens Modan. I'd love to see other combinations. Ashenfire Peninsula(either way, Hellfired Ashenvale, or Ashenvaled Hellfire)? Durokkar Forest? Nether'goro?
Seriously, are there any other of his videos that happen to show melded zones?
Theserene Jul 10th 2007 12:20PM
I loved the melded zones, the zangermarsh combinations were especially good.
Andrew Aug 20th 2007 12:12AM
I don't understand what is so amazing about this video...
He swapped some blizzard art with some blizzard art, he hardly did anything special. If you think all of this looks so amazing, you should just buy some ale in-game and realize that you too can play in a surreal landscape, just add BLOOM.
People just think it's so amazing because it's places we've never seen/been before. But I bet once you got there, after 5 minutes you would be bored. That is how it always is, that's how it was with Outland and that's how it will be with Northrend.
jason Sep 6th 2007 5:49PM
ok so maybe I don't know for sure . . . but I tend to think that to render a blizz map it takes a buttload of polygons that form the basic shape of the land, then the comp loads the major items in the map like buildings or specific landmarks. Next you have some layers of 'color' to the gorund and then you have all the 'permanents' like trees etc then last of all you add the npcs and creeps.
Seems to me you take something like map_loch_modan and then you load texture_barrens_ overtop of it and then load maybe a thing like structures_barrens
(forgive me I wouldn't begin to know any of the vars or DB addresses, but I hope you get the point)
Imagine making your bed and putting a different colored sheet on it. . . then take a 3D pop-up carpet and roll out over top of the sheet(trees) then boom. . .there you go.
I surmise all this from the standpoint of slow comps. . .crap for graphics cards and high latency. . .. anyone else ever flown over a white field of polygons? Seen it replaced by a 'sheet' of color?
Every flown through an elwinn with no trees only to have them pop up all of the sudden in front of you and under you?
I have a hard time thinking that this guy really took any genuine skill. . .the sakura elwin was the only thing that I was awed by. . .didn't know where the white blossums came from. . . . if he 'made' those then more power to him. . . .