"World of Warcraft" has officially revealed the revamped version of their Human female character models.
In the game's official blog, Chris Robinson, senior art director of World of Warcraft, broke down how Blizzard Entertainment went about designing their new character.
"We're completely overhauling every aspect of the player models, but our goal is to do so while retaining the core look and feel that has always made them your character," Robinson wrote. "We'll feel like we've succeeded if you see the updated version of your character and it still feels like you're looking at the character you've been playing for the past however many years-only someone has finally focused a lens."
WoW has redone their character model from scratch, redesigning the bass model, skin tone variations, customization options such as wrinkles, scars, jewelry, etc. According to the blog post, even the facial expressions were revamped to showcase a wider range of emotions.
Joe Keller, senior character artist on the WoW development team, revealed how the Human female's body was sculpted to give her a stronger look.
"Everyone is pretty familiar with the Human character models in WoW, but working on these updates gives us a chance to embellish and fill in the blanks," Keller said in the blog. "For the Human female this meant we could give her more muscle definition and personality in the face while still staying true to the overall look and spirit of the original. Hopefully this will also help show her as more of the capable fighter that she is."
From a Human female's eye shape to hairstyle, the design team left no feature untouched. Another goal was to make animations look smoother yet still sharp.
"To achieve this, we're increasing the polygon count significantly (in some cases going from less than 1,000 to over 5,000), more than doubling the texture resolution, increasing bone count significantly to support updated animation and facial expression, and retouching nearly every animation for all of the characters," Robinson wrote.
For more information and photos of the Human female character revamp, click here.
