Amazing player-animated and -rendered WoW avatar

by Allison Robert Jan 17th 2012 at 5:00PM

Mother of sweet things! I saw this on Reddit's /r/wow community a few days ago and realized that I'm kind of a slacker when it comes to my own forum signatures (which is apparently the whole purpose of the project). Thovald, the player responsible for the video, wrote that he did it in 3D Studio Max and didn't actually change the female troll model itself. The big difference is an increased polygon count for the robes and (I would assume) the graphics of the fire spell being cast. It reminded me more than a bit of the perennial favorite Blind, and it's all the more amazing that Thovald is apparently self-taught.

We know that Blizzard is working on an update for character models, but it's pretty cool to see what players can do with them in the meantime. They might be old, but as Thovald noted, they're still a surprisingly expressive bunch.

Tags: animation, animations, avatar, character-animation, character-animations, character-model, character-models, charaction-animation, female-troll, player-animation, player-content, player-created-content, troll

Filed under: Arts and Crafts

Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)

Snuzzle Jan 17th 2012 7:58PM

I should also add, the animation itself seems to have been stitched from several existing animations then cleaned up. The starting hip work is from the dance while the arm motions are from a different part of the dance, and the "playing with fire" part is the crafting animation, for example.

Blightmare Jan 17th 2012 8:56PM

TAKE MY MONEY!

bubblesofmischief Jan 17th 2012 9:02PM

Wow, nice video :)

RetPallyJil Jan 17th 2012 9:11PM

How is it everyone but me can get the models to export into another program? GRRRRRRRRRRR

Teresa Jan 18th 2012 12:10AM

Very cool, I love extended animations for what otherwise is just fireball, fireball, fireball,ect.. Reminds me of Rift, where when my elf would cast something, she'd frantically flip through the pages of the book she was holding. Which makes me wish my paladin could incorporate a libram somehow in her rotation, but they got rid of librams so thats out.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, sweet animation, I hope they end up flashy like this if they re-do the character models. Its almost perfect, just THAT FACE. You know, THAT FACE every troll and orc player uses. Uuuggh.

Traksis Jan 18th 2012 2:37AM

Looks kinda... silly to me.

Sorry, but it's like she's trying to do a pole dance, lap dance, and hack up a hairball all at the same time, then literally does a little hop forward when she casts the fireball, and then settles into this kinda Japanese anime babe pose.

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